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Who’s Raising your child? How Parents Can Maintain Their Influence
In today’s rapidly changing world, parents often struggle to maintain a strong, guiding presence in their child’s life. With technology, peer influence, and busy schedules pulling families in different directions, it’s easy for the parent-child bond to weaken. When the bond weakens, so can the sense of security and belonging that holds the family unit together.
I can’t cover them all, but some of the key forces that can weaken our parental influence are decreased time together, peer-orientation, digital distractions and parents not listening to their instincts.
Why do children resist parental guidance?
During my parenting talks, questions related to children not listening and hence not cooperating, are the first to surface. And usually by the end of the day, parents often realise that what they saw as behavioural issues are actually symptoms of tensions in the relationship and a weakening of the parent-child bond.
The reality is that the parent’s influence is determined by the strength and security of the child’s attachment to their parent. Parents have been misled into believing that their child should listen, respect and basically obey them simply because they are the parent. In reality, the child’s motivation to listen and cooperate is dependent on the attachment and this is something that needs to be constantly maintained. And when the parent-child bond weakens, it needs to be repaired and rebuilt by the parent.
So why don’t kids listen and cooperate more, why so much stress and conflict?
The child has the innate instinct to follow the guidance of those they’re attached to. Attachment expert and author Gabor Mate explains that for their survival, humans need to be able to detach from their parent when they’re not present or when they grow up. Humans need to be able to attach to the person who is present and available to them.
This topic is the subject of the book “Hold on to your kids” co-authored by Dr Gordon Neufeld and Dr Gabor Mate, both globally respected experts in the field of developmental attachment.
Dr Mate explains: “For the child, attachment is essential. But there’s no circuit in the child’s brain that says that they have to attach to Mom and Dad. There’s circuitry that says they have to attach so the drive is absolutely relentless and essential, especially when you’re immature. But there’s no instinct that says they have to attach to Mom and Dad, have to listen to Mom and Dad, have to respect them, value their opinion, absorb their values or heed their demands. There are no such instincts because heeding requests and absorbing values all follow attachment.
When the child is well attached to someone, they will want to heed their opinion and meet their expectations, cooperate and respect their values. Attachment is first, all this other stuff is secondary.”
How can children maintain secure attachment?
The child needs to feel seen, heard, emotionally safe and secure and cared for in their family. Parents invariably want their child to be securely attached to them and subsequently feel overall safe and secure in their world. This security and depth of the parent-child bond creates the happiness and harmony that leads to overall enjoyment of life despite all the challenges and chores.
The child develops a secure attachment with their parent when they can trust that they will overall consistently meet their needs. A child develops a positive sense of self through their parent’s reflections, gradually learning who they are and what they are like.
How we respond to their needs and what that teaches them
When the primary attachment figure responds positively to a child’s needs, the child learns that it’s normal, healthy and safe to express their needs. When the caregiver either responds with anger and irritation more so than not, or worse still ignores the child’s bids for connection, as happens with sleep training or time outs as two common examples, then the child learns that it’s not ok or safe to express their needs.
But the child still instinctively needs to be seen, heard and responded to. Children can feel torn and confused when they gain more relational comfort, enjoyment and responsiveness from others outside the family. The stronger the parent-child bond, the less vulnerable the child is to other influences, and the less vulnerable to becoming more attached to their peers than their parents.
When speaking with parents, I often ask how many confided in their own parents as teenagers. This question always sparks laughter, many cringe at the thought of their parents knowing half of what they got up to. When asked why they didn’t share, common reasons include shame, embarrassment, and fear of punishment or restrictions. But when I ask if they faced situations where they wished they had a wise adult to turn to, parents grow solemn, often reflecting with a sense of sadness.
Children need to have open and emotionally safe lines of communication with their parent in the critical years of brain development up to 25. This doesn’t mean that teenagers and young adults should tell their parent everything that’s going on for them, but they do need to feel comfortable to confide in and seek support and guidance.
Maintaining attachment requires both quality and quantity of time spent together
One of the biggest challenges parents face is a lack of time. Whether a solo or two parents working, it can be difficult to find enough time to spend with their child. This can lead to both parent and child feeling disconnected. Additionally, the quantity and quality of time spent together directly influences a child’s attachment style. This trajectory began with the women’s liberation movement that made it ok for mothers to go into the workforce. Yet, the pendulum has swung and today women are more likely to feel they need to defend their right to stay at home with their children.
Children who consistently receive love, warmth, and care in their early years are more likely to develop secure attachment, which supports lifelong mental health and healthy relationships. Research shows that attachment patterns in infancy tend to persist into adulthood. Repair is always possible, yet the younger the child is the easier it is to change the patterns.
Lack of financial support for stay-at-home parents
From my experience, many mothers and some fathers would stay home longer if they could. Governments have long known that investing in early childhood support leads to significant long-term savings in mental health, criminal justice, and healthcare.
