Mentalization: What is it, anyway and what does it have to do with parenting?

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In the last few years, everyone has been talking about mentalization. But what is it, really?

Two British psychologists, Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman, began writing about mentalization in the late 1980’s. They introduced the term to describe the process of understanding our own behavior and that of others in terms of underlying feelings, desires, and intentions. 

Often described as “holding in mind” or “thinking about thinking”, (and also called Theory of Mind) this skill is crucial for understanding other people as well as being helpful in understanding and regulating our own emotions. Mentalization allows us to reflect on our own behavior and that of those around us and to interpret its meaning.

This sort of reflection is an important skill for use in parenting. Fonagy states that for the optimal development of children, it is important for parents to imagine what their children are thinking and feeling and to keep these feelings in mind in their everyday interactions with their children. This is different from what is called “gentle parenting,” where parents meet their child’s every behavior with an explanation to the child of their feelings. In fact, you could say that gentle parenting takes mentalization to an illogical and unnecessary extreme. 

Sometimes described as “having the mind in mind” or “seeing ourselves from the outside and others from the inside,” the capacity for mentalization is important for building an internal picture of how other people’s minds work. 

Fonagy says that some parents have more trouble understanding what their child is thinking and feeling than others. In such cases, the parents’ feelings can get in the way of understanding what might be in their child’s mind. They may attribute the motivations that often drive them to their child, or they may attribute the motivations that were attributed to them as children to their own child. This can interfere in both really understanding their own child and in their child’s feeling understood and recognized as an individual.

Once, when my son was about a year and a half old, we were at the Bat Mitzvah of my niece. When the photos of the Bat Mitzvah girl’s late grandparents (my parents) were projected, I began to cry. My son looked at me with concern….and then offered me his bottle.

I wonder now, was this metalization on his part? At one and a half? My eighteen-month-old could relate to my feelings and he could want to comfort me. Was this more an example of empathy – which is an identification with another’s feelings – or was it mentalization? Was my son able to understand and relate to my feeling sad or was he able to understand more fully why I was feeling this way? The former would seem like a primitive form of mentalization while the latter would be a more fully developed theory of mind. I suspect that at that age, my son was not able to imagine what I was thinking and what it was that made me cry but he was able to see my sadness. Endearing – but not mentalization.

When children can more fully mentalize, starting at around age 4, this is very helpful to them. Understanding the motivations of others aids in building their own emotional regulation. If a four-year-old child can begin to understand that his friend took his toy because he had waited a long time and just could not wait any longer, he learns several things – first, that his friend was in a different position than he was. Often called alternate perspective taking, the child can realize that he had the toy and he was enjoying playing with it but his friend did not have the toy and was having a hard time waiting to play with it. This is helpful because it is much more tempting to hit someone when they take your toy if you have no understanding of why they did it.

And for parents, mentalization is important for several reasons. First, using mentalization, that is, keeping your child’s mind in mind while being his parent, helps with differentiating your feelings from your child’s and being able to understand your child’s feelings, thoughts and motivations separate from your own. This is useful when trying to maintain your own emotional regulation while dealing with your child. Second, modeling mentalization is helpful for your child’s development of this skill. We want our children to achieve theory of mind because children who are able to reflect on their own feelings and to predict the feelings of others are better able to develop good relationships, strong self-confidence and a healthy sense of self.

So what does mentalization look like in parenting? An example of a lack of mentalization would be a parent who hurries their reluctant child into the car for a pediatrician appointment saying only, “Hurry up, we’re going to be late!” The same parent, using their mentalizing function, would realize that their child might be slow in leaving because they are frightened to go to the doctor’s. The parent might remember that the last time they went, their child received a vaccination, and they would be able to keep in mind that their child might be feeling anxious about the visit. They might imagine their child thinking, “I don’t want to go!” or “I won’t go!”. The parent can choose whether or not to reflect back to their child what they realize, but their awareness of the child’s mental state can guide their actions with their child in a very helpful way. 

How Are Parents Supposed to Learn to Parent?

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In hundreds of thousands of homes in our country, parents are reinventing the wheel … of parenthood. 

