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ShiftED Podcast #67 • In Conversation with Dr. Gordon Neufeld: The Power of Playfulness

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Have we been approaching education all wrong? In this mind-shifting conversation with renowned developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld, we explore the invisible but essential foundation of all learning: relationship.

As another school year begins, Dr. Neufeld challenges educators to recognize their primary role as "attachment agents" rather than just instructors. The modern educational system often separates children from their natural "villages of cascading care," creating an environment nature never intended. When this happens, our first responsibility is to help children maintain connections with their primary caregivers while building secure attachments with us as teachers.

Most provocatively, Dr. Neufeld argues that many of the competencies we're desperately trying to teach—empathy, self-regulation, resilience—cannot actually be taught at all. "We're teaching what can't be taught," he observes. "We can only teach children to perform." These qualities emerge naturally when children feel secure in their attachments and experience genuine playfulness.

And here's where Dr. Neufeld's wisdom becomes truly transformative: he distinguishes between structured "play activities" and true playfulness. When the brain enters the play drive (as opposed to attachment or achievement drives), learning is optimized, creativity flourishes, and even sensory processing improves. This has profound implications for how we approach education, particularly for children with attention or sensory challenges.

Twenty years after publishing his landmark book "Hold On to Your Kids," Dr. Neufeld's message remains more urgent than ever. In our digital age, where screens and social media compete for children's attention and attachment, educators must "retreat to the basics" rather than pushing harder with more structured learning.

Ready to transform your approach to teaching and child development? Listen now to discover how prioritizing attachment and playfulness creates the optimal conditions for nature to do what it does best: grow children into their fullest potential.

Chris Colley:

welcome back everyone. Here we are in another Shifted, shifted Podcast. Start of new school year is here, 25, 26. And I'm reaching across Canada to pull in just an amazing expert, dr Gordon Neufeld, on attachment theory and relationship building, which I think when we begin these school years, is crucial for us to do with our students and also our colleagues within the school to create that kind of welcoming community where we encourage learning and growth and mistakes and all of those beautiful things. So, gordon, thanks so much for hopping on here and sharing some insight about this topic that you've been dabbling in for a long time I'll say yes, thank you.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Thank you, Chris, Glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation to join you.

Chris Colley:

A real pleasure of mine. So when we start talking about school readiness, I think that's kind of something that we're getting our kids ready for to go into school. But I heard on a TED Talk that you had done a while ago that nature's job is to grow the kids right. It will do all of that stuff, but it's really our parents and teachers to cultivate the relationships a part of that which goes tandem with that process. What are some of the ways that you talk to people educators, parents about kind of getting out of the way of nature and focusing on what you have power to do, which is help kids with that maturation process before they are going into school, and this idea of school readiness Could you put some words to that for us?

Speaker 1:

Yes, I could write a couple of books about it, Chris.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

That's a very good question and it gets to the issue. Of course, as you said, and thank you for listening to that, it's always nice to know that somebody took in that TEDx talk on. I think it was Relationship Matters or I'm not sure that's right.

Chris Colley:

It was called Relationships Matters.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

The thing about relationship and I think I bring it out there too is it's invisible. It's a context right, even the word context is with text, but it's not the text, so it's invisible. And if everything was working well, we wouldn't have to pay attention to it. And culture is meant to keep us together. It's the ties that bind, isn't it? Rituals and so on. And so when we do something like a school and we take children out of the villages of cascading care where they are, it really sets up. When you put them into daycare, it just sets up something that nature never had in mind.

Speaker 1:

You know, like this, this wasn't the deal.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

And that's what makes it so difficult. You know, in the plant world, all the attachments are below ground. You don't see them. You only see the fruit of attachments. You never see the attachments. Well, that's the problem in general society. You don't see attachments. You don't see the relationship between an atom and a proton. You don't actually see the relationship between the moon and the earth, yet that relationship defines everything. It's invisible. It's invisible and it's not what is seen. And that's what attachment is. It's invisible, and that's why it's so important for those who can think, and educators should be the primary ones who can think about things and philosophies and so on.

Speaker 1:

Is that they?

