Attachment, not discipline, the answer to the 21st century teen

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

An ex-Davidian, Tudin is a social worker, clinical and forensic psychologist, and organisational development leadership consultant.

She recently co-authored a book, Fortnite and Other F-Words, the practical hand-on guide to managing the world of sexting, snitches, and teen witches. “In the 21st century, anxiety is higher than it’s ever been, social connectedness is lower than ever, and there’s a high environmental threat,” she said.

Tudin explained that as a parent or teacher, we are not the child’s only influence. “The big bad wolf is not out there, it’s in their head.

“They worry about everything – getting HIV, being hijacked, anything – and they’re cursed with having to think through their anxieties 24/7. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of cyberspace.

“To teens, there’s no such thing as the digital world, it’s their world. There’s also no such thing as privacy. For parents, there’s no such thing as staying on top of it, the online space is constantly changing. There’s also no such thing as ‘my child would never’.”

It’s normal for children to do things that shock their parents. “We have to deal [with it]. We must dive into this world, and know that we have a role to play. Because their devices are their bridge to attachment, and if we’re honest, that’s true for some of us too.”

She said there were many devices or portals that serve as the attachment bridge and, while the game Fortnite was the biggest at the moment, there would be others.

Fortnite involves up to 100 players. You can play alone, in pairs, or in quads. It’s free to download, and it can be played on any device. Yet buying online extras on Fortnite in South Africa can cost up to R1 000 a month.

Tudin said it wasn’t the violence that made the game addictive, but the fact that you play it in a 20-minute loop. “If you interrupt your teen playing, they don’t want to know.”

A part of a teen brain, the ventral striatum, is at the core of the excitement this game generates. This is dominant in teens, which means that “They want the risk to be the reward. It explains the appeal of things like drugs and porn.”

While playing Fortnite, “they’re deep in the brain’s amygdala space where they process emotions triggering the fight, flight, or freeze response.

“Fortnite offers a place where they’re able to exert their fight without flight or freeze, they can be as aggressive as they like.”

Fortnite is also a portal to predators because you can get kicked off the game early on, sending you to a landing pad where you wait for the game to end. Predators wait there, pretend they’re teens, and guide kids offline into a secret chatroom. “Kids fall for it repeatedly because they feel affirmed,” said Tudin. “The brain is wired for risk.

“Fortnite isn’t the guilty party, how we manage it as adults, and how we manage our kids is the issue.” If it’s not Fortnite they’re immersed in, it’s their phones. Sixty eight percent of teens are sexting.

Tudin said that to stay connected to our children, it’s vital to talk about these things before they happen, when they are nine or 10, not when they’re 15.

Parents need to ask their children whether they know what sexting is, whether their classmates or friends do it, and finally whether they do it. “You take it from the broad into the narrow. They can see you haven’t had a hysterical response up until that moment, so they will tell you.”

You can then help them manage uncomfortable situations in a way they understand, by showing them how to use a diversion to stop an initiation of sexting instead of having to say an outright “no”, which they would battle with.

As much as the teen years are a time of developmental shift, they’re also a time of reattachment, said Tudin. “The media perpetually says to us it’s a time of detachment, it’s a time of letting them go. It’s not. The goal of all teaching and parenting is to keep children feeling safe, soothed, seen, and secure. The moment you can tick all four boxes, you have a different child.”

To do that, she said, we cultivate the “six roots of attachment”, modelled on the work of Dr Gordon Neufeld.

“When they were little, there were just three roots of attachment. They needed to feel safe, soothed, secure and seen,” she says.

There are three more roots that enable us to sustain what we built when they were little, and ensure they don’t seek those three roots with their friends first, said Tudin. These are significance, love, and understanding. It’s fine to go to their friends to get it, but it needs to come through you first.

The child needs to know they matter to you through your actions in support of the fourth root. “Remind them what you have in common. It’s saying, ‘We have a link, and my love for you means transcending time and space.’”

For the sixth root, she said, “They must know they can bring anything to you and, before you blast them, it will land safely. You can sit with the issue and say, ‘I’m not good with this, but let’s talk about how we can work through it.’”

Tudin believes that with these six roots, staying connected becomes far more manageable.

When children are falling out of attachment, they show it through rebellion, she said. “Rebellion is not defiance, it’s a panic in the amygdala – I’m in fight, flight or freeze because I feel like I don’t belong or I don’t matter to you, so I’ll push back to see what I can do to manage it. When they’re at their absolute worst, they feel like they’re fragmenting. When we’re struggling with our children, it’s because they are struggling with themselves. Understanding that gives us permission not to be so cross with them all the time.”

We must go back to the basics of attachment, not to the basics of discipline, she said. “As parents, we don’t need to have all the answers, we have to believe that we are the answer.”