Relationship Matters

A Neufeld Institute resource package designed to assist viewers with integration on the challenges of parenting and teaching today’s children and youth.

Society has changed. So too have the challenges of parenting and teaching. We all want our children to realize their full potential. We all want our children to become caring and considerate individuals. Yet achieving these outcomes seems to be getting harder in today’s world. How do we provide the conditions children need to truly grow up? How do we provide direction and discipline without it backfiring? How do we shield our children against the rising tide of aggression and bullying? Dr. Gordon Neufeld addresses these issues and points to a way through. His approach is refreshing and his insights make sense, not only of today’s society but also of the children and youth in our care.

This resource package has been customized by Neufeld Institute Faculty and Lead Facilitators to help to deepen your understanding of the material presented in the Relationship Matters recording by providing stories and examples, reflection questions and more.

www.NeufeldInstitute.org

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Contents

1. About the Neufeld Institute …………..………………………………………………… 1
2. Instructions ………………………..……………………………………………………… 1
3. Recording Outline ……………………………………………………………..………… 2
4. Three Common Actions in Parenting & in Teaching …………………………………… 3
5. The Three R’s of Relationship …………………………………………………….……… 4
6. The Three Rituals of Relationship ……………………………………………………….. 5
7. Appendix I: Neufeld Institute Course Suggestions …………………………….……… 6
8. Appendix II: Additional Articles & Editorials ……………………………..…………… 8
9. Appendix III: Additional Suggestions …………………………………………………… 9

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld , Ph.D.

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About the Neufeld Institute

The Neufeld Institute is a non-profit society and charitable organization registered in Canada. The Institute is a vehicle to develop and deliver the courses created by Dr. Gordon Neufeld whose life’s work has been to create a comprehensive evidence-based model for the unfolding of human potential. The Neufeld Institute is physically headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. More than twenty-five courses now deliver Dr. Neufeld’s articulation of the attachment-based developmental approach. These courses are delivered primarily online through Neufeld Institute faculty and course facilitators in a number of different languages, including French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Hebrew, Danish, Dutch and Polish.

Our mission is to use developmental science to make sense of children to the adults responsible for them. Our instrument is the attachment-based developmental approach as synthesized and articulated by Dr. Gordon Neufeld. Our hope is that the insights provided by this evidence-based theory will rejoin parents, teachers and helping professionals to their natural intuition. Our evidence-based belief is that children are meant to be raised in the context of relationship to those who are responsible for them.

We attempt to fulfill our mission through delivering the courses that Dr. Neufeld, with the help of his daughter Tamara Strijack, has developed. These courses are delivered to parents, teachers and helping professionals via online continuing education, facilitated videocourses, and onsite events. Our online education is delivered via a virtual campus that has been created specifically for this purpose.

Instructions for Using this Package

This package is designed to accompany the two-hour Relationship Matters recording. We offer the recording free through our website under Free Resources.

Follow this link to find the recording: https://neufeldinstitute.org/resources/free/

If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you! Please contact us through the Inquiries page on our website: https://neufeldinstitute.org/inquiries.

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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Recording Outline

(please note - times are approximate)

Introduction

0 - 4 minutes

Context in parenting & teaching

7 - 14 minutes

The Three Common Actions in Parenting & Teaching

14 - 45 minutes

Common actions in parenting - giving direction

14 minutes

Receptivity & resistance

18 minutes

Compass point for the child

19 minutes

Two set of instincts in attachment: alpha & dependant

21 minutes

The child being at the steering wheel

30 minutes

Counterwill

36 minutes

The Three R’s of Raising Children

45 - 60 minutes

Confrontation with futility (adaptation)

45 minutes

Soft heart (feelings and defences)

50 minutes

Peer interaction

55 minutes

A safe place to cry

1 hour 1 minute

Consideration (caring)

1 hour 10 minutes

Tempered Mind (mixed feelings)

1 hour 15 minutes

Bullying

1 hour 17 minutes

The Three R’s of Raising a Child

1 hour 20 minutes

Relationship-Attachment Roots Model

1 hour 12 minutes

Rest

1 hour 33 minutes

Room

1 hour 38 minutes

The Three Rituals of Relationship

1h 38m - 1h 58m

Collecting

1 hour 42 minutes

Bridging

1 hour 53 minutes

Matchmaking

1 hour 56 minutes

Summary - Keys to Raising Children

1h 58m - 2h 2m

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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The Three Common Actions

in Parenting & Teaching

As you view the first section of the recording (14 to 45 minutes), you may find it helpful to look at these resources, which provide more on each of these subjects.

Action 1: Giving Directions

Neufeld Institute Editorials:

• Attachment Hunger, by Pamela Whyte, March 2011
• Does Your Child Have an Alpha Complex? by Gordon Neufeld, March 2012
• The Surprising Secret Behind Kids’ Resistance, Deborah MacNamara, December 2016

Action 2: Confronting With Futility

Recording:

• Snippet from the Disney Pixar movie, Inside Out: Sadness comforts BingBong

Action 3: Wanting the Child to be Caring & Considerate

Neufeld Institute Editorials:

• Relationship, Room & Rest for the Cooped-up Adolescent, by Darlene Denis-Friske, April 2020

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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The Three R’s of Relationship:

Rest, Room & Relationship

As you view the second section of the recording (45 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes), you may find it helpful to look at these resources, which provide more on each of these subjects.

Neufeld Institute Editorials:

• Lessons from the Farm: Finding Rest, by Tamara Strijack, November 2017

https://neufeldinstitute.org/lessons-from-the-farm-finding-rest/

• Back to School Thoughts, by Eva de Gosztonyi, August 2010

An editorial about relationships in a school setting

https://neufeldinstitute.org/back-to-school-thoughts/

Book:

• Wild Feelings, by David Milgrim

A great book to normalize a range of big feelings

Reflection Question:

• In what ways could you help your child to find rest in their relationship with you?