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

realize that when we do this kind of thing, when we take children out of the context of cascading care with their grandparents, their ancestors, their tribes, their cultures and so on and so on, that we essentially become attachment agents first and foremost. And so we think of ourselves as educators, of teaching children. And again, as you spoke to, the issue is actually all the wonderful things that we talk about develop quite spontaneously if children have the conditions that are conducive to that. And the number one condition is an experience of attachment where the togetherness is not threatened. Now there's no way young children are able to hold on to their parents and their grandparents when apart. So they need help. So that's the first thing of help is how do we help them hold on when apart? You know, we become agents of attachment that way. Secondly, they don't function very well outside a context of attachment. So they'll naturally gravitate towards their peers because they're at a.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Whenever attachments don't work, you retreat to sameness as being the main idea of attachment. So you can see the health in society In society like. You can see the health like in the American society now, with this huge tribalization, it goes to sameness and differentness. Whenever a society does that, you know it's in trouble to sameness, borrowing another person's laugh, having to be the same it absolutely thwarts the whole individuation process. They're not growing up, but we think they're being socialized, we think they are now conforming to the society they belong in. In actual fact, they don't belong to each other, because that's not how care is delivered. Care is delivered in cascading care, and so our job is not only to become agents of attachment and help them hold on to their parents when apart and an intuitive teacher will kind of get that, especially with a young one. That that's what they need to do. But the second thing is is you've got to get into the business yourself. You've got to get into the village of attachment so the child attaches to you, so that there is a context in which nature can do. What only it can do is to grow the child up.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Nowadays we've got into nature's business, trying to teach things like empathy and trying to teach things like self-regulation. This is all spontaneous. We're teaching what can't be taught. We can only teach children to perform. I mean, that's always been the criticism of school. Is the school? Is learning taking place? If that was true, why are we crushing their curiosity? And are we not only measuring performance? And is that not like a monkey, we're doing circus tricks? Is school not only a circus where children perform? Do we really have we really learned? Can we remember things we have? Where children perform? Do we really have we really, you know, learned? Can we remember things we have? And why is it that more children are curious in kindergarten than in grade 12? That's not good.

Speaker 1:

That's not good. So there is something that you said, too, that struck me that kids learn more than all formal education in their first four years of life than all formal education. The brain is just going crazy.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

But you learn about what you're attached to, how to attach, about how to be part of, how to matter, because that's what the brain just soaks in. Because that's what the brain just soaks in. And the second thing is, if there is luxury there, then it goes into the play mode and play optimizes attention learning. It goes automatically into the play mode and so that is how you know there's luxury. There's a problem is that even if attachments like for a three or four-year-old, even if the attachments are, you know, the child feels very secure in the togetherness, provided it only lasts for a couple of hours, and then the child goes back because play can't be sustained, right right, because it's a luxury. And so we can call things play, we can put it into the curriculum, we can say go play now. That doesn't mean that they're playful. Well, we've been thinking of play rather than playfulness. It's playfulness that is the number one indicator of emotional health and well-being, even for our cats.

Speaker 1:

And for humans.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

And if we understood this is how do we preserve playfulness, and that includes the teacher. If the teacher isn't playful anymore, oh my goodness, we've got a problem.

Chris Colley:

Right. That's an amazing point too, Gordon, because oftentimes when I talk to teachers, preschool teachers, daycare teachers they're like there's still this, not quite sure of what play is and like the benefits of play they're. They're even in like preschool. They have this mindset that they have to prepare these kids for grade one and grade two and etc. Throughout, and play really gets neglected in the sense that it's not valued as something that is actually way more important than learning to count or write your name.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

At that age, I'm saying Well, at every age, play is. Play is the nature school for learning. We learn more when we're playful than anything else. I mean, the major corporations in the world have known that creativity happens in play. You know all of the latest science on attention deficit is no. You get attention into the play mode, in curiosity, and the filters work differently and the brain finds its way around.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

And this is the antidote, not medication, which actually interferes with the development of the prefrontal cortex. Play just optimizes all of this. It engages only that which doesn't overload the brain. So in this explosion of hypersensitivity and spectrum, we should know well what is the answer. If we're talking about sensory overload, our brains were not ever designed for the information they have in this world. They are totally overstimulated, some more than others, and those who are hypersensitive and cannot filter out the information need play as a default scenario, because play automatically regulates incoming information to that which you're curious about, and so your brain has half a chance to be able to work with stuff instead of spending its whole time trying to keep things out, like it already throws out close to 95% of all stimulation, but in the hypersensitive it's struggling to keep it out, so it's a defensive mode and we don't have growth, we don't have progress. So play would be the standard modality for any child having difficulty, be they three or be they 15, would be the issue.

