Dr. Gordon Neufeld on the new future of education (... and play and emotion)
On this episode of New Future, we speak to Dr. Gordon Neufeld. He is a clinical psychologist and international authority on child development based in Vancouver, Canada and has spent much of his professional life creating coherent theories for understanding child development.
Dr Neufeld has authored (with the help of his colleague Dr. Gabor Mate) the best-seller “Hold On To Your Kids”. This book is now published in over 25 languages and is about the pivotal importance of children’s relationships to those responsible for them and the devastating impact in today’s society of competing attachments with children’s peers.
Dr Neufeld is internationally recognized for his work on aggression and violence among children and youth and appears regularly on radio and television.
Transcript
KRG (Kate Raynes-Goldie)
Welcome to the New Future podcast where we talk to business leaders, researchers and visionary thinkers about what happens next. I’m Kate Raynes-Goldie.
KR (Kate Razzivina)
And I’m Kate Razzivina
KRG
On this week’s episode, we’re talking to Dr. Gordon Neufeld. He is a clinical psychologist and international authority on child development based in Vancouver, Canada, and has spent much of his professional life creating coherent theories for understanding child development. Gordon has authored with the help of his colleague, Gabor Mate, the best seller “Hold on To Your Kids”. This book is now published in over 25 languages and is about the pivotal importance of children’s relationships to those responsible for them, and the devastating impact in today’s society of competing attachment with children’s peers. Gordon is internationally recognized for his work on aggression and violence among children and youth, and appears regularly on radio and television. Gordon, welcome to the New Future!
GN (Gordon Neufeld)
Thank you, pleased to be here.
KRG
So my background is a game designer, and for me curiosity and play are two of my things. I also use the Lego Serious Play as a methodology for getting adults and organizations to be more innovative and creative, so I’m really interested in that connection between the lack of play and major mental health problems later in life that you’ve found in your work. So can you talk a bit about why – based on your research – play, especially for adults, is even more important as we move into this New Future?
GN
As you probably know, being in the play field, the original thinking around play, the original study of play was by the ancient Greeks. And it was actually the first subject of philosophy. It was that important – as they brought play right to the fore, immediately – they considered it absolutely pivotal, necessary to make humans fully human and humane. It was part of the realization of potential. Plato saw it as being the frame in which we take a leap ahead, which we get ahead of ourselves – that is the forward place of all development.
But interesting enough, almost all of the work, all of the study on play was with adults, not children. And it did not have to do with physical playgrounds. Certainly, the Olympics have come through, and we think of this as sports, and games, and so on. But that wasn’t what they were talking about. The word ‘play’ was reserved actually for drama, for theater. And it was an emotional playground. And so it had to do with ‘the emotions could come out to play’, they didn’t really count for real, and so on. It was actually the place where we could feel how we were moved one step away from reality. And so the tragedy – dealing with the futilities we encounter in life, one step removed. And the comedy – being able to laugh at our rulers, so we didn’t kill them. These were the two huge functions of play. So play has become reductionistic – play has become about children, play has become about games, play has become about toys. And we have to start at a completely different place, if we are really going to going to understand that emotions are meant to take care of us, they have a purpose.
Now we’re beginning to understand that the primary purpose of play is to take care of our emotions. So ‘play takes care of our emotions’ is where emotions can come out to play – without repercussions for attachment, without feelings getting hurt – one step removed from reality in a completely engaging activity that is not achievement-based or attachment-based, and where the will is preserved. So it’s huge. It’s huge. And it is right at the core of emotional health and well-being. But we have to understand it as adults – why it is so important for us, and especially now, when our emotions are afraid, especially now, when we’re in work mode, having to solve all these kinds of problems – why play as the antidote is so important for adults. And if we can understand it for adults, we will be much more likely to discover the kind of play that helps children and their emotions as well.
KRG
Yes, and I think it’s kind of a worldwide thing, but I find it especially in Australia, and especially in Western Australia, where we’re a bit more conservative – but it’s kind of like ‘play’ is a bad word…
GN
Really?
KRG
Yeah.
GN
Oh, yes, it’s frivolous! Yes, yes, yes. I know, maybe it’s a bad word among achievement-oriented adults, I could see that. Yes, it’s frivolous, you only do it when your work is done! Of course, we think of males and their games, their sports vehicles, and so, you know, they’ve never grown up because they, you know, they have their ‘man toys’, and so on, and all of these things. And that’s where we have to rehabilitate the construct of play. Play is so absolutely important. And so we have to understand what is true play, and there’s books written about this. Play can’t be defined. And that is very interesting. As they tried to do that – the operational definition of play is ‘purposeless activity’, except then they discovered that play has huge purpose. And so that kind of got thrown by the wayside. But that’s still how they study play in other species – when they don’t know the purpose – as soon as you know the purpose, it is a different thing.
