Heart of Relationships: Need for Attention

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

This podcast is brought to you by Sage Hill, a social impact organization. Our mission is to help people be who they're made to be so that they can do what they're made to do. Find more resources to live fully, love deeply, and lead well at sagehillresources.com. The need for attention. Attention means to be tended to. At about age 12, most people think they're done with it. If you need attention at the age of 12, you're not growing up fast enough. Do you get what I'm saying? At what age did you think your need for attention was kind of something you needed to get over? Okay? At certain age, I want you to know this. Listen to the wildness of this. Attention means to be tended to. Right? The greater your service, the more you need to be nurtured, tended to. Grown ups need more attention than children. And if the grown ups aren't getting the attention, they won't be able to give the children what they need. Children need less attention than grown ups. Because grown ups jobs are to take care of children. Now think about on the airlines, what do they say? In a crisis, the air masks drop, take the mask if you're traveling with children and put it over your own face first and then over the face of your child. You need to be attended to first and then take care of your child. Because if you're in chaos and crisis, you don't know where your security is coming from, you don't know what your needs are, you don't have a community system to rely on other people, you you will try to use this child or you try to do something, you won't take care of this child. So are you good at getting attention?