Hi, and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week, I want to sort of tackle one of those big themes, but try and put it in a way that doesn't sort of move on out into sort of large high altitude philosophy. And that's attachment strain, and what I see going on with phones, with our digital devices.
You know, we've all been at school plays where we've seen someone, you know, the children are on stage performing their little hearts out, and there they are on their phone. We've been to sports events where a child's running and again, just playing so well. And looks up and there is dad, there is mom, looking at their phone.
I've even seen in a cafe not so long ago, a mother who was nursing a baby and I thought that's lovely. She's gone to a quiet little place nursing a baby. But then as I sort of rounded the corner, I glanced and there she was looking at her phone, and the baby was looking up into her mother's eyes, and the mother's eyes were not connecting with the baby.
They were looking at a phone. All these are just very deep attachment messages that we send our children. And to be really honest with you, I'm worried that we're raising a generation of attachment strained children because the phone is getting in between us.
These crucial moments of attachment, of bonding, of sharing, of being with a child, of saying I'm with you, I know you're up on that stage on that play, doing that play, and I know you're nervous and your eyes or my eyes are showing I'm with you, I'm with you, you can do it. Or the sports event where a child scores a goal or makes a good pass or makes a mistake and they glance over to the sidelines and there you are, it's okay, it's okay. And your eyes and your body, your language is saying I'm with you, I'm with you.
You're nursing and a baby looks up and just gazes into your eyes, those beautiful things and you just gaze back down into their eyes. The deepest attachment imaginable really in those moments. In those moments and myriad others, we have got to get phones out of the picture.
This has been sort of creeping up on me more and more, I was talking to a friend recently about my work as a young guy when I was working in an agency that was dealing with a lot of orphans that were being rescued really from orphanages in Eastern Europe. And we were a part of a resettlement, a reconnecting and finding homes for these children that had been left for long, huge periods of time with very, very little care and had grown up in that way. And more and more, I'm coming to recognize kids now showing signs of those orphans who had suffered such neglect.
And when I was talking to my friend about it, he said, well, really, is it that serious? And I said, maybe not yet, but my goodness, we're going in that direction. And there's still a chance that we can heal this. But we've got to become much more conscious about our use of screens, and in particular phones, so that it doesn't get in the way, in fact, almost literally, it gets in the way between our eyes, our body language, and our children.
Now I want to just quickly go over the four kinds of attachment disturbances, or three actually, and one is a secure attachment. I want to just talk briefly about that. There was a gentleman back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, whose thoughts around attachment really informed a lot of the way we came to see this.
His name was John Bowlby, and he talked about various types of attachment, the most positive of which was secure attachment. And secure attachment is when a child has healthy boundaries. They grow up to have healthy boundaries.
They are able to give mutual trust and support. They're able to sense that the world is safe around them. They can keep things in proportion.
They can control conflict. And there is a way in which they stand firmly within themselves. It's almost like they have a secure base.
And then there is an anxious attachment, and this is not at all helpful, and it's a fear of being abandoned. It's a need for almost constant validation. And it depends on others, a partner, other people, peer groups for their own self-worth.
And this is what phones are preventing, is that secure attachment, and it can often lead to anxious attachment, where kids will seek their dependency, not on our family values, but on peers, on others. And others are not, it's not always, in fact it often isn't very healthy for a child. And children start putting the kids they play with at school and the things that they say and the way they talk and the way they behave way ahead of our values.
And they come home and we say to them, they've got to behave like, you know, within the boundaries of our family, but they haven't had a family, not those values, because the phone has been continually turned to. So what do they do? They turn to others. Older kids turn to social networking influences.
Other kids, teenagers eventually turn to all kinds of some pretty questionable peer influences. And a lot of this has its roots in our need to be able to put away the phones and attach to our kids, so our kids don't develop anxious attachment. The next two kinds of attachment, which are not at all healthy, is what's called dismissive or avoidant attachment.
And this is a child who avoids getting close, who avoids intimacy, and also avoids any kind of situation where they will feel vulnerable. Now you think about that. That's a child who is not learning, doesn't want to put themselves in a learning situation.
There is problems with commitment and really grit, determination. But in future years, avoiding intimacy, avoiding commitment, if you think about where that's going to go, that goes into a lot of future relationship problems when a child grows up. And they're guarded, and it's almost like they have a closed heart, or their heart is partly closed off.
I see a lot of kids with attachment issues, with dismissive avoidant attachment, being very dissing, very cynical in their comments. And again, this, one of the main culprits in this, it's not the only one, but is the phone. And we can do something about it, but we're setting our kids up for some pretty major issues in the future in their relationships if they become dismissive and avoidant.
Now, the last one is more of what's sometimes called fearful or fearful avoidant. And this is a fear of rejection. It's the kids like us have a really hard time trusting other people.
But the hallmark of it is a very low self-esteem. It's an I can't do this, I'm not good enough, or any criticism, yeah, I'm a horrible person. Now, is all that due to phone use, all these things? No, I'm sure we can't lay all this at the feet of phones.
But over the years, I've spoken to countless parents who very bravely almost have said, we are not going to deal with phones and have phones out when our kids are around, if at all possible. We're not going to have the phone get in the way at a sports event. We're not going to have the phone sit on the dinner table and we're going to be looking at the phone rather than taking part in a conversation with our kids.
Our kids come first, the phone comes second. And I've heard countless parents in one way or another say that. And the improvement on their connection and attachment to their children happens fast.
And this is the interesting thing, you think this would be slow, it would take time. It doesn't. It happens fairly fast in weeks and months.
You've got a whole different connection to a child. Now, this is hard because phone use has become so ubiquitous. But just turn off notifications, turn off things sliding onto the screen, turn all that stuff off, be in charge of the phone, model that to your child.
But most of all, I feel there's an urgency about not having phones disrupt the most fundamental thing that we have, and that's our connection with our children. There is kind of nothing else. Everything comes from that.
Everything comes from that. And this will be enriched day after day if at night you lay in bed thinking, you know what? I really got a hold of my phone use today. I really made eye contact.
I was really present for my child. I got a hold of that, well, some parents have called it an addiction. I got a hold of it today, and I was in charge, and I made that connection with my child.
So, I guess this is what I'd call a basic rule of the eyes. When it comes to attachment, our eyes are like, they're like the hands of the heart. And if our eyes are on a screen, we're unknowingly, perhaps, withdrawing our heart, withdrawing our love from our child.
Be careful what you do with your eyes around a child. Pay attention to not being split between the screen and your child. Give your child your eyes, and you give your child your heart.
So be careful, be really careful what you do with your eyes around a child. I sure hope this gives you the confidence and courage that you need to further your ability to be present with your child, and have the phone put away. Alright, hope that's helpful.
Bye bye for now.
