- The session focuses on how attachment makes a child receptive to being taught and taken care of, and empowers the adult responsible for the child.
- Attachment is hierarchical in nature, not horizontal, as its primary purpose is to care for offspring.
- This concept may be difficult for those who value equality, but it is essential for understanding attachment.
- The child's attachment to responsible adults creates the context for raising and teaching the child.
- Understanding the hierarchical nature of attachment is crucial for revolutionizing parenting, education, and daycare systems.
- Attachment empowers both the child and the adult, and the capacity for relationship unfolds in stages.
- Attachment facilitates dependence and allows the child to trust and depend on the adult, making the child receptive.
- There are two modes of attachment, and attaching in the wrong mode can lead to management and receptivity problems.

- The receptivity of children towards teachers and parents is not solely based on skill, love, or knowledge, but rather on their attachments.
- Attachments are what make children receptive and render them endearing to adults.
- When attachments are lost, children can become irritated and distant from adults.
- Attachment is a powerful force that covers up flaws and allows for closeness and connection.
- Attachments are important for both parents and teachers, as they create a sense of home and enable children to feel comfortable and connected.
- Creating a sense of home is crucial for children's success in school and their overall well-being.
- Relationships and attachments are the key to providing comfort, rest, and a place of retreat for children.

- The speaker was invited to address an educational conference in Japan about the decay of the educational system and attachment infrastructure.
- While at a market in Tokyo, the speaker witnessed a child involved in an accident and realized that they were not the answer for the child's comfort.
- Nature designates the person a child is attached to as the one who can provide comfort and care, regardless of qualifications or credentials.
- Understanding the importance of attachment can help in decision-making regarding a child's education and behavior management.
- Cultivating attachments between children and caregivers, including teachers, is crucial for effective teaching and learning.
- Attachment helps children feel grounded and provides guidance and direction.
- The speaker's experience in France highlighted the idea that being attached to a caregiver can provide a sense of security even when the caregiver may not know where they are going.

- Attachment to a teacher provides a sense of direction and belonging for a student.
- Attachment activates proximity instincts and loyalty, allowing students to follow and be loyal to their teacher.
- Attachment to a teacher motivates students to be good and behave.
- Children have impulses to be both good and bad, but the desire to be good is strongest towards those they are attached to.
- The desire to be good for those we are attached to allows us to act with power and authority.
- When attachment is not present, motivation to be good diminishes.
- Consequences and punishments can undermine attachment and the desire to be good.
- Attachment is a powerful force that should be respected and preserved in order to harness its natural power.

- The speaker discusses the importance of attachment in motivating children to be good
- Children naturally resist being controlled or pushed around unless they are attached to the person doing the controlling
- The speaker argues that children are born difficult and not naturally obedient
- Counter will, the instinct to resist coercion, is a basic human instinct that can only be overcome by attachment
- Understanding counter will could revolutionize the education, foster care, and daycare systems
- Counter will serves attachment by protecting against outside influence and direction, but also allows for the development of a child's own will when attachment needs are fulfilled

- Counter will is a dynamic where children resist coercion unless they have a strong attachment to the person giving the commands.
- Counter will occurs when the pressure from adults is greater than the child's desire for attachment and compliance.
- Stuck kids, who lack attachment and feel controlled by others, are highly prone to counter will.
- The concept of defiance is misunderstood, as it is a natural response to being pushed around outside of attachments.
- The power lies in attachment, and children are most inclined to follow, agree with, and be influenced by those they are attached to.
- Parenting literature often focuses on managing children, but the key is cultivating attachments with them.
- Many parents of adolescents give up due to a lack of natural power and influence, leading to resorting to force.
- The answer lies in understanding what children are attached to and believing in their desire to be good for us.
- Children's attachments, not adult roles, are the most important factor in post-industrialized society.

