The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
Why kids usually "prefer" one parent #021
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Ever felt like it's all on you and your kids ONLY wants you?
OR
Ever felt like, no matter what you do, you're always just second best in your child's eyes?
You're not alone. In this episode, we examine the emotional rollercoaster of the attachment hierarchy in families. Sharing my own experiences as a non-preferred parent, I peel back the layers of this complex dynamic.
As we traverse the spectrum of parenting challenges, from feeling like the backup to handling jealousy, you'll uncover strategies and reassurance that will redefine your approach to these sensitive situations.
Parenting is not a competition, yet it can certainly feel that way.
This episode sheds light on the evolutionary underpinnings of why children may gravitate towards one caregiver and how this is not an indictment of your parenting prowess. We'll navigate the tricky emotions that come with parental comparisons, offering insights into fostering secure attachments and empowering both preferred and non-preferred parents.
Then I address preferred parents and non-preferred parents directly and ask "What can you do, based on your role, to support your child and your partner?"
This was one of the most vulnerable episodes for me to record; I hope that you are encouraged and helped through listening!
Imagine that your partner was just picking somebody else over you over and over. It would be emotionally exhausting. You would feel jealous of that relationship if your partner was getting really close with somebody else. Yeah, it's hard to watch your kids seemingly not like you to scream because you're the wrong person walking in after nap time which, by the way, has happened to me more times than I can count. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast.
Speaker 1:My name is Jon. I'm at Whole Parent on the social medias Instagram, tiktok, youtube, facebook. I don't know, maybe I'm on a new social media and you're listening to this episode someday in the future. If you don't know me, I'm just a guy who's out here. I study parenting. I try and help parents to parent more effectively, to think about their child's brain and development in the act of parenting, so that they can do so knowing with confidence that they are raising resilient kids, because that's really important and that's really what this podcast is all about, and it's really what this platform is all about, if you've encountered me in other places as well, but this episode is actually less about kids and more about the experience of being a parent. Of course we're going to talk about kids. We're going to talk about research, like we always do, but we are going to do something a little bit different in this episode.
Speaker 1:If you've listened to all of the previous episodes, you know that, generally speaking, our episodes are divided between two types of episode. The first type of episode are episodes that are primarily me and answering questions that come from the community, and I'm still going to do those episodes from time to time. I'm not getting rid of that format. But the other type of episode is episodes with guests. People like Jennifer Anderson was our last guest on the podcast. She did an amazing job telling us about kids and food and eating. I have other podcasts recorded already that are going to be put out in the future at some point, one with the renowned parenting author my favorite parenting author Tina Payne Bryson, and I've had other guest episodes as well.
Speaker 1:Well, this is going to be a new format starting today and we're going to have a different format, and this is where I'm going to hyper focus in onto one topic and, rather than answering questions about that topic, I'm just going to try and explain that topic in a way, kind of like a TED Talk format what you need to know about this topic and in our episode today we're talking about preferred parents or attachment hierarchy. Why do kids prefer one parent seemingly over another? And by prefer we are not talking about they like them better, but usually although sometimes that's what it can feel like, as the non-preferred parent I can tell you often it feels that way. But really, what we're saying with preferred attachment or preferred attachment hierarchy, preferred parent status, you're the one who, who the child may insist that you are the one who does bedtime every night, or the child may feel so overwhelmed that if you're not there, if they fall down and get hurt, they really want you right? They don't want your partner. So we're going to talk about why that is today and, rather than going through three questions to tell you why that is, I'm just going to talk about what it means to be a preferred parent.
Speaker 1:And just FYI, I've dodged this episode for a long time. This is one of the things I get asked about most because it's something that I talk about a lot on social media and I have a lot of videos on social media that have gained a lot of traction of me expressing my vulnerability as the non-preferred parent, even though I'm a whole parent. I'm the guy who's talking about parenting. I'm the guy who's read all the parenting books, or a lot of the parenting books. I'm the guy who's helping other people parent better. But in my own home it seems like I am not the default parent, I'm not the preferred parent, and because of that I've expressed a lot of vulnerability and things like that, and people ask me about this all the time. But it is a vulnerable thing, it's a vulnerable place to be, and so I want to dig into this episode and go deep on this topic. But before I do that, just a really quick call to action.
Speaker 1:I try and do this at the beginning and end of each episode and that's just to tell you if you have not yet subscribed to this podcast. You can do that in a couple of different ways. The first way you can do that is if you click the first link in the description below this, or the show notes, as they're sometimes called, directly below this. What I'm talking you know. Wherever you're listening right now Apple podcast, spotify, whatever that link will take you to a landing page on my website where you can put in your email and your first name and I will add you to my general mailing list, which is not a bad thing to be on.
