Ep 159: The Science behind attachment relationships and Child Development! With Dan Siegel, MD

Thank you to Dr Dan Siegel for joining Ask Dr Jessica! This will be a two part conversation, and in the first part Dan Siegel and Jessica discuss the intricacies of parenting and the neuroscience behind child development. They explore the importance of attachment, as attachment relationships are crucial for a child's emotional health.  The discussion highlights the need for parents to understand their own reactions and the impact of their behavior on their children, ultimately offering hope and guidance for navigating the challenges of parenting.

Daniel J. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry.  He served as a National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellow at UCLA, studying family interactions with an emphasis on how attachment experiences influence emotions, behavior, autobiographical memory and narrative.

Dr. Siegel’s book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (Bantam, 2010), offers the general reader an in-depth exploration of the power of the mind to integrate the brain and promote well-being. He has written six parenting books, including the three New York Times bestsellers Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (Tarcher/Penguin, 2014); The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind (Random House, 2011) and No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind (Bantam, 2014), both with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired (Ballantine Books 2020), The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child (Bantam, 2018) also with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., and Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Child

Dr Jessica Hochman is a board certified pediatrician, mom to three children, and she is very passionate about the health and well being of children. Most of her educational videos are targeted towards general pediatric topics and presented in an easy to understand manner.

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Website: www.askdrjessicamd.com

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The information presented in Ask Dr Jessica is for general educational purposes only. She does not diagnose medical conditions or formulate treatment plans for specific individuals. If you have a concern about your child's health, be sure to call your child's health care provider.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hi everybody. I'm Dr Jessica Hochman, pediatrician and mom of three. On this podcast, I like to talk about various pediatric health topics, sharing my knowledge, not only as a doctor, but also as a parent. Ultimately, my hope is that when it comes to your children's health, you feel more confident, worry less, and enjoy your parenting experience as much as possible. Everybody, welcome back to ask Dr Jessica. I hope you had a wonderful week celebrating Halloween. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Dr Dan Siegel. He's a Renowned psychiatrist and best selling author of the whole brain child and many other groundbreaking books related to parenting and child development. On today's episode, which is part one of our two part conversation, we dive into why there's so much more than just genetics at play when it comes to raising resilient children. Dr Siegel sheds light on how attachment relationships shape who we are and who we become. We also explore the power of repair. Dr Siegel shares practical strategies for turning moments of rupture into opportunities to strengthen our relationships with our children. I hope you find this episode insightful and inspiring, and please stay tuned for part two next week, where we continue this conversation with even more valuable insights from Dr Siegel. So Dr Dan Siegel, I have to tell you, it is an honor to have you as a guest on my podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. And do you want to call Dr Hochman or Jessica? Feel free to call me anything you like, but Jessica would be probably the easiest. Okay, then please call me dan. You got it? You got it? So Dan, thank you so much for being here. I I hope it's okay. I'd first love you to tell the audience a bit about yourself, maybe mention some of the books you've written, because I'm sure many people are familiar with the work that you've done. Well, you know, I do write some books. I have different areas I write in. So one of the areas is for parents. And after writing a graduate school textbook for people in developmental psychology called the developing mind, I wrote a parenting book called Parenting from the inside out with my daughter's preschool director, Mary Hartzell, and that said it that set the the future of that avenue of interest. So I wrote that book, and then I met a wonderful person who became my student, and then my colleague, Tina Payne Bryson, I know you've spoken with recently, and so she and I wrote four parenting books. Whole brain child was the first, and then we did no drama discipline, then we did the yes brain then we did the power of showing up. And then in the middle of all that, I wrote a book when my kids were adolescents, called brainstorm, because there was no book for them to read themselves. So I had to write it. So I wrote brainstorm. And then with another student and then colleague of mine, Dina Margolin, we wrote a book called