Upon having a baby, many parents realize that they do not have the slightest idea what to do. They do not feel prepared to care for that baby. Often, after years of feeling competent at work, they suddenly feel incompetent – – – and anxious. 

Donald Winnicott, the famous and beloved British pediatrician and child psychoanalyst wrote, “The most important element at any one moment is the ordinary home in which ordinary parents are doing an ordinary good job, starting off with infants and children with that basis for mental health which enables them to eventually become part of the community” (The Spontaneous Gesture,1950, p. 21).

However, in our country, and I suspect in other places as well, there is no “ordinary” way to raise a child. This sort of communal knowledge or this set of common values has been lost. 

And the mental health of both infants and parents is affected by this.

Many new parents have focused on their own lives and education and have just not had prior experience with babies or young children. They really don’t know what to expect from a one-year-old or a five-year-old and, as they become parents, they are at a loss when called upon to meet the ordinary situations of child rearing.

Henri Parens, another child psychoanalyst, advocated for parenting curriculum to be instituted in every school. As one of my psychoanalytic mentors, I often heard him talk about this, and quite honestly, at the time, I didn’t see the point. But now that I am working daily with first-time parents, professional parents, and harried parents, I do. 

I see that the parents I come in contact with are desperate to know what is developmentally “normal” at each age as well as to know how to handle the inevitable challenges of raising children at all of the various stages of development. 

Given the much heralded death of the extended family and the loss of true community for most young families, questions arise: where are people in the early years of parenthood supposed to learn how to parent? Where are they supposed to learn about child development? And where are they supposed to learn how to manage their own internal reactions to the extraordinary stressors of normal parenthood?

Somehow, we have come to a place in history where many kids grow up never once having to take responsibility for a younger sibling or cousin and never having worked as a babysitter. We have put the emphasis on children doing well in school and going to college, and in some cases, even graduate school. In this march toward “success”  many young people never learn about babies and children.

I do not know if Henri Parens had the right solution – teaching about parenting in the schools – or if there are other solutions to this problem. But what I do know is that right now, right here in our country, hundreds of thousands of parents are struggling – more than in other generations, I think – to figure out how to do even “ordinary” parenting.

Winners aren’t people who don’t lose, they are people who keep trying: a personal essay

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When I was a child I never won anything. I mean never. I went to an academically competitive school and while I suppose I was smart, evidently I wasn’t smart enough to win any awards.

This was in an era, long ago, when it had not yet come into vogue to tell children they were doing a good job. My school was big on telling children they were not trying hard enough.

Often, my parents were told that I was not living up to my potential. And once, my mother was told that I always sat in the back row – and this was in a classroom that only had two rows. This kind of feedback was crushing to my self-esteem, not to mention other aspects of my self-confidence. 

It made me feel badly about myself. And you could easily think that this was destructive. However, what actually happened is that it made me mad, really, really mad. And I decided to show them. In high school, I got interested in psychology and in theories of education. I decided I could understand and help children in a way that I had not felt helped or understood. I went to a college that was as different from my high school as possible. It was a wonderful antidote. And then it went bankrupt. I had to find another college. And then I had to convince that new college to accept the credits from my beloved and highly non-traditional, now defunct, former school. Then I decided to go to graduate school to get a doctorate, something the director of studies at my high school would not have predicted. I didn’t succeed the first year. I didn’t succeed the second year. I had to try three years running to get into a program I wanted to go to.

If I wasn’t as “smart” as the kids who had won the awards early in my school career, at least I had perseverance. 

And then, at a time when psychologists were not allowed to enter clinical psychoanalytic training at most institutes, I decided I wanted to become a psychoanalyst. Of course. 

I say all this for a purpose. Telling kids they are doing a good job is now in fashion. Shielding children from criticism, protecting them from failure and helping them to feel they have succeeded is something parents routinely do. But it is important to keep in mind that motivation and drive do not necessarily come from a lifetime of success. And success is not defined by always succeeding, or by a life lived without suffering.