Speaker 1:I just send out one email. It's. I'm not going to spam you asking you to give me money or anything like that. It's just one email that I send out every single week for the general list. That's how can we parent better? Like last week. It was something related to the episode with Jennifer Anderson where I talked about like three tips to help your toddler who's a picky eater. So you'll be added to that list, but you'll also, by using this specific landing page, you'll be added to our podcast list, which means that every time a new podcast episode is posted, you will get an automatic email from me and it'll just give you a little bit of information about that episode and, just you know, tell you where to click to listen now. And so if you're not subscribed or following the show on Spotify or Apple, please do that, but also consider giving your email to that email list. Again, I'm not going to sell your data to anybody. I'm not going to spam you, asking you to pay me a lot of money or anything like that. I'm just going to put you on my general list and also send you updates of when the episodes are posted, so you always know when a new episode is out and you can listen or share it with your friends. And that's the best compliment, by the way, that you can ever give me is not only to subscribe yourself, to rate the podcast, to write me a review I read every single review that I get it's also to share this with somebody else.
Speaker 1:And so, without further ado, I want to dive into what we're talking about today, which is attachment hierarchy. It's it's being the preferred parent, and I'm going to break this up into three sections that I'm going to try and somewhat evenly space, although I imagine the first one's going to be a little longer. I'm going to explain first why kids do this attachment thing according to research, what attachment researchers have identified as the likely cause, evolutionarily, for kids to have an attachment hierarchy, and just how normal it is for our kids to have an attachment hierarchy. So I'll kind of dispel a couple myths about you know, is it because one parent is, is unloved or is somehow worse than the other parent? And then I'll also just give some some general knowledge about the brain and things like that.
Speaker 1:Then, in part two, I'm going to speak directly to preferred parents, and I'm going to speak to what it is like to be a preferred parent, and in that section I'm going to be drawing on what I've how I've processed with preferred parents. I'm not necessarily going to be drawing on my experience, because I am not a preferred parent. And then the last section I'm going to be talking about what it's like to be a non-preferred parent, and that's that's something that's near and dear to my heart, it's something that I've done, it's something that I am with all three of my kids. It's something that I am with all three of my kids. And so, without further ado, let me jump right in to section one. All right, so part one what is attachment hierarchy? Why does it matter? Why do kids do this whole hierarchy thing?
Speaker 1:Well, basically, the first thing we have to understand is that a lot of the developing and budding research into child development that focuses on resilience, that focuses on mental health outcomes for kids, is grounded in this concept of attachment theory or attachment science. And attachment science, attachment theory, is not new. John Bowlby has been doing this, for was doing this for decades. This is not something that's like cutting edge in any way, but more and more and I'm seeing this reflected in the types of books that are being published about parenting. We are focusing more and more on the concept of attachment, and that's great news. I mean, I've done an episode on attachment already here on the podcast. It's a really important part of development understanding secure attachment and how to foster secure attachment. But one thing that we have to understand about attachment is that not all attachment is created equal, and it's not just the difference between kids who are insecurely attached however you want to define that, whichever words you want to use for that type of insecure, disorganized, ambivalent, anxious, whatever you want to say and kids who are securely attached. There's also hierarchy within secure attachment and the reason for attachment in general. Not only is it because we are inherently social creatures as human beings. The other reason why it's really important for kids to attach to their caregivers especially is because proximity to your caregiver was the best means of survival for children.
Speaker 1:Human beings develop in utero, seemingly I don't want to say less, but differently than many other species. In fact, we are born quite prematurely, if that makes sense, in comparison to other species, and the reason for this is that the longer, the more cortical neurons, the more neurons that you have in your neocortex that you have. The more of those you have, the longer your adolescent or child upbringing period, development is going to be, and this tracks across tons of different species of mammal. As humans, we spend a really long time developing because we have the most cortical neurons or neural connections in our neocortex and so because of that, we tend to be born somewhat prematurely Like our. Our kids can't do very much compared to other species, right, if you, if you see a baby giraffe be born, which is is a is a harrowing experience. There's videos of it at my local zoo. They can, like get up and walk around and and and I don't want to say fend for themselves, but they can. They can do a lot within the first day, even week, of life.
Speaker 1:In comparison to humans, I mean, we spend years just totally incredibly dependent on our caregivers, and that extends throughout adolescence and childhood. We need our caregivers for much longer than most other species, in fact, probably for longer than any other species, and so it's really really important that we feel secure in that bond between our caregiver and us when we're growing up, when we're in those vulnerable stages, and the more secure, the less vulnerable we feel, not because we are less vulnerable individually, but because our proximity to our caregiver makes us less vulnerable to understand. But but and more attachment is better, right? So the more people that you can have your child be securely attached to, it's a law of diminishing marginal returns. It's not like infinitely OK if they're attached to 100 people. It's better than being attached to 99 people. Probably that's there'd be no difference, but being securely attached to three or four people is significantly better than being securely attached to one person.