Financially supporting parents to stay home during their child’s first five years, especially the critical 0-3 stage, would improve both child and adolescent mental health, reduce crime and healthcare costs, and benefit the economy. Yet, in New Zealand, paid parental leave is just under $600 per week for 26 weeks, making extended time at home unrealistic for most families.
Peer Pressure
With more infants and preschoolers in daycare, many children now spend more hours with peers than with family members. It strains the parent-child bond when kids spend more time with peers and teachers than parents. For primary school children, parental support with extracurricular activities like sports and music remains crucial.
Spending time with peers is, of course, a natural part of development, but the balance between peer and parental influence has a significant impact on a child’s sense of security. Friends offer social learning and fun, yet children also face challenges that can feel overwhelming without parental support. Those heavily influenced by peers may be more prone to risky behaviours like underage drinking, violence or drug use.
Attachment science highlights that early bonding is the strongest predictor of a child’s future nurturing instincts as a parent. Can parents balance workforce demands with their child’s attachment needs? The short answer is yes, but it’s a lot of work and can never be taken for granted.
There’s much that parents can do to protect their children and maintain the strong enduring bond despite separations during the day and even during the inevitable big changes that life tends to bring like immigration or parents separating. When parents are aware of how vulnerable their child is to the stress of separation and being away from home, they can make changes that help their child adapt and maintain their sense of security through it all.
Losing our kids to the screens
Technology offers benefits but results in reduced face-to-face interactions, free play, imaginative play and time in nature, which are all crucial for a child’s physical, mental and brain development. Excessive screen time can also lead to conflict, with children becoming less motivated to engage in family activities. Screens reduce eye contact and the communication skills essential for healthy family dynamics.
In his fascinating longitudinal study “Growing Up in New Zealand”, Scott Duncan, an Associate Professor and Researcher at AUT, followed the development of more than 5,000 children. The study found that children under two spent an average of 1.5 hours a day on screens! It also highlights an alarming decline in the time children spend outdoors and in free and imaginative play.
Children aged 8 to 17 are spending on average 8 hours on screens per day. Increasingly, we see children in the pram or sitting on their parent’s knee fully engrossed in a device. The increase in screen time is linked to impaired speech, cognitive development and emotional regulation. When screens replace in-person interaction, secure attachment can suffer, leading to many behaviour issues. Since the advent of television, children have been exposed to outside influences, impacting family bonds. Yet, this new culture of multiple screens in the family plus social media pose serious challenges that need to be managed responsibly.
In summary, it’s essential to be mindful of the potential risks of screens on children and youth. Increased exposure to violence and pornography are huge topics in themselves. Encouraging balanced usage, fostering open communication, holding healthy boundaries and agreements, educating yourself and your child on the risks are all crucial steps toward ensuring the well-being of children and teenagers. And once again, your influence depends on the strength of the bond.
Parents need to follow their instincts
Relatives, teachers, well-meaning friends, doctors, psychologists and other experts can advise parents to take actions that a parent later regrets. It starts when a woman is pregnant with her first child. She’s given advice on whether or not to breastfeed, whether or not to co-sleep or put her child in a cot in a separate room, whether or not to respond to her baby’s cries or to sleep train. Parents can easily be intimidated by relatives, teachers or other professionals. Yet, nobody knows your child like you do.
A doctor, teacher or psychologist will have their professional opinion but they don’t know your child like you do. Yes, seek advice but only you can weigh up the pros and cons, the risks and benefits. Listen to your heart. Parents can feel shamed and confused by terms like “helicopter parenting” leading to them being overly permissive. I strongly recommend constructive parental engagement in all aspects of their child’s life. Parents absolutely need to know and have a say in all that children are exposed to.
The strength of your bond with your child determines whether you remain their primary source of guidance and support or if outside influences take over. Children instinctively look to their parents for security, but they will only continue to seek your influence if they feel truly seen, heard, and understood.
When parents stay emotionally present, calm, and responsive even in difficult moments, children learn they can turn to them instead of peers, technology, or social pressures for direction and reassurance.
Parents typically have just 18 years of daily influence before their child moves into adulthood, after which time together dwindles to an estimated 104 weeks spread over your lifetime. The habits and connections built in childhood determine whether your relationship remains strong or weakens over time. By prioritising presence, connection, and open communication now, you ensure that you are the guiding force in your child’s life through their early years, their teens, and well into adulthood.
Originally written for The Natural Parent Magazine
Genevieve Simperingham is a Psychosynthesis Counsellor, a Parenting Instructor and coach, public speaker, human rights advocate, writer and the founder of The Peaceful Parent Institute. Check out her articles, Peaceful Parenting eCourses, forums and one-year Peaceful Parenting Instructor Training through this website or join over 90,000 followers on her Facebook page The Way of the Peaceful Parent
