How I describe attunement is through the analogy of singing. Imagine your child is singing their song (ie. doing their thing/different behaviours) and you, the parent come in with a completely different tune one with lots of harsh staccato notes (i.e. misunderstanding them, barking orders and threats) this is misattunement misattunement leads to conflict and worse behaviour. Now imagine the same scene but instead the parent finds their child’s tune and harmonises with it (getting curious/ using non violent communication/ connecting before correcting) this is attunement. From attunement the parent, with their more mature and sturdy voice can then guide the child flowing together in their song; this is calm sturdy leadership.

Emily Hughes Conscious Parenting Coach

***Different kids are singing different songs. The knack is to find your child’s unique song and harmonise with it. You can’t force them to sing your song unless you first understand their***.

Attunement leads to attachment. Securely attached kids thrive in every metric of life success and are buffered against the biggest “scaries” of teenagerdom.

What Is Secure Attachment?

Dr Daniel Seigel talks about the 4 S’s of attachement

Safe- The child feels physically and emotionally safe. The parent can achieve this by validating emotions and creating a warm nurturing environment where they know they can be supported

Seen- The child is understood for who they truly are. This can be more challenging that it sounds because to truly see a child often involves grieving who we thought or hoped the child might be or it might only be possible if the parent is first able to fully see who they are.

Soothed- I believe our first and most important job as parents is to be a good soother. The world is a big old place and our kids ae experiencing it without the orientation and understanding we do. Being effectively soothed prepares children for an adulthood where they can soothe themselves so they don’t get lost or stuck in emotions.

Secure- The secure part of Seigel’s model comes from doing the above imperfectly most of the time.

Things that can get in the way of attunement:

Supernanny trad style parenting styles- these are all about disconnection and misattunement and create more behaviour issues
Being so overwhelmed/ overstimulated by parenting that you are stuck in survival mode and your child’s behaviours feel like a threat
Catastrophising what might happen in the future
You aren't attuned to or securely attached with yourself
A child who reminds you of yourself and thus cracks you open to vulnerability/ shame/ fear

Ways to be more attuned to your child

Slow down and spend more 1:1 time together. You can’t attune if you don’t know each other well. This can especially be the case when your child reaches tween/ teendom.
Listen. This can be really hard. To truly listen without jumping in and fixing takes a whole lot of trust.
Get clear eyed on your “Trad Patterns”- Trad patterns tend to be your default patterns influenced by the way that you were parented. Perhaps your trad pattern is permissive or perhaps they are authoritarian. Unless you were very lucky and had highly attuned parents its likely your trad patterns are leading to misattunement.
Get to know yourself better. It’s hard to have deep relationships with your kids if you don’t have a deep relationship with yourself.