now maps, which is written for tweens between eight and 12, about their own minds. And then I wrote a preschool book called now maps Junior. It's kind of like a rhyming book for preschoolers. So those are the main books related to parenting. And I'm just curious. I know that initially you were a pediatrician, did you have an idea that you were going to be such a prolific author? Was that a goal of yours, or did that just sort of come to be as time went on, you know, I think I had a feeling that I liked writing when I was in junior high school, with what we called it, when I was there, you know. So around 12 or 13, I just had a feeling, I don't know why, because I had an eye problem that no one diagnosed till I was 30, so I wasn't a big reader or anything like that, but I just had a feeling. And then my best friend, his number one goal was to be a writer, and maybe he inspired me to this was more like when I was 1617, but because I had this eye problem, I didn't do much reading and didn't do any writing and and I loved biochemistry, so I studied biology and then went to medical school. And it's a long story that I talk about a book called Mind, a journey to the heart of being human. But you know, the bottom line is, no, I had no plans on being a writer, except it was like a fantasy from when I was just 12, and it kind of happened out of necessity. I stopped school before I went back, started in pediatrics, then switched, after a year of Pediatrics to psychiatry, and then when I was going to be an academic in psychiatry, it was the beginning of the decade of the brain, and there were all these controversies about what the mind was. And so I was going to stay in academics. I left academics and went into private practice as a therapist, which I loved. I still love. I still do that full time. And then, you know, some books came out saying parents do not impact children except in the genes. They give them their in their sperm and eggs. So I took all my different, you know, writings that I had been just musing with, and I actually had a contract when I had been academics, to write something on trauma, the brain and therapy. And so I reassembled that collection to fight against the statement in the 1996 through 99 period that was the end of the decade of the brain, to show that the mind was much broader than the brain and even bigger than the body, that it was fully embodied and fully relational. And so what that did was it became almost like a political requirement to put out a document against some of the very esteemed academics who were saying, parents had no influence on children and we shouldn't fund high risk families, for example, wasting our public money because Those kids were destined to live out their genes, and there was nothing you could do to change that. So basically, became a necessity to put all that together as a book. So I did, and that was called the developing mind. And you know, fortunately, I learned in writing that book in 90 in the late 90s, that when you have a sense of purpose for me anyway, writing was something that was really rewarding, even though it was pretty solitary, and I just love the experience of finding a purpose, something that needs to be said, and then finding a way to say it that is really helpful for the reader, but also from a societal point of view, puts out a message, like, parents matter. And here's the science, that's the developing mind. And then once that book came out, that it was like, okay, parents matter. If you're a parent, how do you matter? And why does it matter that you understand, like, what this book is trying to tell you. So all the parenting books and other books I've written are, you know, have a message to give that I try to put a lot of energy into how to convey the message so it's as accessible as possible. I have to tell you, a lot of my friends who are pediatricians, when we talk about our favorite parenting books, they refer to your books. And I, what I think is so helpful is there's a lot of parenting books that offer advice, but they don't back it up with the science to understand what's happening in the mind and the brain of children. So it's really nice that you have all of that knowledge that you can combine into books that you know psychology, you know pediatrics. You're an author, you're a parent. So thank you for all the work that you've done. Well, Jessica, thank you so much, because sometimes it's lonely. Writing and getting feedback like that makes it all worthwhile, because you know you're alone, you're alone, you're working on this thing, and you know you believe in it enough to like put it down on paper. But you know when you hear that it's helpful, it makes it makes all the difference. So that really means a lot to me. Thank you. I mean, the whole brain child is that, right? That it sold over a million copies in over 70 languages. I know that's incredible, you know, you know. And it basically the whole brain child takes the science of the textbook, the developing mind and essentially translates it for parents so they don't read the textbook into usable science based notions that we can talk about but, but you know, if I hadn't written that the book is now in its third edition, if I hadn't written the developing mind to say, basically to those academics and say, parents don't matter, and no one could fight against it, except they'd say things like, well, Siegel believes that