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For all of the fathers out there doing the work to connect with your children, keep going.
In a world that is filled with wounded men who never had the chance to experience empathy and connection in their own childhoods, your children desperately need you to show them what a healthy, connected, caring male looks like.
I know this is not an easy ask. That the world around you (and probably your own growing up experiences) will mock you in your attempts to be tender and kind instead of seeking control and dominance.
But you won't regret it. Your children will trust you. And run into your arms and rely on you as a safe haven and a secure base. There is truly no triumph in life greater than the success of being a secure attachment figure for your children.
Connection is what creates resilience for both your children, and for you.
In this video, learn three tips for navigating difficult moments in relationships, including acknowledging tension, expressing confidence in the relationship, and actively listening to the other person's perspective.
In this video, the speaker discusses time outs from a perspective based on attachment research, emphasizing the importance of taking breaks to help reset our brains when we are dysregulated and the need for calm co-regulation rather than isolating with shame or pain as a lesson, adding that the lesson we want to teach is that our bodies need breaks sometimes to calm down so our brains can make good, safe choices - and this lesson applies to marriages as well!
Learn why suggesting activities to a bored child may not be effective as it triggers a stress response in their brain, and instead, how to hold space for their emotional discomfort so they can reconnect with their executive functioning skills in this informative video.