Henri Parens, a child psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor, revamped the psychoanalytic theory of aggression. He wrote that aggression comes from an overabundance of frustration. But he also said that there are two kinds of aggression: hostile, destructive and non-hostile, non-destructive. And, it turns out that this latter type of aggression is what motivates us to move forward in life. We need SOME aggression to motivate us. And we need SOME frustration, in addition to our inborn, natural aggressive impulses, to generate that motivation.

So, frustration is necessary for children. Some frustration can lead to a feeling of wanting to do better next time. Shielding children from experiences of frustration and even occasional failure is not beneficial. And telling kids that they have done a good job when they actually have not is not helpful. Kids need to feel motivated by not doing well sometimes and the frustration that comes from that in order to want to try again and try harder.

If you have any doubt about this, read Ernst Papanek’s Out ofthe Fire about the hundreds of children he housed and educated during the early days of World War II in France. These children were separated from their families; some walked across Europe, some went from hiding to hiding until they reached one of Papanek’s homes for children. And what did those who survived become? They became lawyers and doctors and writers and professors. 

Winners are not people who do not lose – or suffer – they are people who keep trying.

Parental Expectations: Do They Help or Hurt?

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We all have expectations of our children. We are conscious of some of these – and less conscious of others.

I want to talk about several issues regarding these expectations:

First of all, expectations are not necessarily good or bad. They just ARE. And they start even before conception. As soon as we think about having a baby, we imagine what that baby will be like, what they might look like, what their personality might be like, what talents and abilities they might have.

This is universal – – and it is normal. It is part of the process of becoming a parent. 

Often we hope for a child who will be a particular way, and have particular skills and abilities. Whether school was important for us, or whether we missed out on going to college or graduate school, we might hope for a child who is “smart” and does well in school. Or, if we were shy as a child, we might hope for a child who is gregarious or assertive. If we love sports, we might hope they will be talented athletically.

In one way or another, our expectations will be formed by our own histories, values and wishes. And to the extent that they are unconscious, it is a good idea to try to make them more conscious. This allows us to decide whether they want to act on these expectations – or to rework them.

Because our expectations WILL affect our children. 

Children naturally want to please their parents – and this is good motivation for them. But when we expect things of our children, we also want to make sure that our expectations are realistic, and that we leave room for our children to be who they are, and to establish their own goals in life.

So, small expectations – like helping around the house, being kind or doing homework? That’s a definite YES.

But regarding our deeper fantasies of what we want our children to be as people? We need to ask ourselves if these are reasonable. For example, if we expect our children to get all A’s, what happens if our child turns out to have a learning disability? What happens if reading or math just doesn’t come easily for them? How will they feel about themselves when they come home with B’s or C’s…or worse?

And how will WE feel?

Will we be disappointed? And will our child pick up on that disappointment? What will this do to their motivation? Will they try harder? Or give up? Will they feel badly about themselves? Less confident?

For a while, everyone was talking about Oscar winning actress, Bri Larson’s YouTube content. She said, famously, “my job is 98% failure”. She talked about how many times she was turned down for parts in TV and movies before she got anything significant at all. 

Perhaps we need to spend less time expecting our children to be a certain way and more time helping them to learn how to handle the times when they don’t meet our expectations – or their own. Perhaps we need to help them to be more like Bri Larson. And maybe we need to think less about our own wishes for our children’s success, and instead, help them to learn how to fail – and to survive through failure. Because, after all, Bri Larson is right. Life is full of failures, both little and big. And, if our children are to be successful, we have help them to learn to keep trying, and not let individual failures define who they are.

Perhaps it is more helpful as a parent to think about how we are going to talk to our children when they don’t get an A or when they don’t make the team or get the part in the school play. All children experience these disappointments and all children feel badly about them. 

Here are some things you can do as a parent:

1. Make goals small. Starting in infancy, when your baby is trying to learn something new, encourage them. But also, watch out if you notice yourself comparing what your baby is doing to what other babies are doing.

2. Concentrate on your own child. Stay in the moment with your own baby or child. Stay with them where they are.

3. Make your goals small for your child. Help them to accomplish tiny milestones; for example, an extra minute of tummy time, one new word, one spoonful of a new food, or for an older child, getting a B when their last grade in that subject was a C.

