Chapter 3 - Responsive Parenting and Creating Safety

Summary

This chapter discusses the literature on parent-child attachment and the qualities and skills required in responsive parenting (as well as in responsive healthcare provision). Readers are introduced to how the steps of the FBI –Pain Division protocol concretely guide parents in the implementation of responsive parenting strategies. There is an emphasis on the mutability of the system: it is never too late to gain and provide potent benefit by honing responsive parenting skills. This approach establishes a secure base of attachment between parent and child, yielding not dependency but the courage and sense of safety necessary for confident exploration of one’s environment. Responsive parenting also facilitates self-parenting in offspring. One of the tasks of childhood and adolescence is to become our own “self-parents”: attune to our needs, game for investigating further when our needs are elusive, and ready, willing, and able to respond to our needs effectively. When children are taught to be masterful “self-parents”, their self-knowledge and self-trust further contribute to their confidence in venturing out to experience what the world has to offer.