But you define ‘true play’ – basically because there’s all kinds of false play – around seven distinct properties: it’s ultimately engaging – that’s play’s middle name – not necessarily fun, and that was a mistake. It’s ultimately engaging, but the engaging is in the activity, not the outcome. Work is defined by working towards an outcome when the activity may be a little bit undesirable. But in play, you play for play’s sake. And so two children can play a board game, or play sports, or, as kids, we played marbles – and we had two games of marbles – what was called ‘funsies’ and ‘keepsies’. And ‘keepsies’ – you either won marbles, or lost marbles. So that was work, that was outcome based. And ‘funsies’ – you’ve got all your marbles back at the end of the game. That was play based. And so you can have a child who plays a board game just for the sheer activity of fun and engagement of the activity, and another one who only plays if they have a chance of winning. And so we have to be very, very careful when we use the word.
The kind of play that is important for emotion is not outcome based. It is one step removed from reality. It doesn’t count for real, it is safe for feelings, not necessarily physically. It’s safe for feelings – feelings don’t get hurt, the will is preserved. And it is in very clear parameters that distinguish it from everyday activity. And so when a dog goes to play, they’ll make a play signal with another dog. All the animals that play signals that enter, go out, often a little bit of silliness for humans, for a child – will say, “I’m in a play mode” or putting on a bit of a dress. There has to be a signal of a beginning and end to differentiate it. Otherwise, play doesn’t serve its purpose. And it can be used as an escape from reality, which is one of the dark sides of play. So many people use it or think that they’re doing it as an escape from reality.
Oh, the other distinctive that I forgot to mention is – its expressive. And so it is not about entertainment. It’s not stimulating, it is a place for the emotions to be expressed without repercussion. So it comes from the inside out, not from the outside in.
So those are the seven properties of the kind of play that is important for emotional health and well-being – the kind of play that Plato and Socrates – it is so funny that Plato, with a name like Plato, would be the first play theorist. But it was true. Plato was the first play theorist. But the kind of play that is good for the soul, that is good for emotional health and well-being is that kind of play, and that’s quite different. Most sports are played for outcomes. We have ruined sports for, you know, all kinds of things. many video games are outcome based, they are not in the enjoyment of the activity. And so we have to be careful here about about preserving the true nature of play.
KRG
Yes, I love the video games that are more play based like The Sims, like sandbox games that are about just playing rather than the outcomes. But yes, I think this is a nice kind of segue into the next question, which is kind of the flip side of this, which is your work talking to or researching some of the worst murderers and psychopaths in Canada and looking at evil, the nature of evil, and the connection between that and the lack of play. So, you know, there can be all these great benefits from it, but if you don’t have play at all – could you speak more to the implications of that? It is so important to look at the worst case scenario.
GN
The putting the pieces together with regards to play – it’s not my work actually – it’s some of the leading play scientists now in the United States. And they have done some work around those that are the perpetrators of the school shootings, and atrocities, and serial murderers, and so on. And they found a remarkable thing. In fact, they have over 6,000 case studies of individuals who have in some way committed some serious crime, and they found that they were remarkably devoid of this kind of true play as children. So that’s one part.
My own putting the pieces together, when I was working with very, very violent youth, and violent adults – that work was putting the pieces together and discovering something else, but it’s related. And it was discovering the fact that they were devoid of feelings. And they could not feel their emotions, their tender emotions. I had two serial killers, who out of a normal kind of list of 100 feelings, could only identify with two of them. And so it was just remarkable – on the average about 80% less capable of feeling.
And so from this, and very much from my work with these individuals, I came to the conclusion that one is not born evil. It doesn’t make any sense to me that anybody is born evil. We all come into this world with a potential to become fully human and humane. But it is our feelings that are responsible for the unfolding of our potential, our emotional maturation, our empathy. It’s our feelings, it’s our heart that is responsible. And when children lose their feelings in early life, that takes a dreadful toll. And the good news is that feelings can always be restored. I worked with some of the most hardened criminals, and feelings can be restored. And when the feelings are restored – oh my goodness – to get their heart back again, and their sensitivity and their caring, and their sadness, and all those things.