parents matter, and we know they don't, so there's no reason to read what he says. I mean, I mean, just like I remember at UCLA, because I was a, I was a psycho biology major, and we studied harlows monkeys, and it was fascinating to me that the monkeys that received the warmth of the mother felt secure and comfortable, and they weren't anxious all the time. And the other monkeys that got, I think, they were a wire. They were what made of wires with a bottle to drink from, yeah, with a bottle to drink from. They were anxious. They were uneasy. They couldn't relax. I mean, I think for someone to say that parents don't matter, even from the outset, that doesn't make sense to me at all. Right. Well, here's, and this is, you know, luckily, I haven't mentioned any names, so this is something I can say because I'm not pointing out individuals, but 20% one out of five of adults in the United States of America have what's called avoidant attachment histories, and have in the adult version, dismissing attachment and I'm trained as an attachment researcher, so I know that we have this data which says that the main feature of those individuals is. Adults is to say relationships don't matter. That's literally what they say in their private, you know, interviews you do in this research protocol. So I've been asked to debate publicly some of these folks who are very revered people. And I said, look, as I'm a therapist, it'll be, it'll be conflict of interest, because I'm gonna want to really help the person, and I want to try to point out to them that, you know, it's very possible they're actually in the 20% that say relationships don't matter, but now they're making their whole career live out the way they adapted to their very emotionally barren childhood, and now they're shoving it onto other people, and they might want to think about it, and that would be kind of humiliating for them, so I'll just write textbooks that show that they're wrong, and rather than be on a stage with them and be in the awkward position, because I'm a therapist at heart writer saying that must feel really strong for you to be able to say, parents don't matter. You know, because deep inside when we do when we do those we do those narratives and obtain them. For people, you put galvanic skin response monitors on them, and when they say, when you say, Well, how did these relationships affect you? Right? Their skin response monitor, even though they're saying the words, they don't affect me. It goes way up, because below their cortex, their sub cortical areas remember that relationships really matter. But when they're typing their essays or typing their forwards to books or typing their policy statements to remove funding, their cortex, that's defending them from what was so lonely of a childhood is typing these things out. That's my theory. You have this you have the psychologist perspective to understand what's missing in that statement. But you know something, when someone's personal adaptive stance of attachment relationships don't matter, gets shoved onto people in need, then you get activated. So I don't need to fight them individually, but I am gonna put a lot of energy into I mean, I you know, after the developing mind, someone asked me to do a series of books. Now I've edited 100 textbooks for professionals, basically showing the science of how relationships matter, including parenting relationships. So, you know, you can understand why. You know, one out of five in the population that doesn't even say what the percentage is in academics. That's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. That could be a next book topic. Someone should do that study. Yeah, no. I mean, I mean, to me, it's the most basic of all tenants, that relationships matter, that connection matters. I mean, you don't you live longer when you're or, for sure, don't husbands live longer when they're married. I know. I know, I don't know. It's the same for women. Wonderful, our wonderful Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, you know, he wrote, wrote a beautiful book about this, and talks about the pandemic of loneliness, you know, that we have. And so listen, I wrote a book called Mind site, which kind of reviews different aspects of what's called integration. But in one of those domains. I talk about a patient of mine who was in his 90s, and his stance was, relationships don't matter, you know, we did the adult attachment interview on him. He was clearly in this 20% of the grouping, you know. So I said, Okay, listen, you're in your 90s. What do you want? And I said, you know, why do you want to change anything? He goes, well. People say to me, you know, Stuart, that's the name I gave him. Stuart, how do you feel about this or that? You know, he started a law firm. His partner, we started the firm, who was dying and he felt nothing. People say, Well, how do you feel your partner's dying? Said, I don't know what you mean. He goes, my whole life. I don't know what people mean when they say, How do you feel? Okay. He goes, well. Do you think you think you can help me? I said, I think I can, but I don't know why you want to be helped. He goes, Oh, come on. Can you try? I said, All right, if you really want to do it. So the theory is, basically, when you don't have a lot of emotional connection in childhood, the way you adapt is you go over to the side of your brain that doesn't receive much of the