Chris Colley:

And with that play coming in, we tend to also snip it out, formalize the education Play is like for recess and after school and lunch, whatever any, any time that it's not during the class well, we call it play.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

And we call it play because play is supposed to be engaging, right? If you look back to your, your own recess certainly mine very little play happened. You're busy scanning for what works, who does who likes, who can I play with, who I won't be rejected with? This is all attachment work. Children are exhausted after recess. Many of them are much safer in the class than that. It's a Lord of the Flies scenario out there that we put supervisors in. Now the savvy ones can learn how to function around it, but if we looked at it, Savvy ones can learn how to function around it, but if we looked at it, it's not play.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Play is an instinct, is a drive. It's one of three basic drives, the other ones being attachment and achievement. Play is the only one that's not outcome-based. We have used play as to call games which are primarily outcome-based screen activities, which are primarily outcome-based sports, which are only play if they're not outcome-based, and so we're using this word. We even call things like playoffs, which are completely outcome-based Right, completely outcome-based. There's no playfulness in anybody in playoffs.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

The real issue is not what we call play, but when the brain is in the play drive, because when the brain is in the play drive. It's expressive. There is a certain safety from feelings getting hurt. It's a state of active rest. The brain is optimized in the play drive. It is where everything good unfolds. It's a greenhouse for growth. And that will be true of teachers as well. All their creativity will be in their playfulness. And if they can't figure out how to be a teacher and how to preserve their playfulness, they're in trouble. And that's the bottom line. And that's why I said we know more about what our cats. And if they can't figure out how to be a teacher and how to preserve their playfulness, they're in trouble. And that's the bottom line and that's why I said we know more about our cats. If our cat has had a trauma, how do we know? When we get our cat back?

Speaker 1:

When they're playful again, it's the same with us.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

It's the same with us. And so we shouldn't be thinking of play, we should be thinking of playfulness. And playfulness is when the brain is in the play drive, as opposed to in one of the two outcome drives. In attachment, the outcome is proximity. In achievement, the outcome is desired results. And so in one of the two outcome and play is the spontaneous drive you can't make yourself playful, you can't teach playfulness.

Speaker 1:

You can't catch it, it is spontaneous. You can't. You know, I often totally.

Chris Colley:

I hear like teachers say oh, I'm not creative, oh I have no imagination, I'm like well you do. Yeah, are you playing, you know?

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

I mean, I guess that word playful is really all for that, it's all about the playfulness and when your children are playful, when they're being playful, it doesn't matter what it is Like if they're old enough to play with words, with wit, with irony, with paradox, like what is irony anyway? What is a?

Speaker 1:

metaphor it's playing with concepts. What is philosophy? It's playing with ideas. Now, when we teach these things, we're no longer. We've lost the plot here.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

We've lost the plot that when our attachment needs are taken care of sufficiently, when there is sufficient togetherness and we're not facing threats to that, we turn from creatures of attachment to creatures of play. And that is us, and that isn't just for kids, that's for us. At our death's door is, how do we face our mortality If we can't face it? We can't face it directly, we're not meant to. We have to face it in song, in a lament, we have to face it in poetry, we have to face it in one step removed. That's what generates. All the poetry in the world is facing these things.

Speaker 1:

We have to do it in the play mode. There's no way we could do it directly.

Chris Colley:

Amazing and I'm kind of like starting to make. Some things are starting to connect a bit, and I mean a lot of what we try to teach our kids saw skill wise. You know how to collaborate, how to share, how to critically think, how to you know we have all these great skills that we want to bestow upon our youngest generations. Is it simply just kind of again getting out of their way? You can't teach resilience right Like you have to be in environments. You could maybe to practice it.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

No, you can't, you can't. No, you can't. I mean the very idea of being able to teach empathy, and if you teach something, then you reinforce the skill that is made as soon as you act in a caring way for personal benefit. It's not empathy, it's narcissism, it's selfishness. You can't teach it. You can't teach it no more than you can teach playfulness. This is spontaneous life force, unfolding if conditions are conducive.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Now we're full of paradoxes. We use what children care about against them and then are surprised when they don't care anymore. But caring is at the heart of empathy. It's not taking somebody else into consideration. The bully does that better than anybody else. Right, right. And that's why they stopped In science. They stopped doing all work on empathy because they found that the ones who had the best empathy were the bullies.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

So they called it cold empathy because they had made a huge mistake. Is it caring? Is that the root of it? So it's 10 years at the root of it. So it's 10 years. It took how many years when science forsake self-esteem because they realized that they couldn't go anywhere that way, that those that were in denial had the best self-esteem of anyone? We're all insecure, and if a four-year-old doesn't know that bad things can happen to those that they love, then there's a problem with that Right. And then when we say and pathologize that there's a problem with that Right. So we're trying to teach things. We're trying to teach an apple tree how to how to bear apples.