The bad news is that feelings cannot be restored against our will. And so when we align our will with the flight from feelings, certainly evil can result. But we’re not born that way. And it really is an issue of feelings. And when a very intelligent person, a very bright person, loses their feelings and is in a place of huge responsibility, the head of a country or whatever it is – a great tragedy can come from this. So it is a matter of feeling. It is a matter of feeling.
KRG
And that connects back to what you were saying about the importance of play for feelings.
GN
Absolutely. In fact, that is the number one discovery of this, and why play may be the active ingredient in therapy when it works. In play, play is a sanctuary for feeling our emotions, because play is safe, because it’s expressive, because it is engaging, because it is one step removed, it’s not for real, and it’s not outcome based, and it is in a bubble of reality. It is a perfect sanctuary for feelings to return. And that is why it’s so important during this pandemic – my wife and I have a have a weekly ritual now on Sundays, where while we’re putting a jigsaw puzzle together – usually 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle – we’re listening to music and allowing it to bring us to our sadness, and our feelings come back. Because we need that time for feelings to be restored. But that is the issue, and the emotional playgrounds – whether you’re a poet, whether you’re a storyteller, or whether you view stories, you are a painter, a sculptor, a dancer, you know, whether it’s music – these emotional playgrounds are absolutely core to our emotional health and well-being and they couldn’t be more important than now.
KRG
And that’s actually so interesting, because it helps me to understand what I see – that kind of flow-on effect when I’m using my Lego Serious Play methodology with adults. It’s getting them to be in a play space where we’ll be using it as a tool to think about different problems in the organization or be more creative and innovative. But the result I always get after it is people say: “Well, I’ve just felt like I’ve had a therapy session!”
GN
But the point is, you see – the therapy is in the play, not the therapist, and that’s the point. We’re not talking about play therapy here. We’re talking about the therapy of play. And that’s completely different. And play is meant to do its work. And again, if you put the whole picture together, we find out that emotion has purpose, after all. It may be irrational, but the brain has its reasons. And so it has purpose. But there is a problem of what takes care of our emotions, and play turns out to be the only form of activated rest that’s available to us. All good things come from rest. And recovery comes from rest, children grow when they’re asleep. All good things come from rest, we now know the brainwaves of rest, the parasympathetic nervous system. So that’s well documented – we don’t get better from working at it, we actually get better – it is indirect – it is rest that we need. However, at night, the emotions do not rest. They’re in charge of our dreams. They’re in charge of our memory encoding.
So when do our emotions rest, when do they not have to go to work? They don’t have to go to work on an emotional playground. As soon as we’re playful, it occurs to our brain that emotions do not have to work. And so now we can feel them more, a feeling is actually the feedback of how emotion affects us. And so the sensory gating system in the back of the brain opens up to these feelings that are interpreted, which is exactly what it is that we need to happen.
And you can’t make somebody playful. You can’t – no matter how much you can try – you can make it easy for them, you can help them with an activity, but you can’t actually make them. but when we find that, that playfulness and again, I’m speaking to the emotional playgrounds, most people don’t think of this as emotional, you know, this is play. But when you go to this – whether it’s wordplay, and reading poetry – you find your feelings coming back when you’re reading a story, you find your feelings coming back. This is this is absolutely critical for us to become fully human. And there’s a whole science around this now, which is amazing, but we had to have a number of things come together. To understand that feelings were different than emotion, one needs to feel one’s emotion, which is different than the emotion itself. And that play – true play – has these distinct properties, and so that you can study it more specifically.
KR
Just to change the gears a bit, it was wonderful to hear that there is some hope for those incredibly violent criminals, I guess. But it kind of leads us to the next question. Right now we’re having a lot of discussions around tackling domestic violence here in Australia, especially now that coronavirus has made this issue even more pressing, people are locked in at home. So it obviously creates issues. There have been so many initiatives – all these organizations trying to do the right thing and helping the victims. But despite all these new initiatives, the situation seems to be getting worse. And sounds like it’s a global issue at the moment.
GN
Yes, it is a global issue.
KR
Yeah, it is a global issue everywhere. And I guess the question is – what are we doing wrong with these initiatives? Are we targeting the wrong population here? Is it too late to change? The adults, the adult men, for example, or should we be targeting children instead?
GN
The problem is very systemic. It’s very deep in our society. Of course, when we’re crowded together, we get more frustrated, we get more stressed out. We all long for togetherness – togetherness is our ultimate answer. But we get frustrated with the people we love the most. Because we’re most dependent upon someone, we trip all over them.
