The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired

by Daniel J. Siegel

What’s the single most important thing I can do for my kids to help them succeed and feel at home in the world? Notice that this question focuses less on which skills and abilities you want to build in your children, and more on how you approach the parent-child relationship. Our answer is simple (but not necessarily easy): Show up for your kids.

At some level we all know this, but many of us—especially committed, thoughtful, intentional parents—consistently fall prey to feelings of anxiety or inadequacy. We worry about our children and their safety, of course, but we also worry that we’re not being “good enough” in the way we’re raising them. We worry that our kids won’t grow up to be responsible or resilient or relational or…(fill in the blank). We worry about the times we let them down, or hurt them. We worry that we’re not giving them enough attention, or that we’re giving them too much attention. We even worry that we worry too much!

all. Instead of worrying, or trying to attain some standard of perfection that simply doesn’t exist, just show up.

Showing up means what it sounds like. It means being there for your kids. It means being physically present, as well as providing a quality of presence.

As we’ll soon explain, the longitudinal research on child development clearly demonstrates that one of the very best predictors for how any child turns out—in terms of happiness, social and emotional development, leadership skills, meaningful relationships, and even academic and career success—is whether they developed security from having at least one person who showed up for them. Across

Predictable care that supports a healthy and empowering relationship embodies what we call the “Four S’s”—helping kids feel (1) safe—they feel protected and sheltered from harm; (2) seen—they know you care about them and pay attention to them; (3) soothed—they know you’ll be there for them when they’re hurting; and (4) secure—based on the other S’s, they trust you to predictably help them feel “at home” in the world, then learn to help themselves feel safe, seen, and soothed.

We’ve even added a few new twists here and there, since our understanding of parenting and the brain, along with the field of attachment science in general, continues to grow and evolve.

apply them in their personal and parenting lives. In addition to attachment science, the other primary scientific framework underpinning our work is interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB), an approach in which we combine various fields of science into one perspective on what the mind and mental thriving are all about. IPNB looks at how our mind—including our feelings and thoughts, our attention and awareness—and our brain and the whole body are deeply interwoven within our relationships with one another and the world around us to shape who we are.

Showing up thus creates in our kids neural pathways that lead to selfhood, grit, strength, and resilience.

Truly seeing a child means we pay attention to their emotions, both positive and negative. Not every second of every day; no one can do that. But on

They should know, at their core, that when they are hurting, and even when they’re at their worst, we will be there.

We have to let them learn that with life comes pain, but that lesson should be accompanied by the deep awareness that they’ll never have to suffer alone.

up. Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that one of the single best predictors for how any child turns out—in measure after measure—is that they had at least one person who was emotionally attuned and present for them—what we are simply calling having someone “show up” for them. It’s

Your job as a parent is not to prevent them from experiencing setbacks and failures, but to give them the tools and emotional resilience they need to weather life’s storms, and then to walk beside them through those storms.

The greatest predictor for how well parents can provide secure attachment and show up for their kids is whether they’ve reflected on their own experiences and the extent to which they felt the Four S’s from their own caregivers.

History is not destiny. Our past can be understood so that it doesn’t dictate our present and our future.

And the best predictor for whether caregivers can provide this type of secure attachment is that they have what we can simply call “parental presence.”

Inside we come to understand how the past has shaped who we are in the present in a way that frees us to be what we want to be now and in the future. And outside, we learn how to have an open, receptive awareness—to have parental presence—so that our child feels felt, understood, and connected to us.

The child’s mind develops with this interpersonal shaping of the inner personal. (Much

By the way, in case you’re wondering, this attachment strategy is specific to the relational history of interactions with that specific parent, and can be quite independent when assessed with other caregivers. That’s right—a child can be avoidantly attached to one parent, but still enjoy secure attachment, along with the benefits that come with it, with another caregiver.

Disorganized attachment results when children find their parents severely unattuned, when the parents are frightening, and/or when the parents themselves are frightened.

Certain kids are fortunate enough to become adults who generally enjoy good relationships, feel respected by their peers, meet their intellectual potential, and regulate their emotions well. Attachment researchers have called this adult version of secure attachment free attachment.

Unlike the avoidantly attached child who minimizes the drive for connection, the ambivalently attached child magnifies that drive.