4. Help build frustration tolerance. The famous psychoanalyst, Heinz Kohut, coined the term “optimal frustration”. He talked about how important it is for people to learn to tolerate some frustration – not so much that they feel like giving up – but enough that they feel challenged. When your baby or your child gets frustrated, whether it’s building a tower that won’t stay up, or learning the letter R, just tell them, “It’s hard. But it’s OK. We’ll try again later.” Build in the idea that some things are difficult but you can take a break…and then keep trying later….after you’re done being frustrated.

5. Check your own expectations. As children get older, keep checking your expectations, keep setting your goals small and keep helping your child to keep their goals small. For some kids, a more appropriate expectation than getting all A’s is establishing longer and longer periods of doing homework. For a child who can’t sit still for an hour, success might mean doing 20 minutes of homework when they only used to be able to do five.

6. Normalize failure. Tell your child your own stories of failure. Tell them how you reacted. Tell them about Larson and what she said and how she persevered through lots and lots of failure.

7. Talk to your children when they are not in the middle of feeling frustrated. Talk about how hard it is to not get what you want or to succeed in the way they want. Talk to them about frustrated feelings and how hard they are. Encourage them to take breaks when they are frustrated with a math problem or with their average when shooting baskets. Encourage them to come back to the activity later when they feel less tired and frustrated.

We want our children to learn how to live in the real world and to endure both the downs and the ups of life. It is important that we think about how to best do this — and how our own expectations may play a part in how our children do or do not “succeed” and ultimately feel about themselves as people.

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Related posts:

The Importance of Failure

Holiday Re-Do

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Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to start thinking about…the holidays. 

Next year.

How do you want to do it differently? What didn’t work? What do you WANT your holidays to look like from here on out?

These are the things many of the young parents in my practice and in my parenting groups are talking about.

The first topic was presents. So many of the parents felt that their way of doing presents wasn’t working. Their children were disappointed, or overwhelmed or both. One mother described it this way: “everybody opened everything all at once. It was chaos…and I had a headache.”

The second topic was relatives: when they came, how long they stayed and how many presents they gave. One mother with three small children had tried to control the overwhelm by having everyone come to her house instead of having to travel. That too was chaos.

So what’s a parent to do?

Perhaps now is the time to sit down with your partner and talk about how you want the holidays to look next year – and to start to prepare family members for any changes you intend to make.

One mother in our group who has older children said she wanted Christmas Eve and Christmas morning just for her own nuclear family. But she was afraid to tell her parents and her in-laws for fear of causing hurt feelings. 

Another mother talked about how “bratty” her children were around gifts. She had not wanted them to expect a gift every night of Hannuka, but when there was a night without gifts, her kids whined and complained. 

The discussions we had around these issues were really fruitful. The mother with three children told everyone that after numerous years of overwhelming holidays, she finally told her relatives that her family would celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas morning on their own and that she would then have an open house on Christmas afternoon….and to her surprise, everyone was fine with it. 

And as for presents? We discussed how important it is to tell children ahead of time what to expect in regard to presents. If you decide you are just going to give each of your children one big gift for the holidays and you are going to let the relatives give the other gifts, tell your children well in advance. If you are going to give a gift every other night of Hannuka, tell your children ahead of time and let them know which nights will be the present nights. You may also want to talk about other things, for example, the meaning of the holiday, and for that matter, the meaning of gifts. You might want to emphasize the good feeling derived from giving, the importance of generosity, the importance of the children giving as well as receiving, and the importance of graciousness when receiving a gift. Your children may not be able to quell their disappointment when they don’t get what they want or when they don’t get as much as they want, but the topics of meaning, gratitude, generosity and graciousness can be discussed repeatedly over the years.

And as for the other disappointments of the holidays? Well, one mother told us her solution: radical acceptance. She said she assumes there will be some disappointment around presents and she also assumes someone – or several people – will get sick over the holidays….and she just accepts it.

The Holidays Can Be Stressful – But Here’s Something Fun!

