- The focus is on creating a context of connection and compensating for immaturity
- The importance of initiating and activating a relationship
- The need for a context of connection even in intimate relationships
- Working with children requires a context of connection
- Bridging is essential for maintaining and safeguarding relationships
- The goodbye ritual is a manifestation of maintaining connection
- The focus should be on the next connection rather than the separation
- Putting effort into preserving relationships conveys importance and care
- Facing separation is impactful, so preserving connection is crucial.

- The importance of preserving relationships and avoiding separation
- The significance of goodbye rituals in maintaining connections
- Role-based relationships lack rituals and customs to preserve attachments
- The need to bridge what divides in order to prioritize relationships
- Bedtime as a prototype separation experience and the importance of focusing on the next connection
- The ultimate defense against stress is sleep
- The importance of not pushing children's faces into separation
- Bedtime rituals should focus on bridging and setting the stage for the next connection
- Examples of bridging separation in different situations
- The responsibility of parents and teachers to hold on to the relationship and bridge separation
- The need to bridge separation when a child expresses existential insecurity.

- The focus should be on preserving the connection and relationship with children
- Bridge problem behavior by going over the top and emphasizing the relationship
- Do not let problem behavior divide and alienate the relationship
- Children are not concerned with right and wrong, but rather with attachment and connection
- Retreat and take a timeout when the will to connect is lost to avoid harming the relationship
- Make the relationship the bottom line in dealing with difficult children

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of maintaining a strong relationship with a child, even when dealing with difficult behavior.
- Parents and teachers should not make behavior the "bottom line" and should ensure that the child knows they are still loved and accepted.
- It is important to prioritize the relationship over trying to control or change the child's behavior.
- Discipline should be used to preserve order and teach social justice, but it should not divide or damage the relationship.
- When disciplining a child, it is important to bridge the gap and communicate that the relationship is still valued.
- Bridging faults and shortcomings, such as when a child fails to meet expectations, can convey acceptance and significance.
- Defensive detachment, a result of facing separation, should be bridged to communicate directly to the child's brain and help them back down from a defensive stance.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of preserving alpha and avoiding provocation
- Defensive detachment should be addressed by giving the child space and gradually bridging the connection
- Children with chronic defensive detachment may have multiple diagnoses that can be improved by addressing the detachment
- Short-term relationships with children should focus on building bridges and maintaining communication to prevent defensive detachment
- The speaker shares an example of using goodbye rituals to preserve relationships in short-term programs
- Matchmaking involves creating new attachments for the child, using existing attachments to facilitate this process
- The speaker shares a personal story of using existing attachments to gain influence in a school district

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of introductions and matchmaking in creating attachments between children and responsible adults.
- Introductions are crucial for step-parents and teachers to be accepted and trusted by children.
- The speaker mentions examples of matchmaking, such as introducing kindergarten teachers to parents and creating surrogate family members.
- Matchmaking can also help resolve conflicts between siblings and establish hierarchical relationships between different age groups.
- The speaker highlights the need to endear children to their parents and teachers, and vice versa, through introductions and positive interactions.

- Emphasis should be placed on creating strong child-adult relationships, rather than just peer interactions
- Society should be in sync with developmental design to create a village of attachment for raising children
- Steps should be taken to introduce the baby to the adults who will be involved in raising them
- The primary caretaker should be supported and cared for in order to better care for the child
- Child rearing tasks should be shared among adults involved in the child's life
- A vision of a society in sync with developmental design would prioritize attachment and create a village of attachment for raising children

- Focus on creating connections and compensating for immaturity
- Importance of initiating and activating relationships
- Need for a context of connection in intimate relationships
- Working with children requires a context of connection
- Bridging is essential for maintaining relationships
- Goodbye rituals maintain connection and prioritize the next connection
- Preserving relationships conveys importance and care
- Importance of avoiding separation and preserving connections
- Bedtime rituals focus on bridging and the next connection
- Responsibility of parents and teachers to bridge separation
- Prioritize relationship over behavior when dealing with difficult children
- Discipline should not damage the relationship
- Bridging faults and shortcomings conveys acceptance and significance
- Addressing defensive detachment and preserving alpha
- Importance of introductions and matchmaking in creating attachments
- Matchmaking can resolve conflicts and establish hierarchical relationships
- Creating strong child-adult relationships is crucial
- Society should prioritize attachment and create a village for raising children.

Welcome to session 17, our second session on cultivating a context of connection.

Again, to locate ourselves where we are, we're basically in the first step at creating a context of connection, but this is also a way of compensating, the main way of compensating, of working around immaturity.

