Robin Grille, author of Parenting for a Peaceful World (Longueville Books) and a brand new book, Heart to Heart Parenting (ABC Books), visited New Zealand in November 2007 to rave reviews.  Now he has been gracious enough to conduct an interview exclusive to Centre for Attachment to talk about some of the central questions facing parents and society.  Please read on below.  And look for his new book in your local bookshop.  For more information, see Robin's website: www.our-emotional-health.com.

 1.    Why is the ‘heart’ important in parenting? Do we assign too much credit to the logic, the advice, the experts?

How many times have you heard the grave injunction: ‘don’t let your heart rule your head’? A gazillion times, maybe? We try so hard to be logical, and in our culture we downplay emotions at every turn. And yet…this anti-emotional trend goes against our very biology. We have been wrestling against ourselves – and losing.

Brain scientists have established that the emotional centres in the brain (limbic brain) tell the logical and rational part of the brain (frontal lobes) what to think – not the other way around. By the time we make a conscious choice about anything (will I buy my kid the ice-cream, or won’t I?) – our emotional brain has already made up its mind. We all feel and intuit before we think. The conscious, rational mind is deluded: it thinks it runs the show, but it doesn’t.

There’s more news. Now the cardio-neurologists tell us that, unbeknownst to everyone but the poets and lovers of this world, the human heart is actually a second brain! Loaded with neurones, the heart thinks, feels and remembers. It secretes its own neurotransmitters. Based on what is going on emotionally, it tells the rational, head-brain what to think. No wonder more and more people are starting to get that so-called emotional intelligence is far more important to our success and fulfilment, than cognitive intelligence. We are, above all else, feeling/emotional beings. And early childhood is the time when our unique emotional natures are formed.

Childhood (especially the first seven years) is the time of life when our unique emotional make-up is being shaped, with profound implications for all our relationships as we grow up. It is the quality of emotional connection that we foster with our children that makes all the difference during this critical stage of life. The heart connection is the driving force of healthy development in our children, and this requires us (the parents) to learn above all to listen to our own hearts. The wise and guiding voice that resides in the heart of every parent has been long drowned out by noisy cultural pressures, by shame and by fear. But it continues to whisper its unfailing guidance to us, if we are willing to listen to the heart-voice and to trust its often surprising messages.

2.    How do we rekindle the heart in our parenting, and in ourselves?

Almost all of us have been told, directly and indirectly, a million times over, to downplay, ignore or altogether squash our emotions. The message not to cry, not to be afraid, not to be too joyous, not to have too much fun, not to be adventurous, not to be angry, not to be tender, not to be affectionate, is a message that has been pummelled into our minds repeatedly in childhood. Little wonder our ability to hear our hearts and act upon our most loving intuitions needs so much rekindling.

In a nutshell, if we are to strengthen the signal broadcast by our heart-brain (see question 1), it begins with allowing ourselves to revisit how we felt when we were children. Emotional memory does not require us to wallow or fall in a heap. It does require us to be a little more vulnerable. To surrender a little, to recapture at least the flavour of how it felt to be a little child. The excitement, the longing, the hurt, the fear, the rage, the shame and humiliation, the joy, the passion – all of it! 

Do you think your childhood is forgotten and remote? You would be very surprised – it is closer to the surface than you think. Emotional memory is just a case of focus: what we pay attention to. Your body remembers all of how you felt. There are many simple ways to recapture the flavour of childhood emotional memory, I discuss some of these simple methods in my book Heart to Heart Parenting (ABC Books, 2008).

Our connection to our own ‘inner child’ is the most reliable and most powerful parenting manual, and it has been inside us all along.

3.    What does the history of childhood tell us about the tasks we face and about the obstacles we’ve overcome? It is gruesome, but is it hopeful?

A look at the history of childhood makes it clear that parenting is not a fixed thing, it is evolving, and every one of us is a learner. What I find so exciting is that this evolution has been moving away from violence and towards more nurturance, and that the pace of this evolution has been accelerating. For example: almost a quarter of the world’s nations have banned or are preparing to ban corporal punishment of children. For another example: when our generation was in its infancy, breastfeeding had almost disappeared. It is making a rapid comeback around the world. The movement towards birth without violence (natural, non-medicalized birth) is growing apace. Governments are investing more and more in early intervention and paid parental leave. Attachment parenting (natural parenting, call it what you will) is taking off in many countries.