Chris Colley:

Wow, I get that.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Yeah, that not only not only is it futile, it is dangerous, because you know nowadays, when you go to a store and you get an apple, how many apples taste like apples anymore, because the whole industry has gone to create a strawberry that we can call a strawberry, looks like a strawberry, an apple that it's prematurely to get, fruit that they can get to the store and that can last. Does it nurture you? No, no. So it's even worse is when you get an act that takes the place of the real thing, and that's all. Learning theorists know how to do is to get us to act right, but we, when we act nice, when we feel mean, we call it hypocrisy. Yet with children, we call it self-regulation and we call it empathy. Right interesting.

Chris Colley:

Wow, you're making so many things trigger here, gordon. I'm like I I know that we won't have enough time. Well, we need like 20 more of these.

Speaker 1:

That's why I said I could write a couple of more books if I could write them. I'm a terrible slow writer. That's why I had to get Gabber Mate to help me with Hold On To your Kids.

Chris Colley:

Which is an amazing book, such a legacy to that book as well, and the truth that it speaks. I mean, I go back to it often just to remind myself. But if we could, I want to kind of take some of this mindset that we're talking about and put it in a reality situation of what's going on now. We have the school coming back, teachers getting new loads of kids. Yes, what are the key things that teachers should be aware of at the start of these school years where their awareness of attachment theories and relationship building? Can you fill in maybe some advice for teachers on the things to be aware of or tips that you might offer up?

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Well, it's keeping it in mind, and that's the hard part of it. It's invisible. It's keeping it in mind and that's the hard part of it. It's invisible is that when we're dealing with other people as a therapist, it took me a long time to realize that I really was only an agent of attachment, and I'm talking in terms of adults and marriage therapy as well. I'm helping individuals hold on to each other, find togetherness in a world that's falling apart. I'm helping individuals grieve the lack of it, but, where possible, trying to be able to help them hold on.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

That's, first and foremost, the issue. If they don't, children are filled with attachment. Alarm, which we call anxiety, agitation, attachment problems, cutting and burning these are all things to be able to reduce it. So we have all kinds of behavioral problems. Adrenaline seeking, anxiety is the biggest one. It's the one there that indicate that children are alarmed and they're becoming defended against it, and so the bottom issue is that we're falling apart as a society, society.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

It takes nature six years of optimal development to be able to cultivate the ability in a child to hold on when apart. They have to have given their heart to their mom, dad, grandparent, so that that means that it can transcend death. They have to now start sharing all that is within their heart so they feel known from inside out, because they're beginning to identify with their insides rather than their outsides. That's part of the identity that takes a long time of development. Most adolescents today are only at the second level of all about sameness. If you can't be with, then at least you can be like, and that is a great polarization that is happening around the globe. Why? Because they're not in loving relationships, because they haven't given their heart to somebody. If a five-year-old hasn't given their heart to mommy and daddy or to the teacher or whoever substitutes for it, they're in trouble and they're going to be full of anxiety. If a child, because it hasn't been safe, has moved to the alpha mode and is controlling and bossy and prescriptive, we think such a child is more independent, because we realize that no, this isn't independence. This is a child who is trying to stay on top of his world, who is controlling. The problem is you can't make yourself safe, so their anxiety escalates and they develop eating disorders because you can't be in control of your own food.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

What do we do? We try to teach children self-care. Who should be taking care of them, us Right Putting them into this. So what am I trying to do as a teacher if I'm involved in it, even as a psychologist to do as a teacher, if I'm involved in it, even as a psychologist, if I'm involved in it, if I have any profession outside of that?

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Natural cascading care thing is the way nature is meant to grow us up and to connect us.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

If I'm involved, if parents are farming out their kids to be raised, and I'm involved in that endeavor from the outside, then my number one responsibility is to be able to to keep relational relationship in mind, helping them, you know, be able to look for to, you know, to bridge the divide, to collect the kids, to get their eyes, their smiles, their nods, to build relationships, and that this needs to be with adults, not with other kids, because that is not how care is delivered. Care is delivered in hierarchical attachments and so not in terms of siblings. When they attach to each other, they get locked out of the care their parents and grandparents have for them. You know, just like if stars revolved around each other. Well, it's really obvious in the universe, because if planets revolved around each other, they'd die Like they'd crash into each other, and that's what happens with our kids are all revolving around each other and it's disastrous because care doesn't get through, and when care doesn't get through, we have mental health problems going through the roof.