Speaker 1:That said, even when your child is securely attached to more than one person which I hope they are I hope they're securely attached to whoever is doing some of their childcare. If it's not only you and your partner that they're also securely attached to your partner, I really hope that for you, although it's not always the case. I really hope that they can be securely attached to other family members If you have those nearby, and those are people who who are represent safe, stable presence in your life and in the life of your child. Even though they're going to be attached to those people, they are going to have to rank those people, and the reason for this, according to research, is because in a crisis situation, when a child is put into a fear-inducing environment, that child unconsciously or subconsciously needs to default and run to one parent or one caregiver, to one parent or one caregiver.
Speaker 1:And so when you think about it in the case of like evolutionary survival, right, you think about it in terms of like okay, the lion walks into the cave. You don't want your child deciding do I want to run to mommy right now or do I want to run to daddy right now? You want them to go. And so just primarily understanding that fact should give you, whether you're a preferred parent or a not preferred parent, a little bit of understanding that it's not that your child in those moments is only running to you because they only feel safe with you. It's because, from an evolutionary standpoint, over many, many hundreds of thousands of years, it became advantageous for our species for a child to feel like okay, I have this one primary person who I'm going to attach to and I'm going to run to that person.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting is that when they've done studies on this and they do the studies kind of almost exactly how you would expect them to they put a child in a room playing and then they induce some sort of fear, whether that's by turning off the lights or having a stranger walk in, and what the child will do is immediately run to the same parent over and over, and when they do this enough times, they can see that children tend to always do this. So then, what they do in these cases and this is really good news for us non-preferred parents is they'll take that preferred caregiver out of the room and they'll run the experiment again, or they'll run it with a different population of kids and they'll know which parent is preferred, but then they'll put the other parent in the room. Population of kids and they'll know which parent is preferred, but then they'll put the other parent in the room. And when the child has that fear inducing experience, they don't even hesitate. They go to the next person on the attachment hierarchy. And so as we talk about preferred parent, what it's like to be a preferred parent and what are some strategies to be able to deal with your preferred status and encourage your partner and you know some of that burden and also what it's like to be a non-preferred parent and how do I navigate when it seems like my child never wants me.
Speaker 1:It's really important to understand that in the attachment hierarchy. It's not that your child doesn't want you. It's that when given the option between choice A and choice B, they are almost always going to choose choice A right when choice A is not available. They're not going to default to nothing. They will default. According to this research, that's been done. And again, attachment research has been around for a long time, but they're doing more and more of it all the time because now they see how truly important it is and how predictive secure attachment is for later relational success and also later just general mental health outcomes, life fulfillment outcomes. So what they're seeing now even more so, is that that attachment can easily be shifted. As long as the child knows that one parent the one that they prefer is out of the room, they will default to the other one, provided that there is secure attachment there. And so, understanding this and kind of processing through this, we can understand sort of why kids do this and why it's not an indictment against one parent or another.
Speaker 1:Why kids decide which parent they're going to be attached to is something that we don't entirely know. We definitely can see that some of it is correlated with how much time you spend with a child, although not entirely. It seems like oftentimes kids are more attached to the parent who they have more face time with. Again, not always Certainly. It can be the reverse and it doesn't mean that that parent who they spend more time with is a bad parent just because they spend less time with the one who they tend to be prefer, that they tend to prefer in certain circumstances.
Speaker 1:It also some research has been that there is some relationship between really early childhood relationship between really early childhood. So if baby, who oftentimes spends more time with mom in the early days, because there's that biological need for nursing very frequently and so mom tends to have a little bit more on her plate with the new baby, sometimes that early connection experience can foster some of those early bonds of hierarchy toward the mother. The same is true, by the way, if the father is doing the majority in the early early days, or that has been found, so we don't exactly know it can be the parent who seems to be more stable, and that could be for a whole host of reasons. But if one parent is going through something and has to be away for an extended period of time, the attachment hierarchy can actually shift to the other parent. Kids can do that. They can go over time. They can actually swing to one parent and then swing to the other one, and that can be very disconcerting again for the person who began as the preferred parent and then is going what happened? Why am I no longer the preferred parent? But that can happen as well.
Speaker 1:We don't know exactly why. What we do know is that very, very good parents, myself included, are often the non-preferred parent, and so if you're sitting around thinking, man, I'm such a terrible parent, my kids don't like me which, by the way, are all the thoughts that I've had about myself, like, just know that that's not what research would say. And so let's shift really quick into section two of this episode, where we talk specifically. I'm going to talk specifically to preferred parents, and and if you are a not preferred parent, you are more than welcome, and the same thing is true the other, on the reverse uh, you're more than welcome to listen to this and understand a little bit more from your partner. The first thing that I want to tell you, if you're a preferred parent, is that, even though I'm not a preferred parent, I know and have counseled enough preferred parents, including, by the way, my relationship, very open communication with my own wife to know how hard it is to do what you're doing.