Remember, the more immature, the more stuck, the more a context of attachment is required to compensate for this.

So this is true for all children, but more true in terms of immaturity, stuckness, the more things are not working, the more important it is that there's that context of connection.

And so in the last session the focus was on how to begin a relationship, how to initiate, and if a relationship already exists how to activate it, how to engage the attachment instincts so you have a context, a working connection, a context of connection to work with.

Even if you have a very, very intimate relationship, it still is so important to work inside that relationship.

If you're not inside that relationship as husband and wife, as friends, if there is not the will to connect, if it hasn't been activated, things can go very wrong.

This is not the place to discuss conflicts, to try to influence, to try to solve problems.

And so it's so important, even in this, to make sure that a relationship exists.

When I did marital work, marital counseling, I would emphasize this point for couples.

Make sure that you can get the eyes, a smile and a nod, and give something for the other to hold onto, even if it's your hand or some kind of thing.

And unless they can, you feel the response, hold back, you don't have a context in which to talk about the things that may divide you, the things in which there is tension.

We have to do these things inside the context of connection.

So how much more important in our working with children that that is there, even very small children.

To start working or to pick up a six-month-old without having gone through those activating the attachment instincts is so stressful for them, so stressful.

To work with a three-year-old or four-year-old through your role without having engaged the attachment instincts, nothing goes right for them.

It's very difficult, so it's important to honor this.

Again, these ancient cultural traditions in science, unfortunately, the collecting was studied under the construct of courting.

And so the association is, of course, sexual.

And so I had to take the sexual part out of it in studying this and then find its manifestations.

And when I did, all of a sudden it became self-evident that this is, the greeting was 1 of the most common manifestations of this.

We're going to proceed now to asking the question of how do we maintain a relationship?

Once we've begun a relationship, how it is that we safeguard that relationship?

And here I've used the term bridging for this.

And I've had a, I've enjoyed tremendously this process of taking the literature, taking the research, taking traditional culture looking at this and trying to distill it to the essence.

And this material has evolved tremendously since I began with it, in fact, and taught this course, what was it, 12 years ago, first began to teach this course.

And so bridging has come out as the essence of this and I hope it makes sense to you.

Today it's the second again of 2 sessions on creating a context of connection and again the second of the 3 most important rituals of connection.

And again, when I get asked, well, what would it look like to apply this in a school, in a family, in a program, to me it would be characterized primarily and foundationally by creating a context of connection to work in and that whether they know it or not.

And if things are working very well and people are very intuitive, these things just happen, you don't have to know about them, they are there, they function, but it's because we're coming undone that we need a consciousness of it.

And so bridging, I've repurposed that word in the English language to do this, and the bridge I want you to imagine is this kind of a bridge, a bridge not where you're looking at what the bridge is going over, at what would divide.

The bridge is looking over what stays the same or the landing or or the equivalent of this the what I want you to do well the most obvious manifestation of this in maintaining relationship and maintaining connection is the goodbye ritual.

It's the goodbye ritual, the English word goodbye no longer carries its intuitive message.

What it used to mean in Old English is God be with you until we meet again.

We'll hold an attachment in common and put our eyes, draw our attention to the next meeting.

That is, we go over what divides, so we preserve the relationship by drawing attention to what stays the same or the next connection.

In French it's much more direct, au revoir.

In English it's captured by see you again.

But this is the idea, but you're meant to flesh it out that is just the guideline that is just the structure that's just the the the guideline now you're supposed to say I'll call you on Tuesday I'll email you on Friday I'm looking forward to seeing you at such and such a time, and so on, but you put the focus on the next connection.

And this is the way we maintain relationships.

If you're here, those of you that are at this venue rather than in the continuation course, you're here and you have a friend that is here, you've made a friend during this time, and it's time to say goodbye after the course, there will be that sense that if you left, if somebody left without going through that goodbye ritual, it would not feel right.

It would be as if they didn't care about you.

You weren't important because they made no effort to preserve the relationship.

And what we do is we put the focus on the next connection.

And so instead of the face on the separation, I guess we'll never see each other again, or it's going to be a long summer, or, you know, so long, you know, and instead of the idea that it's going into the separation, again the idea is humans don't do separation well.

And so our whole rituals, the way of keeping the fabric of attachment together is to have this thing in which even though we're facing separation, we put the face into the next connection.

So when my children were at home, when I was traveling, I'd go to each of the children and then the focus is the goodbye ritual.

I will see you on Friday, look out for me then, we'll have a pool game then, and each 1 would be when I look forward to the next connection.

My wife and I, we have very short bridges.

