the natural attachment power and the inner confidence to pull it off. Like most behavioral approaches, grounding works best with those who need it least and is least effective with those who need it most. But under any circumstances, grounding, if we are to employ it at all, works best if parents seize it as an opportunity to reestablish the

The secret of reducing the damage is in the timing of things. We want children to be fulfilled with what they truly need before they have access to that which would spoil their appetite for what they truly need.

These children were also more desperate in their attachment behavior: given to boasting, bragging, incessant talking, and striving for attention, as we would expect when attachments are not working.

When we spoil something, we deny it the conditions it requires. For example, we spoil meat by leaving it out of the fridge. The real spoiling of children is not in the indulging of demands or the giving of gifts but in the ignoring of their genuine needs.

As a result, this is the rarest of intimacies and the reason so many of us are reluctant to share even with loved ones our deepest concerns and insecurities about ourselves. Yet there is no closeness that can surpass the sense of feeling known and still being liked, accepted, welcomed, invited to exist.

Underneath the tough exterior is a deeply wounded and profoundly alone young person whose veneer of toughness evaporates in the presence of a truly caring adult.

An evolved culture needs to have some art and music that one can grow into, symbols that convey deeper meanings to existence and models that inspire greatness. Most important of all, a culture must protect its essence and its ability to reproduce itself—the attachment of children to their parents.

Our power to parent rests not in how dependent our child is, but in how much our child depends specifically on us. The power to execute our parental responsibilities lies not in the neediness of our children but in their looking to us to be the answer to their needs.

When the parent is the compass point, it is the messages he or she gives that are relevant. When tragedy and trauma happen, the child looks to the parent for clues whether or not to be concerned. As long as their attachments are safe, the sky could collapse and the world fall apart, but children would be relatively protected from feeling