Speaker 1:I appreciate how exhausting it is to always be the one that your child seems to run to. I appreciate how emotionally taxing it can be to do bedtime for 13, 15, 35, 100 days in a row five, a hundred days in a row, and you just need a break because you're sick or because you have a. You're hanging out with your friends and you're going out, or you want to have a sitter or whatever and feel like you can't because your kid only is okay for you. I just want to say that is seems so overwhelming to me and simply the emotional burden of carrying around that level of responsibility for co-regulation with a child feels exhausting. Even considering it feels exhausting. And so if you're that parent and if you're a preferred parent listening to this, I just want to highlight that I know how hard it is and there are going to be things that we're going to talk about and strategies that you can employ to help move some of the caregiving burden to a more balanced place. However, you probably are not going to ever feel like it's 50 50 because whenever you're in the room it's not going to be 50 50.
Speaker 1:The perception is, whenever you're with your kid you have to be on, and I understand how exhausting that must be. And so I just want to take a moment and say like I don't want anybody to come away from this episode feeling bad. I don't want the preferred parents to come away feeling bad. I don't want the non-preferred parents to come away feeling bad. It is incredibly exhausting to be a preferred parent and I have had countless parents tell me John I just needed someone to validate my experience that I'm not crazy, that my kid only wants me, that I didn't do anything to them to make them this way. You didn't, you absolutely didn't. It's no problem with you.
Speaker 1:It identifies that you're a secure and stable presence for your child. We want kids. By the way, this is a crazy thing to say because, coming out of the 80s and the 90s, most of us learned the opposite of what I'm going to say. But we actually see that kids who are securely attached and have all of those benefits from secure attachment, cry when their parents leave the room, especially their preferred parent. So the idea that we want our children to just like totally, be free from separation anxiety being totally and completely free from separation anxiety is not indicative of a child who's securely attached.
Speaker 1:In fact, the way, as we just highlighted, that they do attachment research so often is by putting the child in any sort of stressful environment outside the presence of their parent and then bringing the parent back in or putting them in this, into a stressful situation in the presence of their parent. We we know that kids look to their parents to co-regulate, and, and especially their preferred parent, and so, because of that, I just want to say that you didn't do anything wrong. You're not. You aren't coddling your child, you're not spoiling your child. When you leave the room, they cry and it's not on you that that's the case. That is indicative of good, secure attachment. Now, if they're totally inconsolable when you come back in the room, then we can talk about how we can work through some of that.
Speaker 1:But the idea that your child is just going to be okay when you leave, as we have highlighted from the beginning of the episode, children are not okay when they are outside the presence of their secure, attentive caregivers. They are just not. Now we want them to develop a sense of autonomy, especially we don't want this to be the case when they're five, six, seven years old, where we are constantly supervising them at all times and we never allow them any autonomy and freedom to explore and challenge themselves and fall down and have to come find us. That's totally fine at that point. But when you're talking about a young child, which so frequently is when the preference really seems to rear up two, three, four years old, even younger sometimes, when we're talking about kids that are that young, they know how vulnerable they are outside of your presence and so they are going to cry when you leave, and that is okay, we can work with that. It's not a character flaw in you or a flaw in your parenting or a flaw in them.
Speaker 1:Just because there were previous generations that conditioned their children to not do that, often by resorting to means that harmed secure attachment in order to do so, does not mean that they were better than you. In fact, what research tends to point out is that it's the opposite. And so just understand I get it. I understand how hard it is to be a preferred parent. I also understand what it's like from the other side, and I can just tell you the advice that I've given to so many preferred parents that they've come back to me. These are folks in the membership who I've been with for over a year now, who have implemented some of these things over a year ago. They can come back to me now and say, john, this absolutely works, this absolutely 100% works. And I don't just come up with this stuff right, I'm parroting this stuff on from what I've read in research and then kind of worked with other parenting experts to talk about and say, okay, is this the right approach? But here's my three-step program for preferred parents.
Speaker 1:Number one trying to not be the person who comforts your child and be in the presence of your child is really, really difficult. You're probably setting yourself up for failure. So when it comes time to do bedtime, for example this is a very common one that people will talk to me about when it comes time to do bedtime, if mom is the preferred parent in this example which it is not always this case, but it can be when mom is the preferred parent. If mom is the preferred parent in this example which it is not always this case, but it can be when mom is the preferred parent, if mom is simply seemingly choosing not to do bedtime, if mom is available in the eyes of your four-year-old, three-year-old, whatever, but electing not to do bedtime, that is going to be very, very hard on a child whose attachment hierarchy is pretty high, because that's also something that I should have mentioned in the first section.
Speaker 1:Different kids have different degrees of this. If you have a highly sensitive kid, if you have a neurodivergent kid, oftentimes their hierarchy can seem pretty huge. Right, and I've experienced this with my own kids. My first, my oldest, has a very extreme attachment hierarchy between my wife and I is a big gap, and he's seven years old and it's not changed at all. Very little, right, he's good with me if she's not around, which is what we're talking about now, but it's a huge gap. It's very, very small comparatively with my three-year-old, but it's still there. With my two-year-old, there used to be almost no seeming attachment hierarchy, but then, lo and behold, every kid has an attachment hierarchy and dad found himself on the bottom again.