So I'll call you as soon as I get to the airport, I'll call you as soon as I get to the next airport, I'll call you when I get to the hotel, I'll call you to say goodnight, call you to say good morning, and you just, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom.

It's just you go right over top of whatever would divide.

This is both a way of preserving the relationship, conveying that a person matters, that it's important for you to maintain and take care of that, and it's a way of keeping the other from having to face the separation because facing separation is the most impactful experience of all and so we preserve the connection and again there's all kinds of ways we do this.

I'm just bringing out the goodbye ritual as the most common manifestation of this.

And again, we do this intuitively, just like collecting with our friends, because that's not a role-based relationship.

But as soon as it may come to our staff, our children, our adolescents, our students, now we're in role-based relationships and society did not evolve around this.

This is not the evolution, so it doesn't bring the rituals and the customs with it that allow us to preserve the fabric of attachments that are necessary for us to interact with each other.

Now, very intuitive individuals will bring these in to every relationship.

There will be that sense of the 2 or 3 students in their class that they're really trying to preserve a relationship and create a relationship with, that there'll be the extra.

Well, looking forward to seeing you on Monday.

I'm afraid I'm gonna be gone for the next 3 weeks, but I'm looking forward to Thursday.

I've got a special treat planned for the class always putting the focus on the next connection never just exiting never just exiting because what it does is it conveys again that the relationship is not important.

We can't maintain a relationship that way.

If we don't hold on to a child, the child won't hold on to us.

We have got to hold on to them and in holding on to them we hold on to them by making sure that we bridge whatever would divide.

And so this bridging here, this, in the bridging ritual, when facing separation, we preserve the connection by drawing attention to what stays the same or the next point of contact.

So what stays the same or the next point of contact.

And that is the essence of the bridging, going right over top.

If you want to put it this way, the second most important mantra, the first is to collect before you direct.

The second would be to bridge what could divide.

To make sure that we bridge that the relationship is seen to be paramount.

We put the face into the next contact or what stays the same rather than what divides.

Again this was transform our parenting, our teaching, our way of working if we kept this in mind.

This little ritual, it doesn't cost anything.

You could build a whole program around it, you could build all kinds of programs around it, but it is so important to preserve relationships.

Well, first of all, physical separation divides.

That divides, and that's where the goodbye ritual is.

Bedtime is probably the prototype separation of all, because bedtime for a young child represents that time When they're out of sight, they're out of touch, they're out of hearing, now, as I mentioned before, we can compensate.

There's ways of compensating by putting our recording of our voice, reading stories or whatever it is so they can be in sound, putting our smells, nighty or whatever around them so that they're in smell.

There's all kinds of ways of compensating for this until they can get to sameness and significance and so on and all of these ways to be able to preserve the sense of connection because night represents separation.

So there's ways of compensating for this and when they're a bit older we can work at nighttime, our bedtime rituals can be full of sameness and oh, you know, we're alike this way, and full of little gestures of significance and of belonging because the deeper the attachment, the more able to hold on when apart.

So you can see what the bedtime ritual is about.

The bedtime ritual should also be about setting the stage for the bridging the night.

And in this case, the whole idea is you put the focus on the next connection.

Now this goes absolutely contrary to what most parents are doing today in which they push the child's face into the separation.

That's all now no more going pee that's the last glass of water it's it you've got to go to bed we close the door and no more talking and then we push the child's face right into the separation.

Now the irony is that the ultimate defense against stress is to go to sleep.

In the nursery, in the hospitals, they were wondering why babies had to sleep so much.

And then they finally turned down the lights, turned down the noise, and all the babies woke up.

It was the ultimate defense against sleep.

So can we get children to sleep by increasing the wounding, by increasing the stress?

Yes, unfortunately we can, but that's a dreadful way to do this.

Because they start losing their tears, they start losing the defendedness, goes around, we don't push children's face into separation.

I can see by your faces You're wondering about this male still carry this ultimate defense many males There may be a male near you all you have to start is talking about something a little bit stressful and see how sleepy they Get and you'll you'll you'll get the the sense of that defense.

All of a sudden you're like, zoss, start yawning, and pretty soon, you know, there's there.

It's just the ultimate defense is in terms of the stress.

Because it's the prototype separation experience.

The idea here is, if a child can handle it, you've given enough to hold on to, you've given a touch of proximity in the different ways, the next thing that you do is you put the focus on bridging.

I'm looking forward to the time in the morning.

In Provence, 1 of the rituals before the children went to bed at night is they set the table for the morning breakfast and breakfast was a sit down meal as well.

And it was a wonderful gesture of moving to the next connection and so on.

