Our children’s brains (and often our own as well!) are continually asking this basic question, whether we’re aware of it or not. This question – Are you there for me? – takes many forms in children’s brains: Do I matter enough that you’ll put me first when I need you to – ahead of your job, ahead of your friends, even sometimes ahead of yourself? Can I count on you to attend to me in the ways I need you to, in ways that calm me and make me feel safe? Do I truly and deeply matter to you? These questions are being asked – nonverbally through behavior often – and when they get answered “Yes,” our children can relax and begin to feel safe, just as we are often able to do in our own intimate and business relationships when there’s high resonance.
The self-preservation structures of the brain continually monitor our environment and the people in it for safety. Our survival depends upon it. We generally love the people we feel the safest being around, and the emotional responsiveness often identified as love arises out of this safe “felt sense.” Canadian research psychologist, Susan Johnson thinks about it this way: “These safe bonds reflect deep primal survival needs for secure, intimate connection to irreplaceable others. These needs go with us from the cradle to the grave.” (We often have relationships with people we feel familiar and initially safe with, but those relationships are not necessarily based upon love, but rather upon an ever-present impulse towards integative wholeness. This is something you can find discussed further in many of the First 250 Blog Topics).
Safety is As Safety Does
Needing to feel safe and secure is especially critical in the first three years of life. (There’s a wonderfully informative website, in fact, that addresses just how important these first years, including the pre-natal period, actually are. I encourage you to visit it at: http://www.zerotothree.org/). In response to this early, embodied sense of safety, begins to come secure attachment, which numerous studies have confirmed is critical for mental, physical and spiritual well-being all through our life span.
John Bowlby, the English child psychiatrist, and the many attachment researchers who followed him, have demonstrated conclusively that babies and young children who don’t get dependable, reliable, attuned responses from their parents (most often mother), become upset and aggressive in an increasing attempt to have these essential needs met. They need to have the question “Are you here with me?” repeatedly answered “Yes!” Isolation, loneliness and disconnection essentially replicate unhealthy neural processes in the brain. It’s not surprising therefore, that children will often do whatever they need to in order to get any response at all from the environment – any response is better than no response. This can often result in seemingly strange, confusing behavior in our children. But viewed through their attachment needs, such behavior begins to make greater sense. When children do not get these needs for attachment and connection met they often give up in despair, become apathetic and depressed and fail to thrive. In other words – they become brain damaged!
Optimizing Health and Well-Being
On the other hand, mounting scientific evidence is becoming overwhelming clear (review any of the attachment texts in the Brain Bibliography above) – later in life, children from securely attached parent-child relationships have better cardiovascular health, stronger immune systems, lower mortality rates from cancer and other diseases, and less depression and anxiety, and they face psychological trauma with more emotional and psychological resilience – throughout their whole lifespan!
But what behaviors are essential and necessary to convey the “Yes” answer to the Big Brain Question? It turns out that what promotes secure attachment is not the number of positive emotional experiences between parents and children. Rather, it’s the quality, timeliness and rhythm of certain interactions, which often may be intuitive or unconscious in healthy parents, or seem incidental and relatively unimportant, but they turn out to be critical, key, secure attachment-creating moments for a child. Such moments are often determined by a parent’s ability to attend to emotional cues and respond to them in timely and effective ways that over and over again convey the unfailing sense, “Yes, I am here with you.”
So this is the fundamental question of our own and our children’s social lives – are you someone who can really see me, hear me, prize me, and be emotionally present for me when it really matters? Can I count on you to come through in a crisis – and there will be crises. In strong, secure relationships, we most often answer this question “Yes” for our children. But what happens if our own early attachment hasn’t been secure, when we can’t or don’t know how to do the things that promote secure attachment? What can we do when the answer to the Big Brain Question in our lives has not been “Yes?” Look over any number of the 250 Topics on the right where I discuss this all-too-frequent reality and suggest evidence-based ways we can begin to make necessary, life-enhancing repairs for both our own benefit and our children’s as well.
You wrote this 13+ years ago. I return to it often. It’s one of those life-changing concepts that will always stick with me. Thank you for explaining this.
It continues to serve me well! Best, Mark
On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 12:11 PM The Committed Parent wrote:
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Well, I have been experiencing a lot of emotional pain around my financial difficulties. My Mom would help me out by giving me money when I needed it. I have been trying do things more independently but because this issue with money is so prevalent and one of my fears is living on the street- no one will be there. I had to look at what was going on. I got a sense of being in a glass box, All my life i just wanted to have some reassurance that some one was there but when i go to my Mom I feel like she does not get it. She Does not seem to understand my pain which causes her to think she’s doing something wrong and gets upset. I know my mom was neglectful growing up. I ended up bulimic for a long time. My Dad passed a year ago. I felt I had done a lot of work around him. (Parents divorced many years) Part of me is tired of feeling like I have to do all the work as well. The thing is I feel a certain way and am trying to remember I have nothing to be ashamed about. To many times I have felt like I am not heard. My feelings are my feelings about my experience.
What do you do when the damage has been done or a least my sense of helplessness can make it seem that way. Course i want rescuing. Cause it can feel like that too.
“But what’s essential and necessary to convey the “Yes” answer to the Big Brain Question? It turns out that what promotes secure attachment is not the number of positive emotional experiences between parents and children. Rather, it’s the quality, timeliness and rhythm… So this is the fundamental question of our children’s lives – are you someone who can really see me, hear me, prize me, and be there for me when it really matters?”
So thrilled to read such a well articulated description about what babies really need in order to feel secure, and form healthy attachments.
Infant specialist Magda Gerber, founder of Resources For Infant Educarers (RIE), was a pioneer in this regard. She understood, and taught parents and others, ways to respect a baby’s need for focused attention, and responsive care long before there were brain studies to support her approach.
Magda always argued for “full attention some of the time, as opposed to half attention all of the time,” and she taught parents and caregivers to slow down, really tune into, and listen to babies.
To learn more, see
Sooo… a question… would a very stressful pregnancy – fear of abandonment – affect the frontal lobe development of the fetus?
It is galling to only just find out this kind of information.
So as a parent who may not have been as good in this area for one of my children, what can be done to help repair at least some damage?? Is that even possible?
I agree with the “big brain question.” As a psychotherapist who has been working with men and the women who love them for more than 45 years, this simple question holds a lot of the answers to whether we have successful or stressful relationships, even whether we survive as a species or kill each other off.
I love this, its so simple and since it is a question of a life time, it might be a life saver for my adult children who may have heard way too many may bees from their fence riding non- committal mama! Much gratitude. ~R
wow. five kids and all of a sudden I am feeling insecure with my parenting!