Speaker 1:So just understand that if you are in the room, it's going to be much, much harder for your child to settle, to cope with another caregiver, and so simply removing yourself from that situation while your child is regulated, right, not putting your child into the position where you're saying, okay, well, now I'm going to leave, it's bedtime, you're going to go with grandma. Or you're going to go with dad, but I'm here but I'm not going to go with you. Or now I'm going to leave, now that it's bedtime. That can create unnecessary stress on the system and you just don't have to do that. If you just say, hey, I'm going to step out for ice cream or go out with friends or just sit in my car or whatever, or go up, you know, walk out the front door, walk in the back door, go upstairs to your bedroom, I mean you don't have to leave the house as long as your child is.
Speaker 1:Just wraps their head around the idea that you're not available, right, which, again, it may seem deceptive. Or you're lying to your kids, then, john? No, what we're doing is we're working within their brain paradigm. They understand if you're there, you're available, and so if you're unavailable by choice, it's easier for them to rationalize, conceptualize that if you're not physically there, so you're going to leave that scenario before bedtime routine even starts. Maybe dad, grandma, babysitter is going to have some time to play with the child, to do something the child likes. Then we're going to transition to bedtime.
Speaker 1:Bedtime is going to go through all the steps. Is it possible? Is it likely that that first night, even the 10th night, that your child may cry for you at the moment of bedtime? Yes, but it's infinitely less likely for those for that to be prolonged and for that to be difficult for the, for the caregiver and on the child If the child has the perception that you're not physically there and you don't have to start with bedtime for some kids.
Speaker 1:I remember one mom I talked to she she had trouble even leaving the house without her kid in any circumstance, and so the idea that she would not do bedtime after she basically was with her child 24 hours a day, that was like a big, big step, right. But for her it was like mornings are good. I'm going to go out for morning run, coffee, whatever, away from my child, and that's going to be clear, right. And so you can start baby steps on this, especially when that hierarchy is so big. You can start baby steps and you can just, you know, work up to the bigger things At some point. You want for the non-preferred parent to be able to cope equally in your absence, with a scraped knee, with a big fall, with whatever, with bedtime. That's ultimately the goal. So just know that that's what you're working up to, but you don't have to run run there, okay. So that's number one. Being physically present is going to be hard.
Speaker 1:Number two one of the hardest things I've found for preferred parents is embodying the idea, or, I guess, believing, that their partner especially, but often also another caregiver, doesn't have to be a partner, has the capability to help be an adequate, secure attachment for their child. And so what do I mean by this? What I mean is, if your actions as a preferred caregiver or as a preferred parent undermine the ability of the other parent or the other caregiver to be able to provide comfort and aid, that is going to backfire on your child for a couple of different reasons. And so allowing your partner and we'll just keep saying that, because that's probably the most likely case of this allowing your partner to struggle, to not do it the right way, to not do it the same way as you, to not calm down your child as quickly as you, to not get to regulation as effectively as you, is better for both your child yourself and your caregiver, your co-caregiver, in every case. Now I'm not saying that you should set your partner up to fail. Right, if there's good advice that you can present your partner with of hey after the fact. Oh yeah, we were going through this. It was really hard. I couldn't figure out what they wanted. Oh, he probably just wanted water. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, I'll. I'll remember that for next time. Right, we'll talk about that with the non-preferred parents in a moment. But that experience of providing that feedback later, totally fine.
Speaker 1:What's less fine, what's actually, I think, counterproductive and counter effective, is what's going to happen if you hear from the other room that your child needs water. Again, in this circumstance, your child ideally doesn't even think that you're available and you have no ability to control your own impulse to save and to help and walk into that room and fix. That is not going to lead to success, and there's two reasons. One, when you save your other partner out of a situation that you feel they cannot handle and this is different, by the way, when the partner is demonstrating that they are not okay. So it's very different when your partner is screaming at your child, raising their fists like they're going to harm somebody. They're losing it and you need to step in because, for their own good, this is a different scenario. This is they're not doing things the way that you wish that they would do them and you insert yourself in order to fix, or intervene in order to fix the problem.
Speaker 1:When you do that, two things happen. One, your partner believes. My partner does not trust me to do this. My partner does not think that I'm a good, effective caregiver. Their confidence is shot as a result. They're way less likely to be effective in the future if they think that you're going to come and save them, because they're just waiting for you to save them.