raw emotional longing that is constantly being activated when you're in that kind of emotionally barren environment. And and that side of the brain, for most of us, is the left side of the brain, where you can be very logical, very literal, you can make statements like, parents don't matter, and, you know, stand up for that, or, you know, all sorts of things you can do with it. So it has its usefulness in quotes. But what I said to Stuart, I said, you know, the other side of your brain is still there. It's just waiting to be activated. So let's do it. So you'll see in the chapter in the mind site book, I basically developed the right side of his brain, which is more connected to his body, and it's more connected to his autobiographical memory. And suddenly all this stuff of the pain of his childhood came out, not that he had to remember all the details, but the pain that his wife had been in the hospital, and he could, for the first time, own that. And in fact, his wife called me up and when he had gone through these changes, and. Therapy. And said, you know, Dr Dan, she goes, Did you give Stuart a brain transplant? He's like a different human being? I said, No, I just let another side of him grow. And what I found out was that after someone had been over and they were facing an illness, his wife had put her hands on his shoulders and started giving him a shoulder rub, and for the first time in their entire history together, Stewart said, Oh, that feels good. Keep on going. And she goes. He had never allowed her to do that kind of thing. He would never allow him self to be really close to her. So in their last years together, they had this intimacy, this closeness, this emotional sharing, this vulnerability, this joy that they never had had before. And you know it was only because when you look deeply the science, you can come up with this hypothesis that dismissing attachment, which he definitely had by a research measure that I gave him, is associated with left hemisphere over development and right hemisphere under development. And if you're in academics, you can make statements like, parents don't matter, and you can even distort the research that exists out there that proves you're wrong, but you just cherry pick which piece of evidence, like genetics matter. Well, of course, genetics matter, but it isn't the whole story anyway, that's that's a parent that it comments about, I never intended to be a writer, but you know, there were all these things that had to be said. What about for families that have one devoted parent, where another parent might not be as much in the picture or as involved? I've heard that one good, committed parent is really what a child needs to thrive and feel secure. Is that true from your research? Yeah, it's a great question. So to start with the research part, then I'll tell you my clinical experience, and then I'll speak about my personal experience. The research, you know, has to classify a relational connection. And so what we as researchers found, my broad field of attachment research is that one child can, like you're pointing out, Jessica, have a secure relationship with one parent and a secure or non secure with another parent. Or two forms of insecure attachment. I call them non secure because the kid is an insecure the relationship is either like emotionally disconnecting, that's avoidant attachment, or it could be emotionally intrusive and inconsistent. That's called ambivalent attachment, or it can be terrifying, and that's called disorganized attachment. And then, in contrast to those three, you have secure attachment. So the reason I don't want to use the word insecure, even though that's in the research field views is the child is not insecure. The relationship was sub optimal, and the child did the best she or he or they could. So anyway, so these non secure variations, they give you a stance that you're absolutely right. A child with one set of temperamental predispositions, you know, can have a myriad of lots of different attachments depending on the the relationship. And the other thing that's amazing is that the it's the interview findings, how the parent has made sense of his or her life that determines, for the most part, whether the child will have a secure or non secure attachment to them. So what I said when I heard that in 1985 is I said, Oh my gosh, I want to learn that instrument, which I did. I got a National Institute of Mental Health fellowship to study it with the people who created it. And what that tells you is that if you make sense of your life, you yourself as a parent, can free yourself up to not have cross generational passage of non secure attachment. So that's that layer. The second layer about resilience that you're pointing out is, yeah, you know, if your primary caregiver is secure, that's really great, but if you have somebody in your life, certainly a parent, but even another attachment figure, like a coach, a therapist, a relative. You know, having at least one secure relationship is the source of resilience. And I've heard you talk about allo relationships, which I think is really fascinating, that a child can feel more secure, not just from their parents, but from other secure relationships in their life. Exactly. You know, there's a beautiful book Sarah erdie, H, r, d y, called Mothers and others. And you know what? She's an anthropologist. What she suggests, which is, you