- The video discusses the importance of children's attachments in raising them
- The speaker lists 6 sources of natural power and authority that come from a child's attachment
- The stepmom in the example given does not have a strong attachment with Suzanne, leading to parenting problems
- The speaker emphasizes that the answer is not in what to do, but who we are to our children
- The next session will focus on the hierarchical nature of attachment

- Attachment is hierarchical and essential for raising and teaching children.
- Understanding attachment is crucial for revolutionizing parenting, education, and daycare systems.
- Attachments make children receptive and endearing to adults.
- Creating a sense of home and attachment is crucial for children's success and well-being.
- Attachment to caregivers, including teachers, is crucial for effective teaching and learning.
- Attachment motivates children to be good and behave.
- Counter will, the instinct to resist coercion, can only be overcome by attachment.
- Understanding counter will could revolutionize education and childcare systems.
- The power lies in attachment, and children are most influenced by those they are attached to.
- Cultivating attachments with children is more important than managing them.
- Children's attachments are the most important factor in post-industrialized society.

In this session, we're going to look at how attachment renders the child receptive, the student receptive to being taught, the child receptive to being taken care of, and the adult to whom the child is attached to, empowered to execute their responsibilities.

Now, the most important discovery with regards to attachment is not that we have a social nature.

This was Aristotle's observation and many of the early attachment theories focused primarily on this movement for togetherness.

And the word social was used, and the word social connotes peer relationships.

And so here was the problem, whenever we studied togetherness, it was about the social nature of man or the social nature of humans and so on.

But it was with Bowlby's moving the word from social to attachment that began to reveal the clues, the power of a word, and the true nature and purpose of attachment was to take care of one's offspring for 1 to depend upon the other, which revealed something that even Bowlby had not counted on, is that attachment is basically hierarchical in nature, not horizontal in nature.

It is that way because its primary purpose is to take care of our offspring, to render them receptive and the adult empowered.

Now this is such a difficult construct for us to understand.

Those of us that come from countries that love democracy and all things of equalness, of equality, the idea of hierarchy in something does not go down easy.

And so I've decided to leave this topic because of its sensitivity and essential controversy to deal with this topic in the next session, in session 13, because I didn't want to just pass it by so quickly.

So if, don't worry about it at this point.

We'll get to it where I can flesh it out and hopefully that will help you work around that construct and hopefully also answer some of the concerns about the fact that the most important relationship to us is essentially hierarchical in nature.

Now the most important discovery with regards to attachment again as I said is not the social nature of us as human beings but that it's the child's attachment to the adults responsible that create the context for raising the child, including taking care of the child and teaching the child.

And that is undoubtedly the most significant discovery in social science.

That discovery would revolutionize our parenting, our foster parenting, our educational system, our daycare system, it would absolutely revolutionize.

If we got this, And this is, there is no controversy around this.

There is just a lack of understanding and a lack of, to be able to move this into where we need to move this into, into our practices and our policies.

And we have such difficulty with this as adults, such difficulty.

When I began to sense this and put the material together, the university I was teaching at allowed me to create a course around it, which I was pleased to be able to do.

They were willing to do all the legwork for it.

And so I created a whole course that was simply called Child-Parent Relations.

So it came back from the Registrar's Office and the Dean's Office and say, okay, we've done all of this and I looked at the title of the course and it was called Parent-Child Relations.

People are talking about teacher-student relations.

We put ourselves first in thinking it's about our relationship with our kids.

Now that's important, but that isn't the context that is what's required by a child.

It's the relationship of the child to the adults responsible.

And even in terms of the book, the book kept on being translated and continually using the adult first.

We're so egocentric, we think it's all about us.

A child can have attachment to a teacher.

I taught hundreds of students at university with hundreds in the classes at 1 time.

It was their connection and attachment to me which gave me the context in which to teach.

And so again to be able to, how did that empower me as a professor?

How did it render them receptive as students?

And that is the question, how does attachment empower?

Again, the 3 keys to unlocking the mystery of human attachment.

The first 1 was that the capacity for relationship unfolds in various stages and phases.

The second 1 is, and this is the 1 we're looking at here, is a child's attachment is what enables and empowers the adult responsible for the child, or all of those adults that are responsible for a child.

And as I said, this session and the next session and session 13 go into more the hierarchical nature of attachment.

I begin it here with obviously this picture which I have borrowed from Tokyo Doi's book Amai, translated to the simply translated the anatomy of dependents and he has this beautiful Japanese picture in kimonos and so on, about on this, and I just westernized a bit and did my usual thing with stick figures because I can't really do anything else and put it in here.

But the idea of this is that attachment is first and foremost a hierarchical relationship, that the child is seeking something, and the adult is meant to be the answer to what the child is seeking.

Be the answer to their invitation to exist in this world.

