Therapeutic Parenting: Strategies and Solutions

We talk today with Sarah Naish, the CEO of the Center of Excellence in Child Trauma and founder of the National Association of Therapeutic Parents. She is the author of The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting and The A-Z of Survival Strategies for Therapeutic Parents. She is the adoptive mom to a sibling group of 5 who are now adults and she has fostered over 40 kids.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why are some kids harder to parent and why especially are kids who have experienced trauma, including prenatal trauma, often harder to parent?
• Understanding the cause of the behavior is the root of parenting harder to parent kids.
• Establish the basics to make their lives predictable so they can feel safe and grow and heal. The elements for establishing this base: 
  • Routines
  • Establish yourself as a safe base-empathetic and nurturing but in control 
    • Respond to the child, not to the child’s demand
• Be honest about their story, contact, etc. – be factual, but don’t fill in the gaps
• Establish strong, clear boundaries- what to do when these boundaries are crossed?
• Use natural or life consequences 
  • Our kids may not recognize cause and effect. 
    • Early trauma, including prenatal exposure, can hinder a child’s ability to recognize cause and effect
    • Our kids may be developmentally younger than their chronological years which also impacts understanding.
  • Natural consequences help children recognize that they can make an impact on the world-helps them make sense of the world
  • Combine natural consequences with nurturance.
• How to handle incidents when they happen. PARENTS model. 
  • Pause-to allow you to respond with intention not emotion.
  • Assess-is anyone in danger or serious damage.
  • Reflection-quick reflection to identify the trigger.
  • Empathize rather than ask questions 
    • use empathetic commentary-
    • respond to their feelings rather than the behavior.
  • Nurture-examples of nurturing in the heat of the moment.
  • Think about next action to take. 
    • What strategies might I use to resolve this? Do you need to do anything else?
    • How can we avoid this situation in the future?
  • Self-care
• Other parenting strategies for harder to parent kids. Other tools for your toolkit. 
  • Identify your triggers.
  • Set realistic expectations.
  • Use silliness or playfulness.
  • Remove the audience.
  • Help kids show they are sorry rather than demand they say they are sorry.
  • The phone strategy.
  • Watch what the child is doing rather than what she is saying.
  • Payback time.
  • Admit it when you made a mistake.