Speaker 1:But you know, who else learns to believe that your child, your child, has to believe. Ultimately, in order to be able to be settled, comforted by another adult other than you, the preferred caregiver, they have to believe that that person is capable and able and reliable. And if they don't believe that that person's capable, able, able and reliable, then they are not going to develop a relationship with that caregiver that allows that caregiver to be able to intervene and help in moments of deep dysregulation. Intervene and help in moments of deep dysregulation. And so when you don't believe in your caregiver, you're sending your co-parent or the other person who's parenting alongside you when you don't believe in them, that message is very clearly sent. And when your toddler then believes my mom, my dad, does not think that their partner or this person trying to take care of me, is capable, able, is reliable, is safe, that they can do it, why should they believe that they're looking to primarily they're securely attached parents to decide what in the world is good and what in the world is bad and what in the world is safe? Children do not have an innate ability to identify danger effectively, and so they look to us to tell them what is good and what is not good, and what is safe and what's not safe, and so they look to our actions more than anything. And so when your actions demonstrate that you do not feel that this person is good enough, your child will similarly internalize that this person is not good enough. So that's one, that's two.
Speaker 1:We'll summarize those two pieces as one try and remove yourself entirely. And, by the way, it's going to be a lot easier to not try and step in and save your partner when they're struggling if you're not even in the house to hear it. Number one. Number two is don't save right, don't rescue. Allow your partner to struggle. Thing number three is.
Speaker 1:You have to realize that in order to be your best self or the best parent to your child, you also have to be take impeccable care of yourself. This is something that most preferred parents just do not seem to get until we explicitly say it. If you want to be there effectively for your kid, you have to take care of yourself, and I would challenge any parent who says I can totally do all of my self-care in the hours where my child is asleep. I would challenge that person. I would say you are not. There's something missing. You are not living your most effective, flourishing life if you are only able to care for yourself while your child's asleep.
Speaker 1:So taking impeccable care of yourself is a way of becoming a better parent. I'll tell you this straight up for me, if I am hungry, if I am tired, if I have not exercised, if I am not going to therapy, if I am not spending time being, you know, with with friends, with my wife, if I'm not having good conversations, if I'm socially depleted, if I'm stressed out from work, those are not the moments when I'm the best parent, the moments when I am my best, most ideal version of parenting, when I, when I live into the majority of the parenting principles that I would like to live by all the time are the moments when I have taken care of myself, and so that is true, more so for preferred parents. You have to take impeccable care of yourself, and that is going to require for your child to be able to be in the care of others when you're not around, and so understanding that that's just a reality and it's good for your child to be able to be in the care of others when you're not around, and so understanding that that's just a reality and it's good for your kid I shouldn't say that, too, it's good for your kid. As I've already said, being attached to more than one person is good for your kid, not just because you won't be around someday when they need you, but because the process of learning to build secure attachment, beyond just the secure attachment that they may have from birth with you, is a good process. Okay, last section here, and I'm not going to give a call out to join the email list so that you can get all the updates, or you know, I guess I'm doing it right now. Yeah, rate and review the podcast. Yeah, all that Last section.
Speaker 1:Let me talk to not preferred parents, not preferred parents. This entire episode I've been calling you not preferred parents. It probably doesn't feel very good. I'm just trying to be honest. I get you, I get you, I understand, I am there. You know what's crazy. When I talk to other parenting authors some of your I'm not going to out them on this podcast some of your favorite voices in parenting they will often tell me that they are the non-preferred parent too.
Speaker 1:When you think about some of your most effective thought leaders, they are the non-preferred parent. It's not better to be the non-preferred parent or to be the preferred parent, but if you think that you're doing something wrong and that's what's causing you to be the non-preferred parent, stop. You're not. This is a feature, not a failure, in your child. This is a feature of their own evolutionary biology. It's good that they're attached to your partner or to whomever they're attached to, right, that's good. Even if you're not number one on the call sheet, you still have a place.
Speaker 1:And if you constantly feel undermined, I would really encourage you to take off the training wheels and do it on your own, because almost instantly you will realize that your children respond differently to your compassion and care and empathy, when they don't feel like they're being outed by their other parent or put out by their other parent in order to do so. When your child falls and scrapes their knee, when mom or dad is at work and you're the quote backup quarterback here, it's amazing how they will flock to you and run to you and cry into your shoulder, just the same as they do to your partner, and they may say in those moments I wish that dad was here, I wish that mom was here, but they're going to let you do your job. So you're not wrong, you're not bad. And and I want is as much as I said to the preferred parents how emotionally taxing it is to be on all the time First of all, remember that if you're jealous of them which I sometimes am jealous of my wife for this reason, like just remember how hard it is to be them too.