If you've got a child who's totally spooked, who is so alarmed and anxious, you make a very small bridge, you know, mommy has another hug in me for you, daddy has another hug, I'll be back before the egg timer runs out, whatever it is, and you make this and you're always bridge this, soon they relax and ultimately they start going to sleep or you say, you know, in terms of the of the dreams, or you start in the morning with telling them what a wonderful dream, a dream of connection you had you know, about them and it sets it up for being able to see them in their dreams.

And pretty soon, when they start waking up in the morning, the first thing they do is ask Mommy and Daddy, did you dream of me?

And they want you to tell all the wonderful stories of connection.

But always the focus on the next connection.

Once the child is convinced that you never let go, that you're holding on, that the relationship is yours to preserve, it's mommy, it's daddy's, it's the teacher's responsibility to hold on to you.

Not the night time, nothing will come between.

And again, you can expand this into a thousand manifestations the point is just that you bridge the separation let me go to another 1 and most of us would handle this intuitively Why?

Because it happens so fast we can't get to our head, we don't mess things up with a bunch of thinking and education and this is a very simple 1, this is a very simple 1.

Let's say you're 3 and a half year old, you're 4 year old, all of a sudden gets wind of their existential insecurity And they're maybe a little bit precocious, but maybe their aunt has been sick and diagnosed with cancer, and they've got wind of it, that something bad can happen to people they love.

And suddenly your four-year-old says, Mommy, might you die?

Now, most of us in this situation, we don't have time to think.

So we just dig down deep and go from our intuition and fly from there.

And the answers usually are 1 of 2 things.

You know, something like, don't you worry, honey, I'm going to be your mother forever now notice you put the focus on what would Would preserve the connection or you say don't you worry?

I'm not going anywhere I have no plans on on going anywhere, which is true But we don't say that we are our life has relatively little to do with our plans, and that that is out of our control, because we're putting the focus on what stays the same.

We put the focus on the relationship that is there, and that is the bridging.

So again, intuitively, if we listen to our intuitions, if we listen to this, we see a wisdom in this, that we must bridge whatever, bridge whatever could divide.

The last thing we want to say to a young child, well yes it's true we're all existentially insecure, I could die, good luck with this.

No, no, they're not ready to, they're not, they don't have mixed feelings, They need all kinds of things to adapt to before the big ones and so on.

We need to bridge this, and this is the whole point.

So our job is both to reduce the separation they face generally and to preserve the relationship, their attachment to us by being able to bridge whatever would divide.

What tends to divide most of today's children from their parents, their grandparents and their teachers?

Less their grandparents probably than their parents.

But what tends to divide most is problem behavior.

This is the question I get asked over and over and over again.

In my over 40 years of consulting with parents and teachers around difficult children, I don't think I've been asked any more question more often than, what do you do when a child misbehaves?

I mentioned this at the beginning of the course, but it's very important here.

Because my answer to them is generally to hold on.

You've got to bridge the problem behavior.

If you throw the infraction flag, if you say this is not the way to express your frustration, hits are not allowed in this house, this is not something that is permitted in this classroom.

As soon as you throw the infraction flag, or you've got daggers in your eyes, or you communicate disapproval in some way or another, then it becomes extremely important, because this is what the child can take personally, that mommy doesn't like me, the teacher doesn't like me, whatever it is, it becomes that the next thing that has to come out of our mouth is something that bridges that problem behavior.

Or I'm looking forward to that class this afternoon with you, I'm looking forward to dinner together with you, to watching that game, that hockey game together or whatever it is.

And when you go right over the top, it communicates to the child that the relationship is bigger than the problem.

Now some people are afraid to do that because it would suggest that what the child did is okay.

They're still thinking the bottom line is behavior.

The bottom line can't be behavior, it has to be the context in which to deal with it.

And so the relationship has to be the bottom line.

We need to be able to bridge the problem behavior.

And that's even true in marriage relationship.

There comes a time when there's tension and conflict and you're trying to discuss something and all of a sudden there's insecurity.

It just feels a little bit too tense and then the bottom line needs to come out.

I'm still looking forward to going out for dinner with you.

And it says that the relationship, the next point of connection, we've just gone right over the top, and in going over the top, we now have the ability to deal with what's in between but we have no ability to deal with the in-between if it's dividing us.

We need to be able to go over the top and so we need to bridge the problem behavior.

Either focusing on what stays the same, I'm still your teacher, we'll be okay, I'm still your dad, or the next point of connection, I'm looking forward to this, we will be doing this later on.

It moves away over top and now gives you a context for being able to deal with the in-between and before you deal with the in-between you've got to make sure to reactivate the relationship to get the eyes, the smile, and the nod because that's where your attachment power lies.