But the problem here again, if we can go back to the theme, is that when we have attacking impulses, when we have instincts to put down, to discount, to belittle – when that frustration upchucks in eruptions of all attacking energy – it’s because we have not felt enough. It isn’t because we don’t have values. I’ve heard plenty of parents say: “I wish I did not hit my child. I don’t want to hit my child”. So it’s not an issue of values. It is an issue of feeling.
We’ve got to feel – as a society, we’re not feeling friendly. We’re not at all – we’re still focusing, even in our emotional literacy programs in school – we’re telling children to “calm down, don’t be upset”. It’s all about managing emotion, all about self regulation. There’s nothing, no message that all feelings are invited. They’re all okay. So we have a basic problem in our society – ever since John Locke. And he thought that the problem with women and children is that they felt too much, that they were too emotional. We are still back in this world of thinking that feelings are the problem, and not the answer. And still we bring up boys thinking that they’re too emotional, they have too many feelings.
And so it’s not about values. It’s not about empathy. It’s not about teaching respect. It is about getting back to the basic message that feelings are not only OK, they are our salvation, they are what makes us fully human and humane. So we’re not reaching deep enough. The problem is not a value problem or behavior problem. The problem, in a nutshell, is that feeling. And when the hearts soften, then we find our caring, we find our mixed feelings. We remember that when we have hits in us, that we also have hugs in us, as well. That makes us more civilized around those that we’re attached to, that we love, that we’re responsible for. And we find our sadness. And sadness is the most important issue of adaptation. Feelings do all the work, and sadness is responsible for helping us to let go of what didn’t work, couldn’t work, and so on, and prepare for a new way to adapt to circumstances.
The fact is, aggression – any aggression, any attacking, any violence, any abuse, any aggression – whether it’s attacking somebody’s dignity and so on – is an indicator, very simply – and I worked with institutions full of these individuals – is an indicator that there has not been sufficient sadness for the futility that that person has encountered. It’s a direct indicator. So the issue is one of hearts. Those with soft hearts, who can feel conflicted, who can feel their love and their frustration at the same time – these are not the ones who are erupting in foul frustration. Aggression is an indicator of a lack of adaptation.
And is it going to grow during this time? Just the domestic violence alone – 30% has been bandied about – that rate in all kinds of countries – and I fear it’s a lot more than that. But it is indicating – is it a male problem? It is a male problem in the sense that we’re called sissies if we feel, if we have sadness, if we have tears – we’re considered to be too female-ish. And oh my goodness – that ought to be a compliment by this time for a male. This is what’s right about women. This is what’s right about children. It’s easier for them to have their sadness, and their tears – for them to feel. The worst thing would be to try to become like us. The worst thing is to not to do this. But this is the key, and and it goes right from the child rearing, right from the start of knowing that feelings are important. Sadness has a place, and if children don’t feel, they’ll lose their caring, they’ll lose their their sadness, they won’t feel conflicted. And and that takes a huge toll. A huge toll. So it is an issue – not a value, not a behavior. These are symptomatic. It is an issue a feeling.
KR
I have seen some discussions around introducing education programs at schools about the importance of empathy or respect. What’s your view on this? It sounds like it should be more about encouraging feelings, rather than something else.
GN
It’s barking up the wrong tree. Emotional literacy is all around the social emotional learning. It’s about the learning paradigm. The learning paradigm has always been antagonistic. That is what John Locke started – the idea that behavior is shaped by consequences. So it’s all about self-regulation. It’s all about controlling yourself. The words you hear are “Calm down. Don’t be upset. That’s the red zone. Get into the green zone.” Feeling is still the enemy, and you divide all the feelings between, you know, negative and positive feelings. And “if you think right, you’ll feel right”. These are antagonistic, no matter if they have emotion in the name of those programs. They are not feeling friendly by any means. This isn’t saying “It is okay to be upset. It is okay to feel. It is okay to be sad. It is okay to experience this. We are humans, it’s okay to feel” – that’s a completely different message. And that’s not done through a program. You don’t do that through a program.
The problem is, in prison, we had to stop all empathy programs because, first of all, there’s some basic flaws in empathy training programs. One is – there’s eight definitions of empathy in the research, operational definitions and not one of them has caring at the heart. And if you take caring out of the definitions of empathy, it turns out to be like being able to skillfully read another person’s emotions. Now, being able to skillfully read another person’s emotions is what a psychopath does! In 2013, there was a spate of studies that came out and they still haven’t gone down. But a spate of studies came out, first of all from England that demonstrated that the bullies have lots of empathy, when it’s defined as ‘being able to read another’s emotions’. And if you give them skill-based programs and you know, sensitivity-based programs, it’s going to backfire with the ones that either already have lost their caring and their feelings of responsibility. They have already lost their feelings.