know, such a profound finding is that human beings evolved, unlike, you know, some of our mammal cousins, like dogs or cats, we evolved to share child rearing. So it's not just the burden of the mother, it's mothers and others, and it's not a million other people, but it's significant designated others that are attachment figures. And humans do this through. All cultures. In our modern culture, we put the incredible pressure on the mom and say, Oh, are you Mom enough to be have the kid just with you? And that has nothing to do with what attachment science shows. In fact, it's the opposite of what attachment science shows. So even if you see the name of a parenting approach that uses the word attachment. It doesn't mean it's based on Attachment science. They're just using a word. So be very careful, because human beings evolve to have more than one attachment figure. What I so enjoy about what you're explaining, I love that by understanding the science behind attachment and attachment theory, it actually offers a lot of hope to me, because you're explaining how understanding the science, we can make things better and we can improve relationships, which I think is very hopeful, totally. I mean the three big hopeful points, just so everyone can realize what you're saying, Jessica, one is, if you had a horrible childhood, you can make sense of what happened to you, and the research shows your children will have a secure attachment to you. That is a mind blowingly hopeful research based finding. The second is, you know, I mean, the children can have more than one attachment figure, and so that's they're perfectly capable having different kinds of attachment, and that's fine. They're just taking a stance for this parent. This is how I'm gonna be with this one, different for this one, and that's great. The third thing that you know we haven't mentioned is, let's just name it, rupture and repair. There is no such thing as perfect parenting in in in mind. Site the book mine. Site where you talk about Stuart, I talk about Stewart, but I there's a chapter called the crepes of wrath. And in that chapter, I'm at a crepe store, and my kids, who are five, four and a half years apart, they got into a fight, and I took sides with my younger child, which is my daughter, and, you know, and it all blew up, you know, in some really very unpleasant ways. And so what I I tell the story of how I really became irrational and, you know, and how I had to make a repair. And I had my kids review it before I sent it to the publisher, and they said, Yeah, it's accurate. It's exactly what happened. But what's wrong with you that you want to tell the world what a jerk you can be. You know, I said good. That's because I want people to know that even you can write books about this stuff, you can be a therapist and you mess up. So, you know, in that particular case, I had to work through my own issues about my brother being older than me, and my parents never really intervening in the difficult things that went on between us. So I swore when I was a kid I'd always defend the young one, right? Well, there's this perfect situation where it was like a setup. I don't need to go into details, but, you know, I started defending her, and anyway, it was really irrational. What I did. She could have stood up for herself, as she told me later. And so we went for I went rollerblading with my daughter. And after, right afterwards, after, you know, we did this repair of everything, she goes, so what was going on with you? And I said, Well, you know, my brother was hostile to me, and I always wanted to protect you from any kind of ways your brother. And she goes, you know, that's your own stuff. Just work that out on your own time. I can take care of myself and my brother, that's a good story and and just to clarify, when you say repair, that means saying a genuine sorry. Well, it's a number of layers. The first is absolutely saying a genuine I'm sorry. The second thing that immediately goes along with I'm sorry is, let's talk about what happened. Let's talk about what your experience was. Let's stay with the crepe story. And you see this in the book, you know, let's talk about what it was like when my son's a musician. Alex Siegel, you can listen to him now and see how it turned out. But back then, you know, he was really just getting into guitar. He was using my guitar for my childhood and and after he wouldn't share crepes with his sister, was basically the bottom line bowl thing, and she said she didn't really want a whole crepe, just want a piece of his. He goes, Well, I'm really hungry. Let her get her own. And that's what the whole story was, basically. And I flipped out. I said, I'm going to take your guitar away for a year. He says, No, you're not. You gave me your guitar. I said, Yeah, but I can take it back. Maybe I'll take it away for two years. What am I saying? And it's like, I guess then he was, I think, 14, or something like that. So anyway, went on and on, and the repair then is we got together with my wife, who wasn't at the grave store. The four of us got together and we said, let's tell the story of what happened. Well, he was hungry, wanted crepe. She didn't win shit. She wanted a piece of his blah, blah, blah. And I got caught in the sibling chess game, and then I took sides unfairly, and then I took his guitar away, which was also unfair. And then, you know, the whole thing blew