Sublime

Even with one’s own children the natural parenting authority can become lost if the context for it becomes eroded.

reclaim our proper role as their nurturers and mentors. In Part 4 of this book we present a detailed program for keeping our kids close to us until they mature, and for reestablishing the relationship if it has been weakened or lost.

secret of parenting is not in what a parent does but rather who the parent is to a child.

Children become attached to whoever functions as their primary caregiver. But the nature of that attachment—whether it is secure or insecure—makes a huge difference over the course of a child’s life. Secure attachment develops when caregiving includes emotional attunement. Attunement starts at the most subtle physical levels of interaction between

Developing secure attachments with trustworthy others is important in healing the deficits left by undermothering.

For a child to be open to being parented by an adult, he must be actively attaching to that adult, be wanting contact and closeness with him.

The reassuring, consistent presence of grandparents and aunts and uncles, the protective embrace of the multigenerational family, is something few children nowadays are able to enjoy.

Quite innocently but with devastating effects, children are involved in attachment affairs with each other.