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Reviving an old but so relevant post:

The winter holidays are here and this is supposed to be a joyous time – but as we all know, it can be stressful.

Will all the cooking and preparing get done? Will the children have needs and wants that get in the way of getting things done? Will the children be disappointed with the gifts they get? And after the presents are opened, will people talk about politics? Will a fight break out? Will children jump up from the holiday table and run around while everyone is eating?

Well, yes, some of these things may happen.

But there ARE some things you can do to reduce the stress. First of all, try to do as much as you can ahead of time. Instead of doing everything the same day or the day before, start the preparations several days in advance and do a little each day. And try not to stay up too late so you’re tired when the holiday actually arrives.

Secondly, try to keep your kids busy. On the days leading up to the holiday, before everyone comes, or before you go to the house where the holiday is being celebrated, give your kids some projects: give them jobs to help you, provide them with an art project to do while you cook or make preparations. Let them make holiday decorations to put up. Or suggest that they make a holiday card to give each guest. Set them up at a table out of your way. Try having them make little place cards so people will know where to sit at the table.

And thirdly, let children get involved with food prep. They feel so proud when something they helped to make is served. And they may be more likely to eat it if they had a hand in making it!

A day or two ahead, let children help you make the recipe below:

You can keep these covered in the refrig for a day or two and then cook right before you serve the meal:

Steve’s Sweet Potato Marshmallow Balls

You will need:

sweet potatoes

1 bag normal sized marshmallows (not mini)

brown sugar

butter

corn flakes

Roast how ever many sweet potatoes you need (1 per 2 people). Place unpeeled sweet potatoes on a cookie sheet and roast at 400 degrees until soft (45 min to an hour).  Let sweet potatoes cool then remove the skin. Kids can help with this. It’s easy and messy. What could be better? Then put the sweet potatoes into a large mixing bowl and mash. Kids can do this too. If you have more than one child, give each a bowl and a masher of their own. They can use a potato masher or their (clean) hands.  (With supervision, anyone two or older can do this part). After mashing add a little brown sugar. Taste. Make sure they are the level of sweetness you and your child like (this may require a bit of negotiation).

Now for the fun part!

Put corn flakes on a cookie sheet with sides and have your child mash with his/her fists.

Then have your child stand at the counter and take one marshmallow. Have them take a scoop of sweet potato and form into a ball around the marshmallow.  Each ball should be larger than a golf ball but smaller than a baseball.

Roll each sweet potato ball in the corn flakes to coat.

Place finished sweet potato balls on a greased cookie sheet.  Put a small pat of butter on top of each one.

Refrigerate for later use or bake right away at 375 for 15 or 20 minutes or until the marshmallows inside are gooey.  Do not leave in too long or the marshmallows will totally melt and your child will be disappointed.  (You can always take one out to test the marshmallow inside!)

Serve warm.

And try to find some perfect moments during the holidays. To expect the whole time to be fun is setting your expectations WAY too high. But a few wonderful moments? More doable!

Chateau Mom and Dad: Is your college aged kid coming home for the holidays?

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Have you seen “Chateau Mom and Dad”? 

It’s very funny. 

And for those who haven’t seen it, it’s a meme of a Mom offering concierge services to her teen returning home from college. She asks whether they would like valet service (ie Dad bringing in their baggage from the car)? Meal service? (OK, you don’t know when you’ll be here? We’ll just set a place in case…). Oat milk or regular? Full laundry service? You get the idea. 

It’s funny because it’s terrifyingly close to the truth. So many parents provide so much for their college-aged kids when they come home for the holidays….and then end up feeling used, deprived of appreciation, and angry. 

Humor, of course, is one way to vent.

But guess what? Being more direct with your college-aged kids is also a way to respond to their expectations for laundry, meal and cleaning services.

Adolescence is a complicated time of life. Your teen wants independence and autonomy – and at the same time, they can enjoy falling back into the old patterns of dependence. They can enjoy being fed and taken care of. 