Speaker 1:To those preferred parents, who are hopefully still listening, it's hard to not feel like you're loved and liked. It's hard for the person or for the tiny people who you love most in the world to pick somebody over. You Just imagine that it's your partner for a moment. Right, for the preferred parents listening. For the non-preferred parents, you can just say amen when I say this. Imagine that your partner was just picking somebody else over you, over and over. It would be emotionally exhausting. You would feel jealous of that relationship if your partner was getting really close with somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to watch your kids seemingly not like you to scream because you're the wrong person walking in after nap time which, by the way, has happened to me more times than I can count. All three of my kids have screamed because I'm not mom walking in after nap time. I the look of disappointment when dad's doing bedtime instead of mom and I do bedtime for one of my kids every single night. Like it gets better. But if mom does bedtime for two days in a row with a kid that I'm typically doing bedtime with, we switch with which kid we're typically doing. But if, if I, if all of a sudden I'm doing it when mom did it, who are you? I don't want you. It's hard, it's emotionally taxing. If you're not sharing this with somebody, please do. Please be willing to at least put down in a journal. Like man, this sucks sometimes because it does Like it seems like you know, I put in as much work to parent as well as I can, as almost anybody else Right, I spend at least 50% of my kids waking hours with one of them. Like, I'm not saying my wife doesn't do the same. I'm not knocking anything that she does as a parent. I'm just saying I put in a whole heck of a lot of work and it sometimes it feels like it doesn't amount to a hill of beans. The only reason that I feel that way is because I am in a constant battle of comparison Non-preferred parents listen to me very carefully Comparing yourself to the non-preferred parent, to the preferred parent Sorry, let me say that again self, especially to the relationship between your child's preferred parent, your partner and you.
Speaker 1:No good will come of that. No good, you will only experience pain as a result. You will not get better, you will not parent better, you will only feel shame, and when you feel shame, dollars to donuts you're going to feel worse. You're going to parent worse. You're going to be way harder on your partner than you need to be. Who didn't do anything to put themselves in this position, by the way, except for maybe save you a couple times, which we've just? We've just told them that they're not supposed to do that, and so remind them of this episode, remind them how they need to let you struggle and stop comparing yourself to them.
Speaker 1:Stop Comparison and parenting is not just the thief of joy, like comparison is the thief of joy. If you've ever heard that comparison and parenting is a path to destruction. If you find yourself comparing yourself to me or to anybody who I've interviewed on this podcast or anyone else you see on social media, or even your own partner stop. No good will come of that. You can try to be the best parent you can be and if you're listening to this podcast, chances are that's what you're trying to do. If you're reading the books that you're supposed to be reading whenever you can, if you're spending time actually investing in this area of your life, you're probably doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 1:Stop comparing yourself, because you can't win against the preferred parent anyway. Like I know that that's maybe a hard thing to say you can be a quote unquote better parent. You can be more empathetic. You can be more caring. You can lose your cool. Less you can. You can be the one who takes them out for ice cream. You can do all of the positive things right, and even then you will never. It's not. It's not a choice that your child's making. So stop comparing yourself.
Speaker 1:Number two be willing and open to struggle period. You're going to struggle. It's going to be harder for you sometimes, seemingly, than your partner. Remember that their labor, their burden, is not in the individual experiences, it's in the, it's in the piling up of the experiences. Your burden may be in the more individual experiences, and you had a really hard interaction with your child where they just wanted their, your partner, and not you. They just don't. You just don't know yet how to calm them down when they're really losing it or they just don't let you right, co-regulation is a two-way street.
Speaker 1:Really losing it or they just don't let you right, co-regulation is a two-way street. You can't make your child do it. You're doing your best and it's still hard. You got to give yourself some grace and you got to let yourself struggle. Don't throw your hands up and give up and say, well, I'm just not the way, I just I'm a bad parent and everybody hates me. If you do that, you are guaranteeing failure. So don't go down that road. Keep struggling, keep fighting and, you know, maybe talk to your partner and say, hey, it's hard for me to struggle with you in the room.
Speaker 1:If you don't think that your kids are going to respond to you differently when your partner their preferred parent is is watching, you're wrong. I can't regulate my kids down half as well If mom's even in the house. Are you kidding me? I just went through this. I kid you not. An hour before this moment recording this podcast, just went through this two of my kids. Mom is putting the third one down for a nap. Why does she have to do it? Because he saw her before nap, so he's never going to tolerate me. So now I got to go put down. I got to go deal with these other two. Somebody threw something behind them they weren't thinking it was a dumb move Hit the other one in the face. Everybody's screaming, everybody's crying, everybody's losing it. Neither of them wanted me to co-regulate. Now, if mom was at a photo shoot, gone, whatever probably could have done it. She was in the house somewhere. We know she is. Give us mom.
Speaker 1:It's hard, and so you may have to have a conversation with your partner and say, look, I need you to be a little bit less available for our kids. I'm not saying that you have to be absent when you're here. I'm saying, maybe just be a little bit more absent in general, that might be more helpful for you. You need as with anything in life, you need reps in order to get good at anything and chances are, most of us spend a lot of our time that we're with our kids, also with their preferred parent. If we're the non-preferred parent, it means that we have a whole lot less reps than our preferred parent partner. We have a whole lot less reps and we're going to need to get those reps if we're going to be effective. We're probably never going to have as many reps as them, but we are going to need to have enough to feel effective and to feel like I can take my kids out, go do this, go do that. Really, really important to get those in to do that work.