Always work not in the incident but in the relationship and that's again I'll go to this in the next session how important this is.

We made a huge mistake by thinking the incident is the context in which we work, rather than the relationship is a context in which we work.

So bridge problem behavior, some of the ways of behavior proofing the relationship, resolve in yourself that nothing will sever the connection.

It's very important to yearn in that direction, to yearn in the direction of holding on to a student, holding on to a child.

I'm gonna hold on, I'm not gonna let anything come in between.

It's not always easy to do because we get our buttons pushed, we feel alienated and so on, but it's very important to have that yearning because again when there are breaks in the relationship, when it breaks the union, when there is a disconnect, that's what it's all about.

Remember, children, they're not born thinking, oh, good, I've got a teacher to tell me when I do things wrong, and I'm going to learn from mom and dad when I've been bad and when I've done things wrong.

And nobody's asking questions of what is good behavior and bad behavior.

It's our own adult agendas that saying I'm going to teach you a lesson and tell you right from wrong and so on.

For the kids it's all about attachment and that's what's important.

We've got to be able to speak to that because if we don't again then we won't get to speak to the other things we want to speak to.

It's our responsibility to give our value system.

That's our adult responsibility, but we've got to hold on to them first.

That's why this is so important, to be able to see a child is immature.

If you don't see a child as immature, you see it as done on purpose.

If you don't see them with their deficits and dysfunction, it occurs to you that the child is attempting to get to a result.

And then when that happens, we get alienated.

Retreat when you have lost the will to preserve the connection.

1 of the most important things I learned as a father is that when you have lost, and as a husband, when you have lost the will to connect, when you can feel something happen inside of you that you're no longer trying to preserve the relationship, preserve the proximity, then stick the clutch in.

Don't move, don't try to do anything more, because when you've lost the will to connect, when you can actually feel the attachment energy that it is not there, you no longer are trying to hold on to preserve the connection, is where you can say things and do things that will harm and injure the relationship.

So it's very important for us to be able to time out ourselves.

Very important to be able to stick the clutch in, to be able to find some place to go to our room, whatever it is that's required, to excuse ourself if we can in a way that doesn't harm the child.

I've got something to attend to, whatever it is, and find our way back to our mixed feelings.

Our mixed feelings where yes, where our buttons are getting pushed, but at least we can feel the attachment energy within us.

A child should always be able to experience that there is, that energy there, the will to connect, the will to preserve the connection.

Over and over again, I would get questions, and especially when dealing with extremely difficult children and so on, parents and teachers would say to me, there's got to be a bottom line.

And I would often say, well I don't know what your bottom line is, I can't dictate to it, but are you telling me that if he doesn't abide by this, if he doesn't conform to this, you're no longer his father?

Well, then it's very important that your son knows that.

If you can say, I'm still your dad, we're okay.

Now you've got something in which to be able to deal with it.

If it is a bottom line, your child is going to have incredible amount of rejection that they need to deal with.

Because if the behavior is more important than the relationship, that is something that is very, very hard for us to face.

That's something you're going to have to find out for yourself.

But don't go saying behavior is the bottom line if it truly isn't, because nothing is more injurious to a child than that.

The bottom line must be that nothing, nothing will come between I will hold on to you.

The relationship has to be important because nothing works outside of that.

Be prepared to jettison anything that could put the relationship in jeopardy.

We've got to let go of some of our agendas, And I'll speak to this again in the next session.

Some of our agendas are so strong, getting something through their thick heads, being able to get them to cooperate, being able to get them to do something we want, you know, doing sometimes we just get stuck and we don't seem to realize the futility of our endeavor.

And it's important to be able to feel the sadness around it when we're not making headway, and when we see it ripping apart, doing damage to the relationship, to back off a little bit.

It's not that we don't value that, it's not that that's important, but the bottom line again should be the relationship, we should have to find another way or at least take a little bit of a break, a hiatus to figure out another way to address the issue, to address the problem.

And then restore connection when it has been broken.

Again, it's our responsibility, our responsibility to do whatever we can.

That's our alpha responsibility to when there has been a broken connection, when the union has been broken, to be able to go and to restore connection where we can.

And again, there's lots of room for being able to say sorry to a child, to apologize, to take responsibility, but not to make the child responsible ever for making it better, for forgiving us, because when we do so, we put the child in charge of the relationship.

And so I can say to a child a student I disagree with myself, I'm not pleased with how I handled my frustration, I do not like the way I did this, but we should hesitate to going further to say, you know, are we okay now?

Are you know Just Looking for them to be able to make it okay to forgive us because they're not responsible.

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Intensive I - session 17