ELI HARWOOD, MA, LPC is a licensed therapist, best-selling author, and highly sought-after educator who has more than 17 years of experience helping people process relational traumas and develop secure connections with their children. She is on a mission to help make the world a better place, one relationship at a time. In addition to her clinical work, Harwood also offers online courses and in-person retreats to help individuals better understand their attachment styles and build stronger bonds. She has also served as a faculty member at The Denver Family Institute and is the author of Securely Attached. Eli has three children, one husband, two cats, and an extraordinary number of plants. Learn more about her work at [...].

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Most Important Lesson
Author Eli Harwood sets the stage for understanding attachment in the parenting context and the mindsets necessary for a parent to cultivate a secure relationship, and how children learn whether or not they can rely on us for connection and support.

Chapter 2: Connection is the Most Powerful Form of Influence
This chapter explores the emotional side of parenting and the importance of those challenging moments when our kids are submerged deep into their feelings.

Chapter 3: They Can Feel What You Don’t Heal
This chapter focuses on the ways that our unresolved traumas from the past and our dysfunctional relationships in the present affect our children and how we can heal them in order not to pass them down to our kids.

Chapter 4: Feelings are for Feeling
In a world full of so much misconception regarding emotional health, this chapter helps you build your child's emotional intelligence through mythbusting current mindsets about what it means to be emotionally healthy.

Chapter 5: Structure is Nurture's Best Friend
This chapter discusses the power of playful connection and enthusiastic delight, and empowers parents to cultivate positive interactions and explores dominance vs. connection.

Chapter 6: Secure Conflict
This chapter gets into the nitty gritty of conflict with our children and the different ways it shows up in them and us and how to take a discovery mindset instead of a fear mindset with conflict.

Chapter 7: Connection as Protection
This chapter focuses on navigating outside sources of potential harm and struggle with our children. It will help parents learn how to offer protection without sliding into fear mongering or controlling responses.

Chapter 8: The Self-Confidence Recipe
A child can only become confident in their self if they are first able to be confident in the care of others. This chapter guides parents into how to help kids feel securely adored, understood, and supported which internalizes into positive narratives about themselves.

Chapter 9: The Tricky Topics
This chapter dives into the terrain of the tricky conversations that every child needs their parents to have with them. It breaks down conversation by conversation the important things for parents to be aware of as they navigate these dialogues and how to effectively hear and be heard.

Chapter 10: Letting Go *is* Staying Close
This chapter leans into the very complex and emotional process of our children building autonomy and independence. It addresses the emotional ways we come to these moments and how to offer our children the best possible launchpad to move into new stages of independence.

Appendix
Acknowledgments
References
Index