And yes, we are so happy to see them that we are glad to do some of that cartaking. But perhaps we also need to appreciate the skills they’ve gained while away and ask them to draw upon them while home.  They have had to make new friends. They know how – or are learning how – to suss out other people’s needs and wants. And you, as a parent, can expect them to put some effort into recognizing you as an individual with your own needs and wants.

This year, how about talking to your college kids about your own feelings about the holidays and how you would like them to go? How about talking about what you would like from them? Could you even discuss what you’re going to do over the holidays together, when you expect to see them and how you expect them to participate? And what about raising your expectations just a little? Could your kids make sure to have gifts to give everyone? Could they help make the holiday dinner? Contribute a dish? Go grocery shopping with you? Bring in the wood for the fire or take their younger siblings on a fun outing? And maybe, just maybe…could they do their own laundry?

It’s worth thinking about.

What Happens When AI Does the Writing?

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Recently, The Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most prestigious journals in medicine, published an opinion piece on the use of AI in scientific writing. The author, John Steiner, discussed the perils involved. 

He talks about how tempting it is for scientists to use AI when they write, given that many of them do not enjoy or feel competent at writing. He mentions that they have been trained in science, not in the humanities, and many have received no formal training in writing….since high school.

The problem is that scientists become successful partially by virtue of the number of papers they get published. Overwhelmed as they are by their other responsibilities – teaching, research, grant writing, etc. – AI becomes particularly attractive as a way to shortcut the writing process. 

But, Steiner says, it is amid these pressures that an important matter is forgotten: scientific writing is a creative act.

And here is where we get to my point in writing this post: this is not the case only with scientific writing. Just about any kind of writing is a creative act – and this is as true in fifth grade or seventh grade as it is at the postgraduate level. If children and teens farm out their writing to AI, they too miss out on the creative act of writing. They miss the opportunity to choose words and, indeed, ideas, carefully and consciously. They miss out on the chance to figure out how to best express their own thoughts.

Steiner quotes the writer, Ted Chang, who pithily said,  “The task that generative AI has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and
of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning.”

The creative act of writing involves struggle. It isn’t easy to express ones ideas clearly, to choose the words that convey our ideas best and that sound the most pleasing. But the question is, what happens to people – scientists, or kids – if they do not engage in this sort of mental exercise? What happens to their creativity? And what happens to their feeings about themselves when they submit an article or hand in homework on which they didn’t really work very hard because they used AI to do their writing? What happens to the development of their ability to withstand the frustration inherent in doing intellectual work?

In the end, Steiner comes to this conclusion: “We should not protect young researchers from that struggle, and they should not protect themselves by relying too heavily on AI tools.” And I would say the same of kids. Let’s do all we can to discourage AI use in writing – at home and at school. Yes, AI is good for correcting grammar and spelling mistakes, for finding citations, and even for summarizing the content of articles. But beyond that? Let’s try to help kids (and scientists) to do the writing on their own.

References

Steiner, John F., JAMA. Scientific Writing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, November 17, 2025.
doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.6078

Chiang T. Why AI isn’t going to make art. New
Yorker. Published on August 31, 2024. Accessed
May 19, 2025. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/
the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art

Do Smartphones Encourage Anxious Attachment?

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This week, we were talking about smartphones in our parents’ group. Specifically, we were talking about how parents use them to contact their kids all day long. Afterward, one mother commented that perhaps our fondness for our phones has to do with attachment.Maybe having a phone with us, and being able to contact our loved ones at a moment’s notice, has to do with our need to stay connected, and in particular, our old, infantile wish to always be able to be in close proximity to our mothers. As John Bowlby said, this is a matter of survival for all infants – going back to our primate roots, crying in order to make sure our mother comes to us made sure we were not left behind in the forest. Staying connected was crucial!

The mom who brought up this issue is in training to be a psychoanalyst herself. She remembered being told by her psychoanalyst-mentor, that he thought that people carried water bottles and phones everywhere these days because they were a way to gratify our early wish to stay attached to Mommy, and therefore to feel safe and secure.

But is there a cost to adults of relying so much on phones, of indulging in this regressive kind of behavior?

Is it useful to us, psychologically speaking, to be able to contact everyone all the time?