Be the answer to a sense of significance.

Be the answer to a sense of loyalty and so on.

And so there is this hierarchical nature to this where attachment facilitates, the purpose of attachment is to enable 1 to take care of another.

And so there are 2 basic modes to attachment, and I'll just introduce here 2 basic modes to attachment.

We understand this well in working with our favorite pets.

That we can't train a dog who is in an alpha mode.

That the dog has to be in a dependent mode and the trainer in the alpha mode.

That we can't train a horse who is in the alpha mode.

That the first issue in any training with our pets is relationship.

1 of the problems, it's so difficult to train cats, is they're rarely not in the alpha mode.

It is amazing the cat's instincts, the alpha instincts that are there.

And so it renders them much less likely to be trained and managed.

But this key to this hierarchical arrangement is the fact that there are 2 modes to attachment, and it makes all the difference in the world the mode the child attaches to.

And if a child is attaching in the wrong mode, we are going to have, by default, management problems, we are going to have problems with receptivity, we will feel rather powerless rather than empowered.

And so more about that in the in the next session.

Attachment though facilitates dependence, Its whole purpose is at the base of the triangle to take care of the very basic needs of the child And so the child needs to trust in, depend upon, rely on, lean upon the adult for the child to become receptive.

If this doesn't happen, the child doesn't become receptive.

So what attachment does, provides the adult with the power to teach the child, take care of the child.

If it was skill, if it was skill, you're the same teacher, you're the same parent, maybe you have 3 children, maybe you have 7 children, maybe have 30 in your class, you have the same skill, then all the children would be equal in being receptive to you.

You know that you can have your way much better with 1 child than another.

You know that 1 child is much more manageable than another.

So it doesn't have to do with your skill.

It doesn't even have to do with your love.

It doesn't have to do with your knowledge.

You've maybe read all kinds of books, but your children, your students are much different in their receptivity to you.

So it does not have to do with you, it has to do with them.

And you all know that 1 child who's very receptive to you but not at all receptive to the substitute teacher or receptive to you know another 1 that's involved in them or that the child is very receptive to you as a mother but not to their stepmother or to to to 1 grandmother but not to the other grandmother.

We tend to think everything has to do with us and so we think that you know it's around the next book, around the next course and the next thing I will learn.

No, no this has to do with their attachments.

Their attachments are what render them receptive.

And so this is just a picture of how it unfolds.

Just putting these pieces together, just of how it unfolds here.

First of all, Again, that we'll focus on next time.

The arranging hierarchically is absolutely essential.

If this goes wrong, if the two-year-old actually attaches in the alpha mode, we're gonna have a whole host of problems.

And 1 of the problems in today's society is we're giving rise in North America to alpha children like that has never happened before.

And so this automatically spells trouble in terms of being able to raise them and and manage them.

Our only hope is they attach rightly in the right relationship.

Not just attachment, but they have to be in right relationship.

It is, they have to attach in that dependent mode for us to take charge of them, to take care of them and act with natural authority.

When we get close to each other, when we get close to each other, of course, it's very easy to rub, to get irritated with each other's smells, each other's peculiarities, each other's habits.

It's very hard to get close without the endearing effect of attachment.

Ackerberg looked like anymore, but to me she'll always be beautiful.

I don't know, but attachment took care of all of those things.

And she may have had all kinds of blemishes and bad smells, and she may have had these, but fortunately attachment covered it all.

If you've had ever had any experience of falling out of love with somebody, it will occur to you once you've fallen out of love how actually irritating that person was.

Now they didn't change, it's our relationship that changed and that is what's so important.

Many people think today that it's a natural adolescent rite of passage for adolescents to become irritated with the adults in their life.

When we lose their hearts, they're not endeared to us.

Because we've lost their hearts, they're not attached to us.

It was an experience with Kiara, my first granddaughter, Tamara's first daughter, and I was so delighted.

I offered to change diapers, to be involved.

Of course, I've had 5 kids and lots of experience at doing this and on this 1 occasion, Tamara brings Kiera, she had some business to do, and she has a girlfriend and says, Dad, do you mind taking care of my girlfriend's baby around the same age?

I thought, no, the more the merrier, there's no problem at all.

And I wasn't prepared for the fact that you know when it came to changing the diaper it turned my stomach absolutely was foul I had no attachment with this child.

