The emails were all the same:  “I just can’t stop crying…my daughter hasn’t even been gone for 24 hours, and I miss her already.” wrote the mother whose ten year old was off to sleep away camp for the first time.  “The house is so quiet. At first I loved it, but now I am so ready for him to be home,” confessed the mother of a nine year old boy off to two weeks at camp in the mountains.  You wonder if your child is really ready for sleep away camp, when the question really should be, are you ready for your child to go to sleep away camp.

Whether it’s leaving your infant with a baby sitter, watching your four year old go off on a playdate (without you), helping your six year old to pack for a sleepover…whether it’s going off to nursery school, starting kindergarten, or going off to college, over and over again, life is full of separations.

At first the focus is on the child. Will he be okay? Will he be too homesick to have fun at camp? Will the teacher kiss his boo boo at preschool? With whom will he have lunch on the school playground?  Will he even think to wash his sheets in the dorm?  Then the dust settles, all is well, and a new reality emerges.  My child is fine; he can take care of himself. I’m a mess. Look who is having trouble with separation! 

Going to sleep away camp or to a friend’s house for the night are such valuable separations. Not only does your child learn how to take care of his own physical and emotional needs, becoming self reliant and independent, but you get to practice letting go.  All of the little separations in your child’s life pave the way for the big separation. There will come a time when your little guy, now big, kisses you goodbye, and that kiss has to last all the way until his next visit home.

Jessie came home last month to pack up her wedding gifts and drive them to her new home in San Francisco. “Mom, where is my birth certificate? I need it for work.” she asked as she and Michael were about to leave. Of course I had it. It was in the important papers file, its permanent, safe home. “Are you sure you should take it, Jess? It’s the only copy. Shouldn’t we keep it?”  Can you hear the eye roll I got?

 Jessie hasn’t really lived at home, not full time, since she went off to college fourteen years ago. She has come and gone,  vacationed on Greentree Road, but this is still the place called “home.”  But it wasn’t until I handed Jessie her very own birth certificate, that it really hit me. We’ve  separated.

On the next trip,  she promised she would unload the attic and take the rest of her memorabilia to her home.  I waited to cry until the UHaul was at the end of the block.

 It’s hard not to love the movie Babies. That’s what I chose to do for my Mothers’ Day observance.  It was kind of like eating chocolate… all good! There were none of the not-so-fun parts of babies, like colic and diarrhea and sleepless nights. Just one oooo and ahhhhh after another.

 But the cute is not what stuck with me. Several days later, I am thinking about the stark contrast in the way the Japanese and the American babies were parented compared to the African and Mongolian babies.  The African baby was gnawing on a fat stick he plucked out of the dirt. Splinters, dirt, ants, fungus…yuck! Obviously teething, he chewed away. Flash to the sanitized environment of the American baby in his Parent and Me class, daddy swaying to the song about Mother Earth, as they sat on their acrylic carpet squares.

 Then there was the Mongolian baby who appeared to have more animals than adults in his life. Like self rising flour, he seemed to be raising himself amidst the raw life on the plain.  He crawls through the obstacle course provided by the legs of  a herd of calves, and the audience waits for him to be trampled.  Contrast that scene to the Japanese baby who is under the constant eye of her mommy or daddy or Gymboree teacher, getting her prescribed movement experience.

 In the past weeks as I have launched my new book, I have been speaking to parents all over the country. Among the many points I aim to make, is the need for parents to let go of their death grip.  How can young children ever cultivate independence and self reliance if parents are holding on so tightly? Children need to struggle and fall in order to learn how to pick themselves up and survive.  Dr. Spock said, “A child who has not been well bandaged has not been well parented.”

 I am not suggesting that you place your children’s dinner of mush down on the floor and let them all go for it in a giant feeding frenzy, including smushing the white goo on the youngest sibling’s head. Nor am I condoning a child sharing his bath water with the family goat. I am abundantly grateful for all that we, in our disease free, safety precaution filled America, are able to offer our children. But Babies sure made me think twice about the good parts of what children learn when they are sometimes left alone.

With Valentine’s Day always comes lots of talk about love.  I love you, Mommy.  I love my teacher. I love chocolate. I love making Valentines.

Kids are exposed to the word the moment the cord is cut in the delivery room.  And it is reinforced and expanded over and over throughout their growing years   Daddy loves you.  See you after school…remember, I love you.

But truth be told, love is a complicated concept. It’s just not as easy as it sounds. When I work with parents who are separating or divorcing, I am always struck by this reality.  There are lots of different kinds of love. 