up. Right? And, and so I said, you know, I'm really sorry for what happened. And I said, but let's talk about how you feel. So this is the first step. How'd you feel? He goes, Well, it was kind of scary. You're yelling at me in the car while you're driving home. And that was kind of scary. So he could say, you know, that I literally flipped my lid. I, you know, in brain terms, I stopped having my prefrontal cortex, you know, regulate me. And everything that was unworked through with my own brother, you know, was streaming out of me and and then I, you know, and so he's talking about his feelings, and I'm not interrupting. I'm not saying, Oh, but come on. I really didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't really mean to scare you. How scary was I really come on out. You know, you just listen to what his feelings were so, so it's yes, I'm sorry, let's talk about the experience was like. Now he's saying what it's like. And then he started making fun of me. He started imitating me. He's a really well, if you listen to his songs, you see he's really good at making all sorts of emotions expressed. So he's like, imitating me. I had to take a deep breath and let him do what some parents would say was insulting. I think it was insulting. I thought it was really important communication. This is how scary I seem to him. You know, my daughter, who's kind of on the sidelines, she's listening, and she got a chance to talk about it, because there's a rupture too for her. And you know, I could talk about how what I did was really irrational. Now I still think he should share with his sister, but my reaction had was way out of proportion to not giving he actually gave her a little piece, but it was too small. I mean, I went nuts, you know. So, you know, this is where we can get caught up really fast in our old stuff. So my leftover business was about my relationship with my brother and how my parents never protected me, and I was going to, sure enough, protect the younger one there, my daughter and, you know, so that's but so, so that's what the repair was. And then we laugh about it, you know, and then everyone's like laughing their heads off. I had to be willing to laugh at myself and have the the intention of saying, this is role modeling for the kids, that any human being can lose it, and the most important thing is to reconnect by acknowledging that what happened happened. I've heard parents say, Oh, they're too young to remember, or let me just deny that it happen, and that's actually not good at all. I actually think saying a genuine sorry can be really difficult for people, myself included, many times, because I think there's something about your own ego where you're admitting that you were faulty, and that can be really hard to do, because I think we all know we're not perfect and we make mistakes, but saying a genuine sorry. I think it means so much to the other person. And if you can do it in a heartfelt, empathetic way, it really does go a long way, totally so. And it has to be heartfelt. It can't just be, you know, a pro forma thing, like I'm, you know, I'm just saying that because I know I'm supposed to say it, right? Absolutely. And as you said, if it makes the connection deeper, which it does, and connection really is everything having true relationships that aren't, you know, on social media, that's a whole other conversation, but real, true connection. It's, it's worth it, it's worth it, and it's, and every time you do say sorry, it's never as scary on the other end as it feels before you do it, in my sense, well and exactly, and with the repair process, if you think about what we haven't talked about, but if you think about the fundamental principles of secure attachment, they're pretty easy to remember. And I'm saying this as a dad you know, who's raised two kids are now 30, and they're almost 35 and also, you know, a therapist, but also a researcher in this area. You know, it comes down to 3s that if you have them in a reliable way, and if there are ruptures to any of these three, they are readily and reliably repaired. Then you get the fourth S, which is security. So it's good to memorize these first especially the first three S's, you get the fourth s, the first one is being seen, right? And what seen means? I picked that word because in attachment research, it has a lot of layers to it with fancier terms, but it's basically is the inner layer of a child's experience, their emotions, their thoughts, you know, what they're feeling in their body. Are you as a parent, seeing what's beneath behavior? So it isn't being I see the body and I see the bodies, you know, throwing a stick out the window, and I'm furious about that. It's what was the motivation that got that stick being thrown. Now, it doesn't mean you say yes to everything. You still can give, you know, structure and give boundaries and limitations on throwing sticks out windows, but you want to really see the mind of the child. The second thing is soothed. So when, when a child's in distress, they need your nervous system. Them to help regulate their nervous system, especially when they're younger. So that interactive soothing is essential, and what it does is it teaches them that they can learn how to soothe themselves. So that's really, really crucial. And the third s is being safe. And obviously that's about physical safety, but it's also about emotional safety, you know, and