“What happens when insatiability dominates a person's emotional functioning? The process of maturation is preempted by an obsession or an addiction, in… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Some parents resist the idea of ADD for fear of seeing their children labeled and categorized. They do not like the idea… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Our failure to keep our children attached to us and to the other adults responsible for them has not only taken away… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Parental efforts to gain leverage generally take two forms: bribery or coercion. If a simple direction such as “I'd like you to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“More than anything, we have lost the cultural customs and traditions that bring extended families together, linking adults and children in caring… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The obvious alternative to blaming the parent is to conclude that there is something amiss or lacking in the child. If we… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Intuitively we all know that it is better to feel than to not feel. Our emotions are not a luxury but an… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“attachment is the first priority of living things. It is only when there is some release from this preoccupation that maturation can… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“What is peer orientation? Orientation, the drive to get one's bearings and become acquainted with one's surroundings, is a fundamental human instinct… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Although parents and teachers are forever telling children to “grow up,” maturation cannot be commanded. One cannot teach a child to be… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Children displaced from their families, unconnected to their teachers, and not yet mature enough to relate to one another as separate beings,… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The traditional hospital practice of excluding parents ignored the importance of attachment relationships as regulators of the child’s emotions, behaviour and physiology.… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Culture is a vehicle for true self-expression. The flowering of individual creativity takes place in the context of culture. When a child… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“In Separation, the second volume of his great trilogy on attachment, John Bowlby described what had been observed when ten small children… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The nuclear family is said to be the basic unit of society but is itself under extreme pressure. Divorce rates have soared.… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Humans never outgrow their need to connect with others, nor should they, but mature, truly individual people are not controlled by these… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately,… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Walking through the halls of my son's high school during lunch hour recently, I was struck by how similar it felt to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The attachment voids experienced by immigrant children are profound. The hardworking parents are focused on supporting their families economically and, unfamiliar with… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Recognizing that parental responsibility is insufficient for successful child-rearing, but still not conscious of the role of attachment, many experts assume the… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Basically, attention follows attachment. The stronger the attachment, the easier it is to secure the child's attention. When attachment is weak, the… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“While it is beneficial for a child to feel bad when anticipating a loss of connection with those who are devoted to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“In attunement, it is the infant who leads and the mother who follows. “Where their roles differ is in the timing of… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“As parents who make every effort we can to raise our children in loving security, we do not need to feel more guilt than… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.” — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Many adults have not attained maturity — have not mastered being independent, self-motivated individuals capable of tending their own emotional needs and of respecting… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers. This is not simply because of the fact that the mother was different in… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Without attachment, the parent succeeds at most in cowing a child into obedience, at the price of grave damage to the relationship and to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Attachment is our connection with the world. In the earliest attachment relationships, we gain or lose the ability to stay open, self-nurturing and healthy.… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“So what you've actually got is traumatized children. When children are traumatized that affects how they feel about themselves, which is deeply ashamed because… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“We think that there are people who are normal over here, and then there’s the pathological ones who have depression, anxiety, addiction or schizophrenia… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“One cannot get much more vulnerable than to expose oneself psychologically. To share oneself with another and then be misunderstood or rejected is, for… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“The areas of the cortex responsible for attention and self-regulation develop in response to the emotional interaction with the person whom we may call… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“Peer-oriented children live in a universe of severely limited and superficial attachments. The quest for sameness being the least vulnerable way of attaching, it… — Gabor Maté Copy Share
“The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.” — Gabor Maté Copy Share
