The antidote to focusing primarily on the future (“What will he need to succeed?”) is what we call Being-With (“What does he need right now?”). This is a state of sensitive attunement where we share in (without fully adopting) our child’s emotional experience, helping the child understand and regulate difficult feelings and staying with him while he gets through it. Being-With means sitting still—not trying to change your child’s experience but accepting it and showing that you’re here with him in it as another human being who struggles with similar feelings.