Even if you didn’t receive secure attachment from your parents, you can still offer it to your own children. Secure attachment can be learned and earned.

As we’ve said, the key is to develop what attachment scientists call a “coherent narrative,” where we reflect on and acknowledge both positive and negative aspects of our family experiences and how we feel about them.

Then, out of that liberation, you can begin taking responsibility for your behavior going forward, what we clinicians call agency.

When we gather the courage to examine our past, and develop the ability to reflect on and then tell our own stories in a clear and coherent way—where we are neither running from the past nor becoming preoccupied with it—we can begin to heal from our past wounds. In doing so, we rewire our brains so we can better enable our children to form a secure attachment with us, and that solid relationship will become a source of resilience throughout their lives.

By doing your own personal inner work and earning a secure attachment, you break the cycle of insecure attachment and improve the lives of generations who follow you.

liberating. In many ways, we come to forgive ourselves for the adaptations we had to make, and to accept not only who we’ve been, but who we are now inviting ourselves to become.

Safety is the first step toward strong attachment: A caregiver helps the child be safe and therefore feel safe.

I’m here for you. I will protect you. I am the nest, the protective home you can count on, and when you’re afraid or in danger, I’ll always be here. Count on it. I will protect you and keep you safe.

We therefore want to fill our children’s “tanks” in a way that helps them grow up knowing that they are safe in the world, both physically and emotionally, and that while there are indeed dangers out there, they can overcome challenges and emerge even stronger.

Parents have two primary jobs when it comes to keeping their kids safe and making them feel safe. The first is to protect them from harm. The second is to avoid becoming the source of fear and threat.

experiences. If you’d like to read about how you can help individuals who have experienced great amounts of adversity, we recommend Nadine Burke Harris’s book The Deepest Well.

Again, the ACE study offers powerful findings, but it did not include individuals who had experienced therapeutic intervention, and it did not look at positive childhood experiences.

You might begin with a trusted friend, and then seek the help of a counselor, therapist, or medical doctor if necessary.

Instead, you walk beside them through their pain, helping them see that they are strong enough to handle a difficult situation and come out okay. That’s how they’ll learn to feel safe taking chances.

This act of repair will communicate to your child, “Things may get tough between us, but you can’t lose my love. I will be here for you. Always and no matter what.”

experiencing. If you have a hard time with distressing feelings, your child will learn that you are not a source for being soothed or seen, the next two S’s we’ll explore, and it will be hard for her to develop the fourth S, an overall state of attachment security.

But don’t forget the good news for all adults who received less-than-optimal parenting in their youth: You can earn secure attachment by learning about these important ingredients of security and creating them in your life now. By getting clear on your own experiences, and developing a coherent narrative about them—making sense of what happened to you and how it influenced your development—you can earn the type of attachment approach that allows you to learn how to parent in ways that are completely different from, and much healthier than, the ways you were raised. That’s what the carefully conducted research reveals: The attachment strategies we learn as children are open to growth and development throughout the life span.

What keeps a child from feeling seen and understood? Sometimes, it’s because we see the child through a “lens” that has more to do with our own desires, fears, and issues than with our child’s individual personality, passions, and behavior.

A related trap even well-meaning parents can fall into is wanting kids to be something other than who they really are. We might want our child to be studious or athletic or artistic or neat or achievement-oriented or something else.

message. We give our kids cues as to how we feel about that interaction. And you’d better believe they can read those cues like a card shark reading the room. They know what we’re feeling, whether we explicitly state it or not.

And you can apologize when you fail to do so, then keep sending cues that say how much you love them, regardless of how they act or what they say to you.

Shame can be direct and involve statements that are dismissive and, if coupled with anger, even humiliating for a child. Shame

But encouraging our kids to step outside their comfort zone, or working with them on social or emotional skills they’re lacking, is very different from shaming them when they don’t act the way we want. Again,

A practical first step to helping our kids feel seen is simply to observe them—just take the time to look at their behavior, attempting to discard preconceived ideas, and consider what’s really going on instead of making snap judgments.

When you haven’t been seen, you can eventually stop seeing yourself.

Put differently, the repeated experience of interactive soothing can lead to an internalized capacity for the child to soothe herself when she needs it. When