Are we meant, as adults, to remain so tethered to one another throughout our daily lives?

Prior to about 2010, parents often did not know exactly where their children were and they couldn’t necessarily get in touch with them right away. The same with partners and spouses. People had to accept this and tame whatever anxiety they might have had about their loved ones’ whereabouts and activities.​ Prior to smartphones we had to rely on our object constancy, and our internalized images of our loved one, that is, our ability to keep our loved ones in mind, in order to keep them with us (psychologically speaking) throughout the day.

Aditionally, prior to the advent of smartphones, people had more autonomy. And they had more privacy. If they so chose, they could spend time without anyone knowing where they were. They could not be tracked and they could not be called.

Now, we can text or call almost anyone at any time. And if a parent texts a child or teen, they expect to hear back within a matter of minutes. And if they don’t? There’s panic – or anger – or both. Where is he? Why isn’t he getting back to me? What’s going on?

The mother I mentioned at the beginning of this post suggested that smartphones promote anxious attachment. And I thought this was a brilliant idea. Of course, this is an extension of the original concept of anxious attachment – but I think the term can be useful, if loosely applied here. It is true that we expect to be able to contact and know the whereabouts of those we love at all times. And it is also true that we seem to be unable to trust in the ongoing being of our loved ones. Our ability to hold them in our minds with a feeling of confidence that they are alright and will return to us has been dramatically reduced. We check and we check and we check on one another all day long.

Much has been written about attachment styles, and a great deal of what has appeared in popular literature and online is inaccurate. The originator of this term and the person who did the initial research which led to the coining of the term was psychologist and researcher, Mary Main. She defined anxious attachment as an insecure attachment style that develops when a caregiver is inconsistently available, leading the child to become highly distressed when separated from the caregiver but not comforted by their return. This style is rooted in the child’s uncertainty about whether their needs will be met, causing them to be preoccupied with the relationship, constantly seeking reassurance and often showing clingy or demanding behaviors. 

But these days, it’s the parents who show an anxious attachment style. And perhaps smartphones have something to do with this. When our children are inconsistently available, it makes us distressed. We expect to hear back from our kids and our partners immediately after we text or call them. And if we don’t, we become anxious. Perhaps this is like the babies who cry or call out for their mothers and are sometimes left without a response from her. If this happens often enough and for long enough, the infant or toddler can feel that the parent is unreliable, and they can feel worried about whether their mothers will come to care for them. In fact, they can worry about their very survival; they can feel insufficiently cared for. And they can become anxiously attached.

Perhaps it is the intermittent nature of the text messages from our children and other loved ones which makes ​adults feel the same way. Anxious. Unsure. Wanting to hear back immediately. And we all know that intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful kind of reinforcement. The behavior which is intermittently reinforced increases. Hence more calling and​ more texting. 

If thwarted in their desire to contact their kids or partners, parents can become the ones demonstrating demanding behavior. They are the ones who become clingy and anxious.

We have become so used to being able to locate one another at all times that our emotional muscles have gotten flabby. We ​no longer rely on our internalized images of our loved ones, we no longer utilize our capacity for object constancy. We are no longer able to tolerate uncertainty about exactly where a child or a partner is. We have become unable to wait to hear a report about how the test went or how the day was.

Is ​it good for us as parents to be so tethered to our phones – and to our children?

And is it good for kids to be so tethered to their phones – and to us? 

And what does this do to the development of kids’ feelings of independence, autonomy and responsibility? And to adults’ feelings of trust and confidence in our kids, and in each other?

These questions may not have definitive answers, but they are worth thinking about.

And as for what you might want to do about this as a parent, how about asking your children, teens, and college-aged kids about how often they want to be in touch? How about asking if they mind that you track them? How about asking what they feel is intrusive and what they find helpful? And if they seem to be the ones texting a lot, how about talking about why this might be and if there are some worries behind this?

Kids of all ages need to feel competent, they need some independence (how much will depend on their age), and it is worth discussing how to promote and encourage this.

And parents, it may be time to reevaluate how much you text and track and check and expect from your kids and from each other. 