But the problem is, we bring these programs into the elementary, the primary school – this is what you call them in Australia – grades one, two and three? And then in the intermediate grades, we know that school gets to be very hard, because kids become very peer oriented. And one of the things that happens – because they get more wounded in interaction with peers than anybody else – and what happens when you’re wounded is the inhibition of feelings – is they start losing their tender feelings. And so what they have brought with them – the new skills and sensitivity – is like sending them to training school, you know for when they’re a bully, and so it all backfires in the end.
So no. Is it the way we should go? It’s well meant. But it doesn’t get to the root of the problem and it is still not feeling-friendly. It is still barking up the old, and I’m going to say here – male thing – about: “Oh my goodness – don’t feel, don’t feel, don’t feel. Let’s numb out. Let’s drug out. Let’s do something for whatever. Don’t feel. Get a hold of yourself. Self control.” We still don’t have it figured out. Why are women doing so much better in all of the diagnosis, or almost all of them, than men? Why do they suffer this? Because they can feel. So let’s go to where the issue is, to make a huge difference.
KR
It sounds like we need to change the whole society then.
GN
It is a systemic root issue. For 400 years we’ve been barking up the wrong tree. It’s a systemic issue.
KRG
To add to that, I think it’s really interesting that women are better at feeling feelings, but even as a woman, I think maybe in a very male society – even for us – I know Kate and I have talked about this – I’ve had to work to feel my feelings. Because it’s like – shove them down!
GN
It’s wrong, it’s a wrong way to go for work. It’s a wrong way to go…
KRG
But I think everybody’s told you to do that. It’s like we’re an anti-feeling society and anti-play society. And it’s not okay for anybody. And we just shove it down. And it’s like – the more that I’ve been feeling – to your point – it feels a lot better.
GN
That’s right. The equality should be: women – for equal opportunity and equal pay. For men it should be to find our hearts, to be able to find our sadness, and our caring. Why are women known as those who care? Because when you feel attachment – caring is what attachment is all about – you care about, you care for. So they are in all the caring professions and hope there’s good reason, but there isn’t. It doesn’t have to be gender biased, because if we can find our hearts, we can be equal. But we’ll have to find your feelings.
KRG
I think we all need to feel more. That’s the point. And maybe men more than women, but I think women – we can feel a lot more, too, and I think things would be a lot better.
KR
We also wanted to talk about school bullies, as well. Gordon, what’s your view on school bullies? Do you have a theory on how how they’re actually made?
GN
Absolutely, absolutely. We have two basic attachment instincts. One is to take care of, to be taken care of. In all of the animal world – they are the alpha and the dependant. To take charge, to be responsible, or to lean on and depend on – these are the two basic attachment instincts. The reason for this is because all mammals – they don’t have survival instincts – some people still think they do – but they don’t have survival instincts. That was a great discovery of a time. Attachment theory is that for mammals, we get stuck on each other. We have this quest for togetherness, because survival lies in togetherness. Because when we attach and we feel our attachment, we take care of each other.
Now, what happens when you’ve got somebody where it’s not safe to depend? They are backed into the ‘alpha’ mode by default – to be in charge, to be on top, to be dominant, to have to be the most important. However, they do not feel their feelings of caring, or responsibility. Suddenly, you’ve got the ‘making of the bully’ response. And you can see it already there at two years of age. Again, it’s a matter of feeling. We talked about the ‘bully’ – no, it’s a ‘bully response’. And it’s the opposite of the ‘alpha caring’ response. What the bully does, or the ‘bully response’ is to assert dominance through taking advantage of the weak, and through exploiting the vulnerable – the opposite of what we should be doing when we see the weak and the vulnerable. We should automatically move to take care of – that is the appropriate response. And so it’s a perversion of the natural instinct – the alpha instinct – which is meant to take care of, but it depends upon feelings of caring and responsibility.
So when you see someone full of these displacement instincts – to be the top, to have the last word, to always be in control, and all of this, and when they start saying: “I don’t care, doesn’t matter”, when they no longer say “I’m sorry”, they have no feelings of responsibility – you have the birth of the bully response. Now a bully is just somebody who’s stuck with the bully responses characteristic in them in certain ways, but that’s the bully response.
