mother-child bond

The Myth of a Perfect Mother

This Mother’s Day was the 40th one that I have celebrated as a mother. And it has occurred to me that I have earned the right to answer the question: “What piece of advice would you offer about being a mother?”  I used to think that only perfect mothers were qualified to speak on this… Read more »

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A Challenge to Mothers Everywhere

The other day, a friend of mine texted me a picture of a sign in a shop window that said, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” She probably knew that with Mother’s Day around the corner, I’d most likely be writing something about motherhood and would get a kick out of the old expression…. Read more »

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VIDEO: Dr. Allan Schore Explains How an Infant’s Cognitive Structure is Effected by a Mother’s Depression

Watch an excerpt from PsychAlive’s interview with Dr. Allan Schore. Dr. Allan Schore explains how an infant’s cognitive structure is effected by a mother’s depression, leading to the intergenerational transmission of severe depressive disorders.  Dr. Allan Schore; Essentially what we’ve been talking about here is the inter-generational transmission – the inter-generational transmission of psycho-pathogenesis.  So essentially,… Read more »

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VIDEO: Dr. Allan Schore on Our Culture, Parenting and Preventive Mental Health Care

Watch an excerpt from PsychAlive’s interview with Dr. Allan Schore. Dr. Allan Shore talks about the impact our culture has on the mother-infant bond that makes preventive mental health care difficult.  Dr. Allan Shore: And just for the record, you can have a whole culture who is going through such disorganization and such chaos and there… Read more »

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VIDEO: Dr. Allan Schore on Effective Suicide Prevention and Early Attachment

Watch an excerpt from PsychAlive’s interview with Dr. Allan Schore. Dr. Allan Schore explains that effective suicide prevention is contingent upon addressing the mother infant dyad in the first year of life. Dr. Allan Schore: The links between early development and later either resiliency or later vulnerability to psychopathology now are really locking in place.  I… Read more »

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Breaking the Fantasy Bond with Our Mothers

The other day, I was reminded of reading Nancy Friday’s book, My Mother/My Self many years ago; so I took Friday’s book down from a shelf in my office and opened it, quite by chance, to page 388, where I found this heavily underlined quote: “As we get older and the tie to mother is… Read more »

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The Over-Parenting Syndrome

Recently several best-selling books as well as a number of child development experts have focused their attention on the growing trend of “helicopter parenting” and have described its negative effects on children and adolescents. These writers point out how parents’ tendencies to hover and overprotect their kids are destroying children’s initiative and making them feel… Read more »

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What is Your Attachment Style?

What is attachment and why is it important? Attachment refers the particular way in which you relate to other people. Your style of attachment was formed at the very beginning of your life, during your first two years.  Once established, it is a style that stays with you and plays out today in how you… Read more »

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Fantasy Bond

What is a fantasy bond? A “fantasy bond” describes an illusion of connection between a couple that is substituted for feelings of real love and intimacy. Forming a fantasy bond is an often unconscious act of self-parenting and self-protection, in which two people become pseudo-independent, replacing the real relating involved in being in love with the form of… Read more »

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