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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The Three Rituals of Relationship

As you view the second section of the recording (1 hour 41 minutes to 1 hour 58 minutes), you may find it helpful to look at these resources, which provide more on each of these subjects.

Neufeld Institute Editorials:

• The Collecting Dance - the Key to the Heart, by Shoshana Hayman, February 2012
• I Was Smart and Good; I was Dumb and Bad, by Pamela Whyte, December 2012

Books:

• The North Wind and the Sun: A Fable by Aesop

A traditional tale

Adaptation by Rhonda Leyer & Les Drew

• No Matter What, by Debi Gliori

A children’s book

Movies:

• on collecting: clips from Martian Child

Boy in a Box: Watch here

Lucky Charms: Watch here

Reflection Questions:

• Can you give some examples of how you see your child attaching through the senses, sameness, belonging/loyalty, significance, love and being known?
• What are some ways you do (or could) collect your child?
• Insights into child(ren): what do I see differently now? How might this new knowledge change what I do?
• Insights into myself, observations from my own childhood and relationships….

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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Appendix I: Neufeld Institute Course Suggestions

We like to think that delivering courses is what we do best. It is our raison d’être as an educational institute, so one would hope this would be true. We offer twenty-five courses that can be taken in a variety of ways, in order to suit the diverse needs and circumstances of our students.

Typically, Dr. Neufeld’s filmed lectures constitute the skeleton of our online courses, supplemented with various kinds of support and material, including live or recorded support sessions with faculty and forum support – depending upon whether the course is taken through self-study, scheduled online classes, or privately arranged groups.

After viewing the Relationship Matters recording, we have a few suggestions to further deepen your knowledge:

The Science of Emotion

https://neufeldinstitute.org/course/science-of-emotion/

This material is absolutely foundational to an understanding of human nature. New revelations about the nature of emotion have shed fresh light on the pivotal role of feelings in play, brain development, discipline problems, attention problems, mental health issues and much more. In this course, Dr. Neufeld distills the current scientific knowledge on emotion to three basic laws and discusses the implications of each of these laws for parenting and teaching as well as the treatment of children. Neufeld also outlines five basic steps to emotional health and development so adults can foster emotional well-being and get to the root of such problems as alarm, anxiety, agitation, aggression, impulsiveness, lack of empathy, bullying, and so on. This course is powerful in the insight it provides as well as the changes it inspires.

Power to Parent Part I: The Vital Connection

https://neufeldinstitute.org/course/power-to-parent-i-the-vital-connection/

Part I of the Power to Parent series focuses on the child-adult relationship as the context for raising children. Parents and professionals learn how this relationship is meant to develop, what can go wrong, why parents must matter more than peers, how to cultivate a context of connection, how to win back one's child if need be, and more. Parents and professionals are also introduced to discipline strategies that are attachment-safe and developmentally friendly.

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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Power to Parent Part II: Helping Children Grow Up

https://neufeldinstitute.org/course/power-to-parent-ii-helping-children-grow-up/

What we do is determined more by what we see than any other factor, including the strategies we have learned, the books we have read and the knowledge that we have acquired. The more accurate our insight, the more fruitful our interaction. When a child makes sense to us from inside out, a dance evolves that is natural, intuitive, effective and affirming for both the child and the adult. Developmental science has progressed to where it is now able to equip both parents and professionals with the insights that are necessary to understand our children and interact accordingly. This parenting series is founded on the firm conviction that when we are able to truly make sense of a child in a context of compassion, we will discover within ourselves a dance that corresponds.

The Attachment Puzzle

https://neufeldinstitute.org/course/the-attachment-puzzle/

The science of relationship currently exists in fragmented bits and pieces all over the empirical map: biology, sociology, embryology, ethology, epigenetics, neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychology, and so on. The irony is that we have never known more about the relational context required for parenting, teaching and treatment, and yet this knowledge is failing to inform our everyday practice and policy. According to Gordon Neufeld, this failure of implementation may stem from the current lack of theoretical coherence as well as the esoteric language typical to these fields of inquiry. Neufeld's unique contribution is to put the puzzle pieces together to create a coherent model of attachment, using language that is accessible to all. His model of attachment has profound implications for practice, whatever one's involvement with adults or children.

This course is primarily directed towards helping professionals involved with children: pediatricians, social workers, child psychiatrists, child psychologists, pediatric nurses, as well as others involved in children. The course is open to all who wish to understand the science of relationship as it applies to children.

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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Appendix II:

Additional Articles & Editorials

• And It Was So Beautiful, by Pamela Whyte, May 2011
• A School Full of Warmth and Support, by Jean Bigelow, March 2013
• A Shoe Went Flying By, by Lis Kroeker, May 2011
• Cultivating Attachment Villages, by Deborah MacNamara, October 2011
• Next on our Study Group Agenda: Counterwill, by Darlene Denis-Friske, September 2011
• The Roots… by Darlene Denis-Friske, August 2016
• The Vulnerability Problem of the Bully, by Deborah MacNamara, October 2016

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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Appendix III:

Additional Suggestions

Children’s Books:

• There’s No Such Thing as Dragons, by Jack Kent Link
• The Velveteen Rabbit, by Marjorie Williams

Movies:

• Inside Out (Disney Pixar, 2016)
• Martian Child (Meridan, 2006)

© 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

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Relationship Matters

Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

Clinical & Developmental Psychologist

Vancouver, Canada

A Neufeld Institute

Two-hour public presentation filmed live at Vancouver’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts

Copyright 2021 Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

www.neufeldinstitute.org