so we want to protect our kids for sure, but also we want to be careful, to not be the source of terror like at the crepe store, I was pretty out of my mind saying crazy things. And you might say, Oh, you're just setting limits, taking his guitar away for two years. But the tone of my voice isn't revealed in just saying I took the guitar away for two years. I mean, I was really, really angry, and that must have been terrifying to them, right? So you can have anger, sadness, fear arise in you that gets at and you're you're kind of at, you're not even kind of, you're out of control. And that's what I mean by by safety, is that when you're out of control as a parent, you're no longer a source of safety. And so all those three things are important. They're different from each other. Seeing soothe and say, when ruptures happen and they do happen. You want to recognize, wow, I really messed that up, or something happened that messed up. Let me go back and make a repair. And really the scene is you're seeing what your child's experience was, even the repair, you are soothing them from their distress, and now they're safe. They realize, okay, my dad can flip his lid, and we're going to process it, we're going to talk about it, you know, and and then there's, you know, you start to learn to speak like that. That's such a helpful tip and such good advice to help parents think about how to strengthen their relationship with their children, and not only with their children. I feel like that'd be helpful with other relationships, namely with your spouse, so that kids can watch a healthy relationship in action. It's got to be very, very helpful for kids at any age, too. Jessica, I'll tell you, you know, I had some very difficult attachment experiences myself as a kid. And you know, I recently did this process called the Hochman process, which has you dive for a week into how your parenting affected you. And my wife did it, and she found it helpful. We have some cousins. I have a cousin looks actually just like you. She did it, and, and, and she nice person, I hope good person. You like her. Okay, good. So, so she, you know, they did it. So we did it. And even though I'm a therapist who writes about this stuff, you know, it was profound to spend a week where you're doing nothing but diving into how your attachment relationships affected you. And I gotta say, you know, our kids as adults are able to see that even now that they're out of the house, my wife and I, my wonderful Caroline, my wonderful wife and I, can still work on these issues and find a way to get even closer and have the different ruptures come up, you know, get work through because we were both now Hochman graduates. So I don't think everyone has to do Hochman, but it's, it's kind of the broad topic of, you know, seeing that there are two fundamental things that shape us. One is attachment experiences, the other is temperament. So I'm just, I'm coming out with a book for therapists all about taking a deep dive into temperament and how attachment interfaces with temperance. So that's another topic. We can talk about another time if you want to. But this, um, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. It's, it's super exciting, because in the field of therapy, there's not much about how personality can be used in therapy. And so these two factors, what, what are your attachment stances you had to take because of your childhood, and then what's your temperament, which I think is very much related to your sense of wholeness and and feeling of connection in the world. So those two can have some really interesting interfaces and and when you look deeply at it that way, then you can see, okay, I've got these patterns of emotional response, of behavior that sometimes especially with a spouse. You know it can be like a lightning rod for stuff, and once you figure them out, it allows your personality to go from being what it could have become as a prison, it moves over to being a playground. I think it speaks volumes that you are willing to put that time into your relationship with your wife, because there's a saying that where you put, where you put your time and energy, it will grow. So if you're willing to put that work in with your wife, I'm sure it really pays off. So good for you for doing that. Yeah, no, it really does. And we can see, and also our kids can see, hitter. Go to some cards recently. You know, beautiful cards about that, like, wow, you know, because there, you know, there are things you think, sometimes you think in a relationship are just going to be inherent in the relationship throughout the life of this relationship. And we basically showed our adult children, you know, you can always do the inner work of figuring out what's going on and make a relationship better. And they can, they can see the likeness, you know, and the fun, even when things that would have before would have turned into something you know. And then you can work on and figure out, I see what this is about, you know. And I think how helpful for your children to watch you work on your relationship with your wife and those around you. It only benefits everybody in your in your world. So good for you. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Ask Dr Jessica. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review, wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr Jessica, see you next Monday. You.