Attunement is a combination of empathy and mindfulness - the quality of being able to see the world from another person’s viewpoint and also being aware of how a person is feeling and responding to the world. Attunement is also described as a dance. A high degree of attunement between two people can look as effortless and beautiful as two highly skilled dancers executing a complicated series of steps. Poor attunement can look like two novice dancers clumsily bumping knees and stepping on each other’s toes.
For adults, attunement is the basis of successful personal and working relationships. For children, attunement with a parent or other caregiver is critical to healthy development and growth.
Attunement does not happen just between a parent and child. Even for those children and adults who did not experience attunement as very young children, it’s a skill that can be developed and practiced.
The agency that I work for, Partnership for Children, works with families that are parenting children who have experienced developmental trauma - abuse, neglect and inconsistent caregiving - that severely affects the ability to attune and to build attachments to important caregivers. One of the primary therapeutic tools we work with is attunement.
It can take a while, and it has the feeling of someone practicing a second language, but even highly disturbed children can learn attunement. The key is having an adult to help them learn attunement skills through direct experience. A parent who attunes with a child is also teaching a fundamental relationship skill.
Attunement can be a challenge when a parent is faced with acknowledging and honoring an emotion or situation that does not, at least to the parent, warrant validation. An example would be a teenager who comes home upset because of a falling out with a friend. If the friend is someone the parent feels is a bad influence, then the overwhelming emotion for the parent might be relief or even jubilation. In the meantime, the child may be feeling sadness, rejection or even despair. If the parent can put aside her feelings for a moment and see the situation from the youth’s point of view, then genuine empathy can develop. This is attunement.
In the above scenario, it’s tempting for a parent to immediately start listing all the reasons why the child is better off without the now former friend, how the child could make new friends and to tell the child that the lost friend really is not worth crying about. There’s a time and place for these conversations, but problem solving and analysis is best deferred until after dealing with the emotional content.
A simple acknowledgement of feelings upfront will set the stage for more effective communication later on. If you need to celebrate the developments that make your child upset, do it in private or with other adults.
The same rules apply to young children as well. A 2-year-old who wants to play with a sharp knife may (understandably) get no sympathy from a responsible parent who denies that want. From an adult perspective, it’s pretty clear that a responsible parent doesn’t let a small child play with such a dangerous object, but what about the child’s point of view? The child simply sees something really cool, really interesting and really desirable.
A parent who can pause for a moment (while still ensuring safety) and empathize with the child about how difficult it feels to be disappointed is practicing attunement. This attunement will most often result in a shorter time of upset for the disappointed toddler and will help the child to see the parent’s actions as loving care and not as random meanness.
So what happens when attunement is disrupted or distorted?
Every parent will, at one time or another, mis-attune with his child. Poor attunement can result in misunderstandings, poor communications, frustrations, poor behavior and conflict.
The good news is that a lapse in attunement provides another opportunity to practice attunement. The process of repairing a conflict or misunderstanding caused by a lapse in attunement builds relationship. A parent who can approach a child and say “I’m sorry, I didn’t know how important it was for you to (fill in the blank)” is practicing attunement. It allows a parent to honor the child’s feelings about an issue without necessarily agreeing with a child’s wishes.
Once a child experiences empathy from a parent, then that child is more likely to accept feedback from that parent about the issue at hand.
Each month the Missoulian Health page features a column by the Healthy Start Council of the Missoula Forum for Children and Youth, a coalition of groups and individuals working collaboratively to help Missoula’s kids grow up to be healthy and resilient. Partnership for Children is a member of the Healthy Start Council that offers foster care, family support services and group home care. John Lilburn is a Treatment Coordinator at Partnership for Children. He can be reached at 370-0197 or jlilburn@youthhomes.com.
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