So it’s the same thing with the unmaking of the bully. The same thing – as you embed them in cascading care and attachments, where they can feel cared for, in the context of relationship, and when they get their feelings back – ‘emotional playgrounds’ again – and this is what studies have found that with delinquents, you put them into theater programs and music – they begin to feel, they lose the bully response. You don’t have a bully with a soft heart.
And so it goes back to the very same thing. All the ‘stop bullying’ programs in the world won’t stop bullying. All the values, all the laws that are passed will not stop it. The bully was made because of a loss of feeling. The bully is unmade by restoring those feelings. It’s incredibly simple at its essence, not necessarily easy to execute in any given situation. But the problem itself is a simple but devastating, you know, with devastating effects. It’s an issue of feeling.
KR
Absolutely. So, if we move on to the topic of education and school – we all want to know – in this new future, in an ideal world – what would education look like for our children? I myself, I’ll tell you my story. I was a big fan of the Montessori method. I’ve read a lot of books and it does sound great, it can achieve fantastic academic outcomes. But then I read your, “Hold on to Your Kids” and it then really became obvious that this particular method is far from ideal for children’s mental health – probably because children in that particular method are encouraged to be their own teachers and there is less reliance on adults to have as those main figures in the education. So we decided to homeschool our child, at least for now. And here in Australia, from a legal perspective, you have to choose – you can’t do half/half – you have to either become a homeschooling parent, or you send your kids into the education system, to school full-time – there’s nothing really in-between. I guess if we assume no rules, if we just had to reinvent the education system – what would it look like for you?
GN
How should it look like? How will it look like? How should it look like – well, first of all, I would like to defend Montessori a little bit. Montessori is a developmental approach. That’s always a great approach, and in its initial formulation, Maria Montessori was incredible – as an alpha leader, Italian doctor – way ahead of her time and she was like a Pied Piper. She could have probably stood on her head and said: “a glass of water will help you read”, and it would have, because of the power of attachment. And also it was only about the underprivileged, the under-schooled that she was working at. Montessori evolved to a much, much different program, but it is developmental. What it didn’t do is flesh out the reason things worked. And the reason things worked was not because of its necessarily multi sensory approach – which is very, very good – but because of the power of attachment that was demonstrated alive by Maria Montessori. And so it’s those attachment characteristics that haven’t found themselves into the formal Montessori approach. So if you link the developmental approach with a wonderful attachment-based approach, you’ve got the best of both worlds.
But this is similar with all schools. Most schools do not take into consideration the fact that the context for learning is the child’s attachment to the adults responsible – that provides the context. And that play is the natural school – that was nature’s first school. And so these are the elements that need to be brought into – and if there was an ideal kind of school, it would be where student-teacher relationships were cultivated, where relationships with family were preserved. And where play was brought in. I think Finland represents a good example, and scores very high – at the top of the world in educational outcomes usually. And play is huge in Finland. The culture of family is huge. These things are there that cultivate the kind of context in which learning unfolds.
What is quite clear, is it’s not about the curriculum. It’s not about the curriculum. And so the idea that if you go to the best private schools, and you got the best curriculum in the world and the most teachers – no, no, you could get three PhDs from Harvard, and not be emotionally mature. There is no guarantee that it won’t produce a very evil person, because the more clever and individual – if they don’t have their feelings – they are cold hearted and will take advantage of the weak and the vulnerable. No amount of education is going to cure that. So in the end it is not education that is the cure – it’s the relationship that is the cure. It’s not the mind that is of the concern – it’s the heart that is of concern. And if there is any utopian school, it would be a place where, again, student-teacher relationships were for preserving the relationships with the family, the child’s family, and lots of ‘emotional playgrounds’ that were brought back in – not outcome based, but simply to be a place where the feelings could be restored. That would be the ideal school that you would want.
And private school has no dibs on the public school, and getting there, like, there is nothing. In fact, usually, the more prestigious school, the more they think it is about the teachers, and the curriculum, and the pedagogy, and the technology, none of which have been shown to make much difference at all. And so that’s not where the answers lie. So the good news is – you don’t have to have a bunch of money to do this. What you have to do is to have the insight. And you know, even public schools without much funding could actually make headway this way. Because it’s more insight than it is expensive programs that will will get you there.
KR
And what’s your view also on the big debate around homeschooling versus school. Which one is better?