• The love a mommy and daddy have for their child
• The love one has for his puppy
• The love a child has for his teacher
• The love you have for chocolate
• The love a grown couple has for one another

Some love lasts a long long time. But some kinds of love change, it comes and goes.  You can love chocolate, so much that you want to shoot it into your veins, and then wake up one day to realize you don’t really love it all that much anymore; vanilla isn’t half bad.    You can have a best best friend with whom you love to spend all your time, and then you grow apart…new friends, new interests, not so much love.  And there’s grown up love, the love that a woman and man (or whatever the gender combination) feel for each other.  The dream is that this kind of adult love will last forever, through thick and thin.  It can change colors, but it lasts. It evoles from wild, crazy, mad-about-you-love to deep, abiding we’ve-been-together-forever-familiar love. But that kind of love, too, can fade and sometimes dissolve.

Even the forever stamp isn’t really forever.

But it’s not so with parent-child love. Children need to know that the kind of love that a parent has for a child is different. Mommy love, Daddy love never ever changes; it is forever and ever and ever love. It never fades; it is full- strength forever.

With all the uncertainty in the world, with all the change that happens, isn’t Valentine’s Day a good time to share the wonder of the forever and ever love you feel for your child?  I think you’d better.  He needs to know it.

This time of year when teachers ask their young children what each is thankful for, a good 90% respond enthusiastically, “My mommy!”  It’s not only that kids are copycats, saying just what the child before him has said,  it’s also that kids get it. They really are thankful for their mommies. (Forgive me, Dads. I am taking editorial license for the purpose of this blog. But I do not for a minute underestimate your importance and love for and by your children.)

Forever, the mother-child bond has been  depicted, portrayed, discussed, filmed, written about, but it just never ceases to amaze me.  Mother nature does such an incredible job of attaching us to our offspring, embedding the instincts that enable us to care for our children from the moment of birth. It is  true with all  of her creatures. Perhaps that’s the most amazing part!

Recently, I received the  link to a video clip of the birth of an elephant. (It is graphic, be forewarned!)  I watched it with my jaw down to my knees. Share it with the people you love, who will appreicate its magnificence.  Watch it with your child (perhaps six years old and beyond, depending upon his development and maturity.)  Talk about it. Use it as a spring board for discussions of birth,  where babies come from, animal instincts, of mommy and daddy love. Be brave and let your child lead the conversation, even going in “those” directions. Be the mommy who answers all questions honestly and openly. That’s part of your mommy job   Celebrate the miracle of the mother-child bond. It is my gift to you on Thanksgiving.

 Last month, staff at the Elephant Safari Park in Taro, Bali, filmed one of its elephants giving birth. The footage is jaw-dropping remarkable, not just because of the birth, but because the videographer captured the mother desperately trying, over and over again, to save her apparently still-born infant. (It does have a happy ending.)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Click below or cut and paste.

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/656611/d1dfcfee/

I don’t know a person in the world whose breath was not taken away by the story of Jaycee Dugard’s homecoming. Isn’t it every parent’s worst nightmare that her child will be stolen from her, never to be seen, hugged, kissed again? It’ would be like someone reaching into your chest and pulling out your heart.

Of all the press this story has gotten, of all the horror stories that continue to surface, of all the details that are being revealed, of all the insights that mental health workers have shared, none has impacted me as much as ones that addressed what people might expect from Jaycee as she relaigns her hideously broken life. Here’s the thought that knocked me down: It would not be surprising, experts said, for Jaycee to express sympathy for her captors. I read this and felt total revulsion. How could Jaycee feel for sympathy for that highly disturbed and, yes, evil human being?

But then I saw it: attachment. Jaycee Dugard actually grew feelings of attachment with her captors. So powerful is the human creature’s need for attachment that even in the most warped of cases, it can still develop. Whether you are one year or eleven, attachment happens. It is a need.

Many years ago I worked with a child who had been continuously sexually abused by her own mother. Awful, hideous, horrific would be the understatement of the century. A while after I was done with my internship, I ran into the child, seven years old. For the sake of idle chit chat, I asked about her mother. The abused child replied, “Oh my mom is great!” Great? That abusive, evil woman was great? There it was. Children attach to whatever they can grab, so powerful is the need.

One day, hopefully, this little girl will be able to face and detest the abuse to which she was subjected by her own mother. And one day, and likely after a long time, after having had tremendous support and having rekindled her mother’s endless love, Jaycee will relaign her attachment to where it belongs.

There is nothing so powerful as the attachment of child with parent. It is as basic a need as drinking water. It is a cord of amazing strength and durability, but it must be nurtured, massaged, and highly respected. It is parent-child attachment that forms the foundation that enables the child’s to trust, to go forth in the world, to take risks, and to form other attachments. Let’s hope that all of our children’s attachments are healthy ones.