September Separations
Whether you’re a preschooler or a big kid, September usually involves a big transition from the long luxurious days of summer to school, schedules, and routines. That means many of our children are facing separation – not just from their favourite summer activities but also from the most significant people in their lives. Feeling close and connected is a preeminent human need, the most powerful need we seek. The transition to daycare, school, or even between Mom and Dad’s houses can be too much for some kids. The threat of not being with those who matter is too much to bear. Even if they love school, or love Dad’s house, navigating the change into fall rhythms can be tumultuous.
Our cultural habit is to push kids into separation, to try and coerce their individuation. We want them to grow up! Be independent! And be able to handle life’s everyday challenges. The very opposite is usually what’s needed: rather than pushing them to be independent, we need to generously provide for their dependence. The more we try to unhook their desperate, clinging arms and push them teary-eyed toward the classroom door, the more they hold on for dear life. They can become so alarmed that they become preoccupied with holding on to us. If we push independence, it only creates insecurity in a child.
Instead, we need to take care of their emotional needs so they can be freed up to walk out on their own inspiration. Once they can depend on our warm and generous provision of their needs, they feel the luxury to explore and become independent. Only by giving them a strong sense of belonging, of mattering, of being significant, of being loved and being known—not in a piecemeal fashion, but all they need and a little more, will their energy switch from being preoccupied with holding on to us to wanting to walk through the classroom door “all by themselves.” If we do our part well, their inner springs will naturally take over and encourage them to venture forth to be themselves.
On the other hand, if we’re stingy about providing for them emotionally and psychologically, they go to school “hungry” – and more often than not, they look to their peers to fill their dependency needs rather than their teachers. Although this can fool the parents of preschoolers as well as adolescents, they have simply transferred their dependency needs to each other. This can arrest the development of true independence and eventually make it harder for us to parent them because they are no longer looking to us for direction.
We worry that if we indulge their dependence they will never grow up. They are meant to lean on us; it is our job as a parent to provide that. We need to invite their dependence and fill their hunger for contact and closeness so that they experience enough luxury to pursue independence naturally and spontaneously “on their very own.”
References
Gordon Neufeld, Making Sense of Anxiety, Neufeld Institute Vancouver BC, Canada.
Heather Ferguson is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and a Clinical Counsellor in private practice in the Cowichan Valley, B.C.