GN
Well, the less separation children face, always, the better. And so because separation is a great threat – that’s what makes us frustrated, makes us alarmed, and so on – but if school was later, rather than earlier – if we had like in Finland – again, you don’t have to go to school until you’re nine years of age – if school is later than sooner, if there is time to develop the relationships, you can hold on to your parents when apart. If there’s great care to cultivate the attachments to the teachers as a continuation of the village. It’s not that one is necessarily better than the other. It’s how we do it. And, you know, not everybody would have the means to home educate. This is very few people who have ability to do so in today’s world and to hold that off as the ideal would put most parents – both parents have to work these days simply to pay the rent, or to have a place to live, you know. A school has become the way that enables parents to make a living. But it’s the way we do it. It’s the way we do it.
Now, in home education, if the child ends up losing a mother in the equation, because a mother gets so anxious about being a teacher, which has happened during this pandemic for a lot of kids – the parents were so good, the mother was so concerned about adding the role of teaching, that they forgot that they were a mother. And a mother is the most important role in the universe. Their child needs to be invited to exist in their presence, whether or not they do good at math or not. And so the school has to be secondary to the relationship. Well, the problem is, if the child loses the nurturing parent – whether that parent is Mom or Dad doesn’t matter – but if they lose the nurturing parent in this context, the one that is home based for them, then they lose home education, means they lose as well. So it’s not going to school or staying home. It’s how we do it. And how we do it – a child should face as little separation as possible. They should be attached to those who are responsible for them. And again, as I say, we should be bringing ‘emotional playgrounds’ into their life, and ritual in all kinds of ways to help their feelings, to get their feelings back after times of stress.
KR
It’s more around having like ‘a village’, but also a lot of play and emotions in all the child’s key relationships.
GN
Absolutely.
KR
Kate and I, in our podcasts, we’ve been interviewing various speakers about this new future of how how we will live and work. And there’s so many news stories now about work being increasingly remote, which allows for the workplaces to become decentralized. And many architects now predict that we might be moving back into more of this ‘village life’. And the central business districts – like I live in Sydney and so many people have to travel from far away into the city, into this one central point. There’s a lot of predictions from the architects and so on about life becoming more of a ‘village’, so there’s more new co-working hubs, and so on. Kate and I have had a lot of discussions about it, and we both feel that it’ll lead into this merging of work and life. And of course, this could mean that caring for children, and maybe the elderly, or the disabled can become part of the equation of this whole change in how we live and work. So rather than institutionalising sometimes members of our society who are not income producing, such as very young children, and the elderly, we could merge somehow their care into our work lives. And there could be lots of solutions probably for how to do this. But do you think this decentralization and remoteness of work can make a big difference?
GN
I think it would be a wonderful antidote to urbanisation. It would be a welcome antidote. Many, many children are thriving at this time and have thrived – it was just their dream come true. When they’re camping with their parents and all in one place, and everything is together, you know, it’s just like – ahhh, you know, my grandsons are thriving in this kind of situation. So if it could be that we had multi-generational places, we’d have the resources to take care of our children, we would take care of the elderly, they would help us with their children – many good things would be from from being able to live in the context of a village – something that cannot be done when you live in a high rise apartment in the middle of the city, or when you have to spend two hours commuting to work and back every day, it just can’t be done. So there’s many, many positive things.
But our houses or dwelling places are not set up for being able to work from home. There’s very, very few of us. And so this is something that we will have to learn to do, as one of the worst case scenarios that we have learned in development is when a parent is close but not accessible, especially for young children – when they can be seen, but mom or dad is emotionally unaccessible, their mind is preoccupied someplace and so on. So being able to figure out how to be able to give very clear signals and provide a sense of continuity when you’re having to be in a meeting and, you know, on a call, if you’re able to work from home – that really means that your child needs to know when you’re there and when you’re not. There needs to be something to bridge the time when you are.
This is going to be quite a learning curve for a lot of parents about how to do this, because ideally, when we come home from work, we take our hat off, so to speak, and we enter in – and I remember when I came home from work, I came in that door and I was Dad, you know. And so one of the big things when I started to work from home, and this was way back, but when I started to do more work from home, because I did more lectures, more theories, more presentations all the way from around the world. And I did most of the preparation from home – I had to figure out a whole new way of being a dad, and a new way of being able to do this. So I think it’s wonderful that there would be a bit of reverse migration. I think that gives the opportunity for more affordability, for the kinds of dwellings that we can help take care of those who once took care of us and they can help us to care for our children. I think it’s wonderful. I think that children would have more togetherness – this would be one of the best benefits out of this. But we’re going to have to do a little bit of work and thinking about how to do this, so that we are not constantly at work in our heads, and forget that we have parenting to do.
