Be your child’s North Star – Act as their compass point

 

Want to offer your child a sense of core values, direction, and security in a world that can be confusing? The North Star has served this purpose for humanity for thousands of years. It has been a guiding light for travelers, navigators, and freedom seekers as well as a metaphorical image in songs and literature.

As our children grow older and find their own paths, it’s important for us, as parents, to be a guiding North Star of sorts, too. As we offer our children secure attachment, they feel safe to mature and explore. They are grounded in their connection to us and know we will be there to help them find their way over time.

In my past three blogs of this “How to Be a Good Parent” series, I’ve been sharing key ideas about how to best help our children develop a lasting secure attachment with us.

Attachment is core to healthy human development.

We’ve explored many metaphors to help us remember how to do this important work of parenting:

  the dance of attachment

   the side of the swimming pool 

   a strongly rooted tree

  This time we’ll explore the North Star as our metaphor.

All of these metaphors involve developing our inner strength. In this way, we can support our children in more relaxed and trusting ways. As we grow our own strength and resilience, our children feel more love towards us and thrive in their own growing process.

Part 4: Act as your Child’s North Star

Like being in our children’s faces in a friendly way and inviting dependence, we naturally enact the dance of attachment with very young children. Giving them lots of affection and holding them when they are sad comes easily when they are little and cute. We orient them to their environment, tell them who people are, what is happening and where they are going.

As they get older, we stop doing this as much, even though our children still crave the dance of attachment. They still need us to act as their compass and to delight in their presence, especially in the tween and teen years. They may push away at times, but they want us to keep showing up with love and guidance.

While it is healthy for children to figure more things out for themselves as they get older, you can help them feel more connected with you and less anxious by offering orientation. Short on time? See a list of ideas of what you can say under the weathervane picture below.

Orient your child to their day and week

I often recommend to parents I am coaching that they orient their children and teens to what is happening in a given week or day. “Orienting” involves going over upcoming events, posting things on a family calendar, and checking in with their children to see that they have what they need. This practice also introduces opportunities for collaboration and problem solving. Children feel more included in what is happening in their lives and become both more relaxed and more confident. Anxiety goes down, and connection increases. 

Here are a few experiences from parents I worked with recently to help you see what happens when you focus on “orienting” your child more:

“Amy helped us learn to collaborate with our child more often to get his input on difficult situations, like morning routines, which helps him invest in the solutions. We also have more productive conversations with him when we process difficulties because we have a framework. Our family has become closer.” Amy and Pete, Mansfield, MA

“We learned to emphasize the positive and to show our son the process of our thinking through things. Now, we encourage him to participate in problem solving and he comes up with great ideas. Seeing things from our son’s perspective gave us new insight into his needs.  All of us enjoy less conflict and more fun around the house!” Jennifer Chen and Simon Montlake, Cambridge, MA

“We made a schedule for our days and I feel like it is going pretty well. It’s hanging up in our kitchen. Yellow post-its are things we can do at home, pink are outings. I have noticed that since the chore expectation is written, it is easier to get cooperation.” Megan D-J, Columbus, Ohio

I have worked with many parents to create family calendar that their children can see and participate in, along with the adults. Post its, color coded by activity or child, can help young children quickly understand what is happening before they can read. Parents can better coordinate on the weekends if they figure out ahead of time who is doing what and when. When expectations are clear, everyone feels more freedom and relaxation.

Consider your own experiences…

To understand the important way that orienting makes our children feel connected to us, consider your own experiences. Think about someone who has helped you in a new situation or when you might have felt lost about next steps. You feel a connection to that person, and want to stay in touch with them. You know you can go to them with questions, and you feel more adventurous knowing that person will guide you when you need support.

As Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D. and Gabor Maté, M.D write in Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers ,“The more we orient them [our children] in terms of time and space, people and happenings, meanings and circumstances, the more inclined they are to keep us close…Even a bit of orienting at the beginning of the day can go a long way in keeping them close.”(p. 191) When children have a conversation with us at the beginning of the day about what is happening, they feel more calm and will stay in better communication with us about what they need, which is especially important as they get older and more independent.

Act as the Child’s Compass Point

Here are some great ways you can orient your children from Neufeld and Maté (p.191), authors of Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers:

  • This is what we’re doing today…
  • This is where I’ll be…
  • What is special about this day is…
  • What I have in mind for this evening is…
  • I would like you to meet so and so…
  • Let me show you how this works…
  • This is who will be taking care of you…
  • This is who to ask if you need help…
  • Only three more days until…

And of course, you can also orient them about their identity and significance:

Children benefit from our pointing out their internal direction, gifts, and energies so that they can better appreciate themselves.

  • You have a special way of…
  • You are the kind of person who…
  • You’ve got the makings of an original thinker…
  • You have a real gift in…
  • You have what it takes to…
  • I can see you are going to go far with…

What we focus on grows. Just as plants bend towards the sun, our children grow in the direction of where we shine our attention. If your child or teen is acting out in unpleasant ways, try focusing on the qualities you appreciate instead and you’ll see your child re-orient in that direction.

Children attach to the person who serves as their North Star

Offering yourself as a person who can help your child get his or her bearings is a wonderful way to encourage your child’s attachment to you. As our children get older, they are subject to more and more influences beyond our control – adults, peers, media, and more. Therefore, it’s especially important to help them feel they can trust us as a compass point who has their best interest in mind and at heart throughout their lives.

Who has served as your North Star? What qualities and practices of that person did you appreciate? Reflecting on how we felt when someone guided us can help us do a better job of orienting our children. I offer an Inner Counselor™ Guided Meditation to parents to help them access memories, feelings, and paths forward. Valuable insights from this meditation experience become your North Star as you parent. Email me if you are interested in this experience.

Parenting is a dance of attachment around a North Star.

At every turn, we must show up with our full presence, lighting up when we see our children come back to us, and trusting them to do the twirls and solo moments as they move away from us. Then we offer a hand to hold onto or lean against, inviting them close to us again. We offer a compass point to look at and return to so they don’t get dizzy and lose their way. We experience a creative tension of leaning in and out, and a wonderful feeling of connection and love when the dance goes well. It takes practice and persistence. And it is absolutely worth taking the time to learn the dance moves you need to stay in synch with your child. They need us and we need them!

I wish all of you joy in parenting as you learn new dance moves with your children and seek to bring them closer emotionally as you both bring them in and let them go.

Reach out if you want support.

If you need guidance, schedule a Clarity Call with me and we can design some next steps that best fit you and your family. We all have  unique needs and styles of being. It can help to have someone be YOUR compass point – to hold onto, depend on and orient you to the stages of parenthood. It feels good to have someone in your court to help you connect the dots, stay strong, and learn to bend and trust as your children grow up. Your children will thank you for focusing on this dance of attachment with them through their love and connection to you. And you’ll have more fun along the way, too!

Want to keep reading more about attachment? 

Check out these blogs:

How to be a good parent: The dance of attachment

Give your child something to hold onto: Be the side of the swimming pool 

 Be a strongly rooted tree: Offer support to inspire growth



Who I serve:
I coach parents from coast to coast in the US and internationally.  Thanks to Zoom, I am currently coaching parents from Boston to Seattle, Connecticut to California, as well as New York, Ohio, and Colorado. I’ve worked with parents in Bermuda, Japan, Portugal, and Canada as well. I’m grateful for these global and domestic connections!