And it occurred to me, and pardon the crudeness, but it occurred to me that if attachment can make shit smell sweet, it can do most anything.

It's got to be the most powerful force in the universe.

We don't have to dress up or in a certain way or in a certain fashion for our students to like us.

It's the attachment which covers everything.

The fact is is when they attach to us, it covers up all of those things.

Attachment is what endears, and it's meant to be that way.

There's 1 bit of research which shows that when children, when a teacher attaches to a student, a troublemaker, all of a sudden they have a lot more patience.

No, it's the fact that now they see the child differently because attachment covers it.

There's other research that shows when parents do not attach to children they're more likely to abuse those children and so on and so on.

So we've got all kinds of things around this.

The fact is attachments are important both ways but we must, we must cultivate, win the hearts of our children, of our students, because if we don't, it will be difficult for them to get close to us.

So it's necessary for us to be able to do our job.

Every child needs to have a home, But a home is not a house.

It's not made of brick, of stone, of wood.

If a child is attached, then the child is at home with.

Children need to feel at home with those who are teaching them, taking care of them, parenting them.

That is the first and fundamental aspect of relationship.

If they don't feel at home, nothing is going to work out well.

When I used to work with badly damaged adolescents who were basically unschoolable, and the challenge would be when I would consult with these school districts and boards is how to get the child to go to school.

Well, I said, well, first of all, we're homing creatures.

The number 1 issue of truancy and of not going to school is children have to feel at home, a student has to feel at home with a staff member, with a principal, a vice principal, a teacher, someone they feel at home with for them to come because we're homing creatures.

Now, I'll go back to this, but I often was asked through the years in parent consulting, you know, when children would run away, adolescents would run away from home.

And I said, well, no, we don't actually run away from home.

Tell me who your adolescent is attached to and I'll tell you who they're running to.

And The first thing that I would do in consulting with these schools is I would see if there was some staff member, a secretary, a janitor, a administrator, a teacher, someone that was willing to cultivate a relationship, to go the second mile, to create a little bit of a personal relationship, to extend the invitation to exist in their presence, and to operate as home, as home base.

And my goodness, it makes a difference suddenly, because the child now in going to school is going home.

And if they can use that as a home base between periods, as a home base where to eat lunch and the first place to go to, these children actually could stay at school and could function at school, but it was all dependent upon relationship, all on relationship.

How the child needs to feel at home with those who are teaching, with those who are trying to manage the child.

The child's relationship creates that home.

It allows us to provide comfort, rest, and a place of retreat, and every child needs this.

I was invited there to address an educational conference because of the rapid decay of the educational system in Japan.

And because the attachment infrastructure is falling apart.

And so the problems that they were rather immune from are now just exploding for them.

And so I was invited to present as a North American representative to comment on what was happening through the lens of attachment.

And we were having a break, and as various speakers, we went to a large, large market in Tokyo and got separated from these and right in front of me I observed an accident, a four-year-old who was, I estimate a four-year-old, who was riding his bike and collided with with another bike and he was sprawled on the pavement and he was screaming and crying.

So I stepped forward, because nobody seemed to be coming out of the crowds to take care of this child, I stepped forward to take care of this child and he caught sight of me in the corner of his eye and the look of terror on his face far outweighed any pain he felt.

And it was like A shock went through me and I took a step back and I said, oh my goodness, I am not his answer.

No matter what my experience is, I am not his answer.

I've got to find the person he came with, the adult he came with.

So I started tapping people on the back, you know, and pointing, is this your child?

And 1 young, I thought he was a teenager, a young kid, adolescent, turns around I point, and it ended up to be the father, a young Japanese father, and he was his answer.

The boy ran to him, he ran to this, he was able to provide the comfort.

I have almost 200 aggregate years of parenting and grandparenting.

I have over 40 years accumulated experience of parent consulting and of working with professionals with children.

The only thing that has clout, whoever the child is attached to, is the designated comforter, is a designated caregiver.

I was involved in many, many councils in terms of schools where we had troublesome kids and we're all around.

And I say, well, who is the child attached to?

Well, this teacher or that secretary, why aren't they here?

Nature doesn't care if you were the most important person in the universe.

It has everything to do with their attachment.

Nature designates who is empowered to take care of the child for better or for worse.