Is this cause for hope and optimism? Resoundingly, yes. There is a huge bulk of world research into parent-child attachment and brain development that unanimously calls for more empathic and less punitive parenting styles. My first book, Parenting for a Peaceful World, gives many examples of the progress towards more human rights and social justice that has been driven by child-rearing reforms around the world.

There is a long way to go, and unfortunately there are some forces for devolution. In this era of free-market fundamentalism, parents work harder and longer, have less time with their kids, and far too many babies and toddlers are cared for by paid strangers and by televisions. Nevertheless, the way forward is paved by an overwhelming scientific consensus. It is not a flight of utopian fancy to state that a more harmonious and loving world is inevitable if we keep focusing our resources and our reforms on the needs of parents and the emotional needs of babies and children.

4.    What are children missing most from our society and mainstream assumptions about parenting?

Today we have taken strides in securing the physical survival of children, their bodily health and their cognitive development. Infant mortality rates have been slashed, while education levels have soared about what was imaginable by our ancestors.

But our culture has still to come to terms with the emotional health (emotional intelligence and social intelligence, if you like) of children and how to meet their core emotional/developmental needs. This process begins while the child is still in the womb, and inescapably it involves the parents’ emotional wellbeing.

For example, we are still as a society struggling to learn that babies are real persons, and that their feelings count. Most people still tend to ignore their babies’ communications, their cries, for far too long. There are even many health professionals still adhering to obsolete views about the emotional world of children. Any individuals’ capacity for intimate and loving relationships takes a blow from these early experiences of abandonment.

Collectively, we need to give parents and their children back to each other. Families are robbed of time. We cannot build intimacy with our children at today’s insane pace. Emotional wellbeing comes from sustained, intimate and emotionally authentic relationship. This takes time, and regular maintenance.

5.    What are parents missing most from our society and mainstream assumptions about parenting?

Who told us that we can handle being parents to our children, and actually find this task pleasurable and joyous, all by ourselves? How did we get the idea that as parents we are meant to know what to do without learning about parenting from others? Whose idea was it to pressure parents of babies and toddlers to have to both work full-time to survive, and leave the baby-minding to an outsourced institution? How did we ever expect mothers to breastfeed successfully, let alone pleasurably, if they have never been breastfed, if they have precious little support, and if they did not grow up watching relatives breastfeeding every day? Where did we get the bizarre notion that we can live with frequent sleep interruptions at night, without any help from our families and communities?

What am I trying to say here? The nuclear family approach to parenting is delusional. It cannot work. We can pull it off, but it is hard to sustain pleasurably. Our nerves fray, and we daily and seriously compromise the quality of connection we and our children need. Parenting in our modern society is a task, a project – when it could be a more of a dance, a joy, a journey.

At the heart of our parenting struggles is isolation. Homo sapiens has been designed to parent in co-operative groups, not in cut-off pair-bonds – this is the conclusion of anthropologists, ethnographers, psycho-historians and child-development experts. We will always have Mum-and-Dad pairs, but parents need to be held in a caring community that shares the load and the pleasure of relating to babies and children. There are worthy trends toward more support for parents, but we have only scratched the surface of what is possible and necessary in this regard.

6.    What would you consider the best advice you could give a new parent?

You are going to have a child? That’s wonderful news! Who will be your support network? Your tribe, as it were?

‘Don’t do it alone’ is the first thing I would say. Don’t be afraid to reach out, ask for advice, ask for help, ask for company – every day. There will often be trials, challenges and pitfalls; so you deserve to find your time with your child deeply fulfilling, often pleasurable and joyous. For that to happen, your emotional needs have to be well taken care of. Your needs are paramount: for touch, for conversation, for laughter, for a creative outlet, for a shoulder to cry on, for help, for hugs, for advice. Your ability to give from your heart will be proportional to how well your heart is filled, by nourishing contact with yourself, with others, and with Nature. Parenting is all about connection.