I was at the
park the other day throwing pinecones at my kids when a horrified mother asked,
“How can you hit your kids with pinecones!” I said it was pretty easy: you just don’t lead them as much. First,
this is important because my brain is almost completely incapable of accessing
the proper pop-culture comeback (in this case, Full Metal Jacket)
until the middle of the night after it was needed. Second, it’s not entirely
true: my 5-year-old still tends to take a vector, but my 7-year-old has learned
to zig and zag in a way that makes him really hard to hit. (Note: for proper
aerodynamics it’s essential to use pinecones in which the seed scales remain
closed. You’ll thank me later.)
Of course, I
imagine there may be studies in the fields of education or child development
that recommend against pelting your offspring with small, swiftly-thrown
projectiles. But gosh is it fun! And I just ran across this One Study to
Rule Them All, which implies that as long as you love your kids and they
love you, it takes a real, concerted effort to mess them up too badly.
The study, by
the Sutton Trust, is about attachment. Now attachment is a hot topic, fraught
with intrigue and argument in circles that care to intrigue and argue about
this kind of thing. But basically, secure attachment describes a situation in
which, “a child can safely express negative emotion, and seek proximity to
the caregiver, and can expect to feel better,” the authors write.
On the flip side are two major styles of insecure
attachment: avoidant in which distressed
kids learn to avoid the parent, and disorganized
in which the child tries desperately to break through a parent’s wall of
indifference or anger with “big” and sometimes irrational emotions.
A host of studies show the benefits of secure attachment,
ranging from higher cognitive and social skills, to higher incomes and lower
rates of divorce and mental illness. Apparently, the benefits of secure
attachment remain even across tiger parents and helicopter parents and
free-play parents and parents who over-praise or under-wash or happen to have a
particular fondness for watching children run in glorious mock horror as they
try to make it to safe zone before being pummeled by coniferous reproductive
structures.
Here’s the kicker: the study finds that a full 40 percent
of children are insecurely attached. Twenty-five percent of kids avoid their
parents when the kids are upset. And 15 percent “learn to resist the parent,
because the parent often amplifies their distress or responds unpredictably,”
they write.
Sadly, attachment tends to be a generational, trickle-down
thing – the largest risk factor for having a child with insecure attachment is
a parent’s own attachment. Were you or are you still in this 40 percent? If so,
it’s going to take some conscious creation of a new way of relating in order to
break the cycle.
Now, I don’t know nearly enough to draw the line between
what is responsiveness and what is over-indulgence. But what I do know is this:
after we get back from the park, my kids are going to want to snuggle in bed
and look at pictures of macaroni penguins on the iPad.
I figure: love the hell out of your kids and let the rest
sort itself out.
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