Chris Colley:

Right, which we're seeing I guess it brings me to this question is hold on to your children, onto your kids. Sorry, I mean, you put that out a long time ago and it almost it seems like a different environment that we are in now. Yes, how do you see, does that message still resonate today, like more than ever that's what I was going to ask More than ever.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

I, I, I was so concerned about how slow I was. I. I wrote the book in about about 1999 and it was way too big, about 240,000 words, and I thought, oh my goodness, everybody's going to discover this. And there was a little bit of pride in me that wanted to be credited with being able to, you know, say, hey, wait, something is happening, you know here, and I shouldn't have been concerned First of all. That's why I went hunting for Gabber, because Gabber's a really quick writer, right, and I said help, I need help.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Because he was one of my students taking my parenting courses. I said help, and so he helped me, and of course he's such a good writer and now you know it's such a great help he helped me get it out.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

It didn't get out until 2004,. So he helped me get it out. It didn't get out until 2004,. But that was one year before Facebook, before social media, right. But it's even more important now, because now we're seeing all the symptoms of children being pulled out of orbit from those who are meant to take care of them. And we're seeing all of those symptoms that are there, including all kinds of mental health problems, addictions with digital devices, with social media and so on.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

No, this is the thing is, if teachers remember only this one thing is the child needs adults in his life who care for them. And for that care to get through, the child needs to be attached to them. It's like the umbilical cord you can't get it through if the umbilical cord isn't there. So what is my job? My job is to work at attachment and let attachment work for me and for the child. It will work for me because the child will naturally attend to me, want to be good for me, want to do what I want them to do, so I'll have more influence in that child. It will open their mind. Now Socrates himself said in defense when he was being criticized, according to legend, that is on his Socratic method. Well, I couldn't teach him. He didn't love me Like if that was his defense.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

He knew well that attachment was a bottom line and then we think it's our way of teaching, we think it's a curriculum. No, no Again, a child can learn from the worst teacher if they're attached to the teacher.

Chris Colley:

Right right.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Yeah, attachment does all the work. We have to retreat. We're not retreating. We're teaching harder. We're teaching more. We're not retreating. We're teaching harder. We're teaching more. We're teaching longer hours. We've got to retreat. Why is it that all three-year-olds seem to be gifted and then they become stupid when they come to school?

Chris Colley:

Yes, Well said, very well said. I mean the ideas and the concepts that you brought in are so relevant still today and, I think, even more so needed because of all of the other things competing. I mean back then it was just peers, but now throw in social media, throw in digital devices, throw in phones and like we're battling more and more, it seems, to create those relationships because we have tons of competition.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

Yes, we do, we do, and that's the basic thing. You know, what was the problem with television? That wasn't the problem with television, it's what it interfered with.

Chris Colley:

Exactly yeah.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

And what is the problem with false play, with outcome-based play? The little bit won't hurt, but it's what it interferes with, and it interferes with the relationships that a child needs. It interferes with the play they need. And so, in the research on the science of play, the kind of play that children need is it was consistent for generations and now it's taking a nosedive. And this is huge, because when we lose the play we need, we, you know again, none of us can grow ourselves up. That's not with. You can't teach maturity. None of us can grow ourselves up you, you don't.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

And and this is only something nature has been able to do we can't make the geranium grow, we can't make the apple tree grow, we can't make a garden grow. We can be midwives. But that's only providing the conditions that are conducive. We have never cracked life and that is a spontaneous unfolding of potential. That is what it is. Teachers are to be a holder for this providing the conditions that are conducive for nature to do its work. What are its conditions? Attachment and play. So, as things disintegrate in our society, we've got to retreat to those things, to be able to focus on cultivating a relationship, the child's relationship, helping them hold on to those who have the care to deliver to them and helping them form the connection with us, the attachment that they want to be with us, a bit like us belong to us, so that we can take care of their relational needs and then nature can do what it does best grow them up.

Chris Colley:

Amazing. Well, gordon, this has been absolutely mind blowing for me, and I know the listeners are going to feel similar. I wish we had more time to continue this, but I want to respect our time. Again, thanks so much for taking some time out of your day and sharing your knowledge with us, and I'm sure these words ring true to educators and these little, just helpful reminders, as you said. A tip, think about it.

Speaker 1:

Just keep it in mind. That's all you need to do is.

Dr. Gordon Neufeld:

It's simpler than you think. You know it's simpler than you think. But you need to retreat, not push ahead. You need to retreat to the basics, to the elements. If we retreated instead of pushed ahead, we'd find the answers would be there. Well, it's my pleasure, as you can tell.

Speaker 1:

I've got less to say about these things.

Chris Colley:

I hope one day you come and hop on again and we continue this amazing conversation. It's been a real pleasure, so thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Bye. Chris.

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