And we had best honor that and try to make the most of that and so my life has been committed to working with the adults to whom the children are attached if I can work with them because they are already designated by nature as the ones who the child is going to seek to be taken care of, I best work for them, or rather through them, for them to become the teacher, the parent, the therapist that child needs.

And so that, again, it's just, it was such an illustration that you don't get there through education, you don't get there through PhDs, you don't get there through credentials, You don't get there through know-how.

It is the child's attachment that empowers.

And if we understood this, we would place great value on this.

When we were deciding which class the child was going to be in next year, it would be who is the child attached to, who has the most power with them, who are they most receptive to.

When the child got into trouble, instead of just sending them to the vice principal who is in charge of, you know, that's the person in charge of the problem behavior, again we would have much more, much more sensitivity to the fact that this child needs to be managed, taken care of, dealt with in the context of their attachments.

1 district who decided to implement some of this, decided to implement that they were going to, in their districts, the vice principals were in charge of behavior, that was a portfolio, that they were going to change this.

And so when there was trouble in the classroom, the teacher would send a student, this was before all of this electronic devices, The teacher would send a student to the vice principal's office.

The vice principal would do the substitute teaching, would take the class.

So the teacher would be able to deal with the issue much more likely to a relationship to have much more effect.

But you can see that in all kinds of ways it is those that the child attaches to.

That is why we need to get children to attach to their caregivers, to their early childhood educators, to their teachers, to their kindergarten teachers.

It's why even in university the best programs are those that foster attachments.

Some of the best programs in universities, experimental programs, even at that level are where they've been able to cultivate attachments with the instructors and so on, and because the teaching is so much more effective in this way.

It creates a compass 0.1 of the biggest issues for children is not to feel lost.

This is 1 of the most important functions of attachment.

It's dreadful when you can't get your bearings.

Remember when you went to a school, a new school, and you were not attached to anybody, and how lost you feel?

How absolutely lost and disoriented because you're not attached to anybody?

And then you became attached to somebody, anybody.

You could be attached to anybody, but when you attach to them, all of a sudden you didn't feel lost anymore.

And so attachment serves the purpose of helping us get our bearings, and that is so important, but it enables the person attached to, to be the North Pole, to command their attention, to guide and direct, to transmit our culture.

Holland's Opus, there is a line in this as the head teacher confronts this musician cum teacher who is frustrated in his work and says to Mr.

Holland you must become the compass point of your students and of course that is a relationship that is a result of that relationship a parent to become a compass point, and we must become the compass point.

It means that the child must attach to us, then they look to us for orientation, then they look to us for guidance, then they look to us for direction, but we are so busy giving guidance and direction without creating the context in which it's delivered.

We even have guidance teachers, we call them, and yet the only 1 they're guiding are those to whom they are a compass point, that is, it's the students' attachments to them.

And so in parenting and grandparenting and teaching, again, it's a result of attachment.

I've told the story in the Power to Parent literature about my experience in sabbatical in France, and they're rather mischievous.

They have the signs after you've left the village and there's just a line, you know, cross on it.

You're not here anymore which doesn't tell you where you are but you know you're not here and it didn't work for me.

I got lost a lot and being a typical male and having difficulty asking for assistance, sometimes I would loss for a lot longer than I would like to admit.

And 1 time I was complaining about it, I actually complained about it a number of times, my children heard it, finally Brayden burst out and said, Daddy, Daddy, it's okay, you get lost all the time, we're never lost, we're always with you.

We can serve our function even if we don't know where we're going.

When children are attached to us, we always think we have to know where we're going, we have to get our act together, we have to get on top of it.

Uh-uh, a child attaches to you, I attach to my Mrs.

I didn't attach to a teacher for another 3 years until I got all the way up until grade 5 and Then I attached again and just my mrs.

Ackerberg being at school gave me my compass point.

But she just served that function for me.

Now, she didn't have to know where she was going.

She might not have been the best teacher.

It is my attachment to her that served that function and that is it.

This is the child's attachment to the adult.

You don't have to teach the child of this.

You see how much attachment is doing, nature is doing?

Attachment is the most powerful force in the universe.

If we understood, even got a glimpse of this, we would realize that all we need to do is cultivate those working attachments and the rest will unfold.

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Intensive I - session12