Speaker 1:Okay, number three I want you to swallow your pride and debrief with your preferred parent partner when you're actually going through the process of getting these reps. One it's going to make them feel so much better if you are honest with them, if you tell them about the struggle, if they don't feel like they're abandoning their child and then they're never going to find out what happened. They're going to feel so much better about it if you're willing to debrief with them. And, number two, you're going to be able to ask them what was going on in those moments. Because, guess what, they've done it more than you. In all likelihood, it's not because they're better than you, it's not because they're more kind than you, it's because your child has demanded that they do it more, and so they have done it more. And just to keep the peace, they've done it more than you and they probably have some insight that would be valuable to you. And so, with that being said, be willing to debrief, be willing to own it up. If your preferred parent partner has listened to this episode, they are not going to judge you for your struggle, or they better not. That's not the goal Process with them. And if they go, you know what? I think you probably just wanted water Go. Okay, you didn't know.
Speaker 1:Mistakes are not the enemy. Mistakes are how we learn. You didn't know that you didn't have the right blanket in the right place. You didn't know that when they scream like that, what they really want is to go outside, or that that's a helpful tool. Or I just take them into the bathroom and turn on the water, and then they just play. You don't know all of the tips and tricks. You haven't had the reps. Be willing to learn from the person who has with your specific kids Doesn't mean that they're a better parent than you. It just means that they have more reps. Swallow your pride. You're not comparing to them anymore. Just be willing to own it.
Speaker 1:I would not be whole parent if I had not done this with my own wife. I'm just telling you that straight up. I would still be languishing in bitterness that my kids didn't like me, which is nonsense. My kids love the absolute mess out of me. Just because they don't want me when they fall and scrape their knee and I'm standing next to my wife does not mean my kids don't like me. They love me, they want to be around me, they they have fun with me. We laugh more than we cry. It's a fantastic life that I live. Do not feel bad for me.
Speaker 1:That said, if I was still trying to compare myself and if I was not taking good advice when it was offered, I would not be where I am. I would not be parenting in the way that I am. I certainly would not be on a podcast talking about parenting period. I read the books that my wife told me to read. I went to the courses that my wife told me to go to. It just so happened that at the same time I happened to be going through some counseling training and realized that this is apples and apples parenting and therapy, and emotional health and neuroscience. But you have to be willing to go there, and so that's what I have for you on this episode.
Speaker 1:I hope this has helped you to learn a little bit more about being a preferred parent and if you're a not preferred parent, being a not preferred parent, I hope that you walk away with this understanding that you are not bad just because your child has attachment hierarchy, that it is normal, that it is natural that it is even expected. And last note, before we end and I saved this one for the end, it's a golden nugget at the end the last thing I want you to know is that it's temporary Attachment hierarchy tends to go away or balance out when a child enters a phase in which they feel safer, more autonomous in the world, and so giving your kid freedom within healthy boundaries, giving your kid unsupervised time to play with friends to you know, play at the park without you constantly following them around, whatever you have to do. When your child's seven, eight, nine years old and they feel more stable, resilient, confident in and of themselves, the preference hierarchy thing just dissipates. Now. It may be that they always go to one partner for one thing, one partner for another thing. That's okay, kids do that. But the hierarchy is going to go away. This, too, shall pass. This is how we're going to survive the early years and if we do this right 10 years old, 11 years old we're going to be securely attached to two adults who feel confident in the raising of that child, or three or four, or even five, and that process is going to be better for you, better for your child, better for your partner, no matter which side you're on on, the preferred not preferred thing or their other caregiver. If the preferred not preferred is if you're a single parent and this whole episode you've been thinking about the not preferred parent is your mother or your father who's helping you, or or a caregiver or a nanny, that's okay, whatever it is. If you're in a situation where you live in two separate homes, right from your, your ex partner and and you're co-parenting with a person who you're no longer in a relationship with and you're the not preferred or the preferred. Some of this stuff's gonna be relevant At 10,. If you do your work, we're gonna get back to some balance, and so understanding this, that it's temporary, that we're moving through this is gonna make this so much easier on you, on everyone else. That's what I have for you today.
Speaker 1:On the Whole Parent Podcast, I've already gone way longer than I wanted to for this episode. I'm gonna have to figure out how to trim these down, but this is a really important topic and I hope you feel better as a result of listening to it. As I said at the beginning of the episode, you can go to the first link in the show notes. You can click there, enter your email and your first name and you will be added to the list of people who get the podcast. If you're already on the email list and you do that, you will not get two emails from me. You'll just automatically be added also to the podcast list.
Speaker 1:If not if you're not getting emails from me yet and you just like the podcast, you're not so sure about the email list get ready, you're going to love that as well. So that's all I have for you today. I really hope that this episode has helped you. Don't forget to rate and review, to share this with parents in your life. Probably so many parents are struggling with this exact same thing right now in your friend group. Be willing to share it. Be willing to be vulnerable and say, hey, I'm struggling. I hope this helps you. Maybe you are too. Until next time. This has been the Whole Parent Podcast.
