Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive

by Daniel J. Siegel

Dismissing Adult Attachment For adults whose early life may have included a predominance of parental emotional unavailability and rejection, a dismissing stance toward attachment may be found. As parents their children’s relationships with them are often characterized by avoidant attachments. These parents appear to have little sensitivity to the child’s signals. The inner world of such adults seems to function with independence as its hallmark: being disconnected from intimacy and perhaps even from the emotional signals of their own bodies. Their narratives reflect this isolation, and they frequently insist that they do not recall their childhood experiences. Life seems to be lived without a sense that others or the past contribute to the evolving nature of the self. One proposal is that these adults live in a predominantly left mode of processing, especially when interacting with others. In spite of these mechanisms that minimize the importance of relationships, a number of studies suggest that the children and adults in this grouping have bodily reactions that indicate that their nonconscious minds still value the importance of others in their lives. Their behavior and their conscious thoughts appear to have adapted to an emotionally barren home environment by producing an avoidant and dismissing stance toward attachment and intimacy. In response to questions about her childhood experiences a mother of an avoidantly attached child made the following self-reflective comm...