What is TikTok Doing to Us?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

The Washington Post conducted a poll of TikTok users and found that over a period of several months, their use, on average, doubled or tripled. For some, it even quadrupled (1).

How does TikTok (and other social media) do this?

According to The Post, a 51-year-old user said, “There are times when I know I should stop scrolling and get work done or go to sleep, but it’s so hard to stop, knowing the next swipe might bring me to a truly interesting video.”

He said that although he had never been addicted to drugs, alcohol, or nicotine, his TikTok use felt like an addiction to him.

We can all relate to this.

And if it is true of us as adults, how much harder must it be for kids and teens to pull themselves away from TikTok – and other social media?

The deck is stacked against us, regardless of our age.

TikTok uses a personalized algorithm to appeal to each person’s tastes, but according to The Post, we know very little about these algorithms and how they do what they do.

So the Post collected data from 1100 TikTok users in order to look at how much time people spend on the app, how many times a day they look at the app and how much time each person waits before moving on to the next video.

They found some amazing things:

First, it takes only watching 260 videos (which can be done in as little as 35 minutes) to form a habit of watching the app. 

Second, after just one week of app use, daily watch time grew an average of 40%.

And third, the more people used the app, the faster their swipe time became.

What are the implications here?

Well for adults as well as for kids, according to The Post, time spent on TikTok replaces time spent doing more productive activities.

This is pretty obvious.

But what is not as obvious are some of the other things that happen when TikTok users spend more and more time on the app.

According to some experts, with increased TikTok and similar app use, self-control decreases, compulsive behaviors increase, losing track of time increases, and using the app while with others also increases.

What conclusions are we to draw from this?

Well, people think that they control TikTok. They think that by swiping past videos they aren’t interested in, they can train the app to give them videos that they like better and they can curate what they watch.


And while this may be correct, the greater truth seems to be that TikTok is controlling us – to watch more, to watch longer, and to watch compulsively, even when we know we have better things to do.


The videos are fun to watch. And the more they become tailored to the watcher’s interests, the more the watcher enjoys themselves, and the more time they are inclined to watch.


And this is true for kids and teens, too.

But the costs are high.

Researchers have found that immersion in a world created by TikTok and Instagram is associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety. And while people may think they are using the apps as a beneficial escape from everyday worries, going on them is absolutely not the best coping strategy. In fact, it has been found that people not only feel more depressed and anxious (2) with app use but they also often feel more bored after using the apps as well as feeling ashamed for having wasted their time.

So – what can you do for yourselves and your kids?


1. Set a daily time limit for how much time you want to devote to TikTok and other social media.


2. Help your kids to do the same. Don’t lecture them about it. Don’t tell them to do it. Just ask them how much time they would like to spend on the apps each day. Ask them if they think going on the apps gets in the way of doing other things. Then ask them if they would like to set a time limit for their use. And if you are setting a limit for yourself, tell them. And if you struggle to stick to it, tell them this too.


3. Look into third-party apps to block or restrict your ability to open the app – and let your kids know you are researching this.


4. Ask your kids if they would like to use one of these apps to help them stay off TikTok and other social media while doing homework and other activities.


5. Promote family time where phones are put away, put in the middle of the table or left at home. This means you, too! And while you are doing these activities, ask your kids their opinions about things. Have discussions. Lots of swiping can inhibit independent thought – and you definitely want to promote critical thinking and the development of personal opinions – about politics, about social issues, about relationships….and about app use.

Good luck.

Cutting down on TikTok use and the use of other social media is extremely difficult, not unlike fighting other kinds of habits and dependencies. It takes time and effort…and repeated backsliding to accomplish.


References

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2025/tiktok-addiction-algorithm-scrolling-mental-health/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F453509f%2F68e53a68fe87267da2488670%2F63caa51aa2ddf36a686dd4c3%2F14%2F67%2F68e53a68fe87267da2488670

2. Roberts JA, David ME. Instagram and TikTok Flow States and Their Association with Psychological Well-Being. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2023 Feb;26(2):80-89. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2022.0117. Epub 2023 Jan 30. PMID: 36716180.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36716180/