KRG
I think this simultaneously showed the potential of all of this, but also how there is a lot of more work to be done. And in seeing that kind of families feeling reconnected, but then parents feeling super overwhelmed with having to take care of kids, because you don’t have that proper setup. So it’s a really interesting time for this right now.
GN
Yes.
KRG
And I hope we make the right choices because it’s like anything is possible right now.
GN
Yes. Well, what we need to do is make a lot of room for our own sadness. Because sadness is the feeling responsible for adapting. It enables us to let go of what we can no longer hold on to, to let go of things that can no longer work for us – but we can’t do it through problem solving. It is through that sadness. It’s the feeling that allows us to actually let go, and it gives us the resilience – it occurs to us that we can handle things not working, just like they have or just like not getting our way. And then we become, we can walk our way through the maze to find out what works. So, opening ourselves up to this – whatever the ‘emotional playground’ – that is the most important thing to walk us all the way through to the other side. So that we can remain – of course, which is close to my heart – is being the parents our children need, that we can we can be what they need, providing them with the conditions that are conducive to the unfolding of their full potential, so that they can become fully human and humane.
KR
Thank you.
KRG
So to wrap things up a bit, do you have three tips for parents in these current stressful times – we’ve had a lot of schools closed down here, and then they’ve reopened again. And it’s having a huge mental toll on parents. I think it’s really hard for a lot of parents now. So do you have kind of like a top three tips for parents globally? Sounds like feeling is a big one.
GN
You got it, you got it. And what you need to do, though, is that, like, there’s so many problems to solve, right? And problems to solve – you want to get the right outcome. So the thing is that when culture was strong, culture preserved those times when we didn’t solve problems – then we just had time for play, time for our music, time to read books, time to read stories, time to do those things. It’s really important during this time, to find the spaces and the places for feelings to bounce back. Resilience is to bounce back, and what needs to bounce back is the feelings need to bounce back. So we need to build them into our weekly rituals, ideally into the day – a little bit of time for feelings to bounce back, when we’re not trying to solve yet another problem, not trying to figure out something else, because it’s those feelings that bounce back. So I would say, the three tips are feelings, feelings, feelings.
And what about them? Make playdates for yourself, for your emotions to come out and play, where it doesn’t count for real. That was key to emotional health and well being 2500 years ago, the ancient Greeks discovered this and scientists have rediscovered this today. So yes, we can do this. We have adapted to a lot more than this, as humans. And we’ve had to, all through the years, we’ve had a pretty good go of it the last 70 years, generally, most of us, in most of where we are. This has been the rule of the day for, you know, a long time before, there was always a new word on adaptation – you had to migrate to a new place, and a lot of people are doing that now – I don’t mean to, you know, we’re not all in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand. There’s a lot of upheaval all over the place, but the way to do this is, is that there needs to be that time, that place, that space, whether it’s a safe relationship, or an ‘emotional playground’, where it’s not about problem solving. It’s not about making headway. It’s just letting your feelings bounce back. And the more you can allow a sadness to be collected and make room for that, the more grounded you will be, the the less irritable you will be, the less impatient you will be, the less alarmed you will be. Does that do it?
KRG
That makes me feel so happy to hear that this is feelings and play. It just makes my heart sing.
KR
Absolutely. Thank you, Gordon. And if people want to find you, how can they can they get in touch with you or you’ve also got quite a few online courses, parenting courses. I’ve met your co author, Dr. Gabor Mate here in Australia a couple of years ago, I have attended a Trauma Conference. And he said: “First of all, Dr. Gordon Neufeld should be here next time there’s that conference. Absolutely. And second, he said the courses that you’ve got for parents are the best in the world. They are fantastic.”
GN
Well, the best way is just – it’s pretty hard to find me personally – but the best way is just to neufeldinstitute.org. And if there is a question, if there is something there, I’ve got wonderful faculty who respond, and so on. And like you said, I’ve got more than 25 courses there, lots of free resources now for during the pandemic, lots of free resources in terms of parenting through the pandemic, and so on. So, it’s neufeldinstitute.org.
KRG
Thank you, thank you so much for this. Such a hopeful and positive conversation. And I’m really excited to share with everybody.
KR
Thank you.
GN
Thank you for the invitation. It’s been my pleasure.
KRG
I think it’s such a magic message that people need to hear right now. So good, thank you. So if you want to find out more about this podcast or get in touch with me or the other Kate, you can head to creatinganewfuture.com, and if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a five star rating on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to this podcast. It really helps us to get the word out there about the new future.