Transcript

Please pardon any errors this is an automated transcript.
Welcome everyone to Creating a Family. Talk about foster, adoptive, and kinship care.
I'm Dawn Davenport. I am both the host of this show as well as the director of
the non -profit, creatingafamily .org. Today's show is on therapeutic parenting.
We will be talking with Sarah Nash. She is the CEO of the Center of Excellent and
Child Trauma and the founder of the National Association of Therapeutic Parents. She
talks about strategies for parenting the harder -to -parent kids. She is the author of
the A to Z of Therapeutic Parenting and the A to Z of Survival Strategies for
Therapeutic Parents. She is the adoptive mom to a sibling group of five who are now
adults, and she has fostered over 40 kids. This is a re -air of a show we did a
year or two ago. It was terrific then, and it's important information. I love her
practical wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. - Welcome, Sarah, to creating a family.
We're so happy to have you with us today. - Thank you, Dylan. Hi. - Why are, I'm
gonna jump right in there. Why are some kids harder to parent? And why especially
are kids who have experienced trauma? When we say trauma, I want to include prenatal
trauma, often harder to parent. Well, there's a variety of reasons, but mainly it's
that the children's experience of the world is different. So their brain has grown
and adapted to cope with the world they were born into. So for example, I use an
analogy about, I say my children were born on a plane, and unfortunately the plane
for whatever reason was flown by unskilled pilots, and that meant that the plane was
swooping and dying.
the child can't just move planes and go, "Oh, few I can relax now." The point is
they have adapted to the environment that they were in and that is full of danger.
So they're still looking for that danger when they come to us, the people that
hopefully know what we're doing. - Yeah, exactly. It's a good analogy as someone who
dislikes turbulence a lot and gets tense and anxious anytime turbulence happens.
So that's a good analogy. You say in your books that understanding the cause of the
behavior is the root of parenting, these harder to parent kids. The behaviors we are
seeing, why do we need to focus first on the cause? Well,
the thing is, it's a bit like, if you keep trying to resolve something in the
wrong way. You're just going round and round in circles. So we talk about a needle
being stuck on a record, like the old fashioned record players. So for example, say
you've got a child who's stealing, for example, and we don't try and understand why
they're stealing. We're just looking at the fact that the child is stealing. And we
meet that behavior with perhaps a standard parenting strategy, which is, well, I'm
going to take your pocket money away. Well, because we haven't understood what's
behind the behaviour, the strategy we're putting in there isn't going to resolve the
behaviour, it's not going to change it. So, as therapeutic parents, we can get very
frustrated because we keep repeating the same thing, thinking something magic's going
to happen. But if we don't understand why our children are behaving the way they
do, we keep meeting it with the wrong response. It's a response that needs to
change in order to change the children's behaviors. - All right, so you start by
saying we have to establish the basics to make their lives predictable. So they can
feel safe and grow and heal ultimately. And you lay out five elements for
establishing this base. And I wanna go through them because as with all bases, they
really are foundational. I guess that's stating the obvious right. Let's start with
the first of your five elements, and that is routines. Why are routines,
first of all, why are they so important for these children? Well, let's think about
the child I was talking about who was born on a plane. There's no predictability
there. The child doesn't know what's happening next, doesn't know when the plane's
going to crash, doesn't know when there's going to be a bad landing, doesn't know
when they're going to crash.
have lowered cortisol levels and to feel calmer and be more regulated so it made
our lives easier. I'm not saying that it was a fun thing to do,
it can be quite boring having to have the same routine and you know pretty well
cast iron but it is important for our children to be able to predict the future
perhaps for the first time in their lives. Predictability leads to a feeling of
control doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And of course, for our children, that's
something that they are seeking a lot of the time. So I often liken that to, you
know, the child banging on the cockpit door, trying to get in the cockpit to fly
the plane with the pilot because they feel like there's only me that knows how to
do this. As parents, we see that as the child trying to be controlling, but
actually it's a fear -based behavior. The child is scared about what's happening and
wants to have some control over that. - That's going back to trying to understanding
the root cause. Right, is understanding that it is fear -based. You know, one of the
things we hear frequently from parents is that they realize the parent who is
parenting the heart of the parent kid realizes that the child needs routines. And
like you point out, sometimes it feels rigid, but it also, to ourselves, but it
also looks rigid to others and and so often we get pressured into oh come on relax
a little for goodness sakes you know it's that's really hard did you find that as
well yeah absolutely there's always an expert around the corner armchair parent yeah
yeah I call them perfect parents people that you know have not raised a child from
trauma but know all about reward charts. So I have a good little story about this.
So I had a very good friend and she ran a nursery. So she knew all about
neurotypical children and she came to my house one day and she said exactly what
you just said, "Oh, you're quite strict aren't you? Lighting up a little bit." And
so I said to her, because I sped up with it, I said, "Do you know what you're
quite right? Tell you what, I'm going to nip out for a couple of hours. You've
finished giving the children their tea and then they just need to have their bath
and go to bed and I'll come back. I'm absolutely exhausted and she was a bit taken
aback, so I went out, switched my phone off, was out for two hours. When I came
back, and this is absolutely true, she was sitting in the middle of the room crying
while the children swung on the curtains and were jumping on the table around her
and she looked at me and I'm sorry, I love that. That's why we have a strong
routine. - Okay, now you're living everybody's dream. I'm gonna tell you, I can't
tell you how many times I would have liked to have done that. And that was exactly
so you're living, you are living my dream so I can hope and I can imagine that
that would happen and I want everybody else to be able to as well. Yeah, and you
just have to toughen up to it. You have to accept that people, and including people
in your own family, grandparents and others, who are going to think you're being
overly controlling and too strict and too rigid just to allow a little fun in your
life type of thing. And I do think that as our children become more regulated,
we can lighten up some. But then we have to, even when we lighten up, we know
that there's only so far that we can go before we've let them they start feeling
out of control they start they don't have that security. That's right and in fact
Dawn the problem you're talking about is so common it's we're asked about is so
much that in the latest but the survival strategies I've actually done a table of
useful phrases and it's in there for when people patronize you and say oh I'm just
like and I've got all the things you can say you know and all the things like
what not to say you can think it but don't don't say it. Oh there's probably a
lot of those okay give us one or two that people that a parent could say when
they're told some version of you're too strict or lighten up or have a little fun.
So I would say something like oh I see what's happened here here and I would do
kind of it, oh I see what's happening, you're talking about neuro -typical children,
I'm parenting neuro -diverse children and actually you have to parent them differently,
would you like me to give you a resource on that? I've got a couple and then I
do, I follow it up and I give them one of my little books or resource from NATP
or you know and it's literally just a little fact sheet that says when you're
speaking to a parent of a neuro say this, and this is why.
Do not say what you just said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Excellent. Your second
of the establishing the basics to make the child's life predictable, your second base
is establish yourself as a safe base with empathetic and nurturance.
So talk to us a bit about that. Well, you know, because of making the child making
sure the child can see their life is predictable we have to become part of that
predictability so often our children would have been met with very unsafe responses
and because of that they will naturally you know try and push our buttons and they
will sometimes be expecting a perhaps an abusive response from us that isn't going
to happen and we can only really demonstrate to them through time of responding
appropriately that actually we're not going to hurt them, we're not going to
overreact and that we are safe. So once we can show the child that we are safe
that helps the child's cortisol to lower and they can start to well to stop testing
us. Now that takes a long time it's not quick but it is about making those plane
landings many, many times, you bring the plane down safely and over time, the child
goes, oh, I think this person has got it. I think they can keep me safe,
but we're not gonna do that by talking to them or telling them we're safe, we have
to demonstrate it. So that will be things like, you know, if a child is lying to
me or doing something which is designed so safe, for example I've told them to
definitely not put an item of clothing on and then they put that clothing on and
they dance into the room wearing it. That will happen because the child is expecting
me to react in perhaps a way that happened in the past. They're testing to see how
safe they are and what I need to do is say oh that's an interesting choice you've
made. Oh well you know I'll wait till you've changed and then and then we can
carry on with our day but what I'm not gonna do it. I'm like, why did you do
that? I can't believe it. That's the kind of response to the child's expecting. And
we have to do it a lot of times and it's tough. It's difficult. We do become
actors, really good at acting. - Yeah, that's good. In keeping with the transportation
analogies, you use one that really clicked with me, that the parent is the engine
of the train and they're pulling behind the little cars, and the little cars are
our kids, and I had four, you had five, so here I am, the engine, and there were
four little cars behind me, five behind you. And one seemed to always be jumping
off the track, but I still needed to be the engine. I still needed to be that
safe base, and try to get the child back on the track. Somehow that just really
stuck with me. - Yes, absolutely because it's only by moving forward that you keep
the children on the track so sometimes it can be a bit tempting to kind of stop
and go hang on a minute so the child has stopped me maybe they haven't got their
shoes or maybe they're not walking out the door and it can be and sometimes we get
dragged into that and we go and we start following the child and we're going back
down the track but if we just keep moving forwards and say oh I can see a
struggle with this, never mind, it's time to go to school now and we keep going,
we just keep going forwards with our parenting. The children do follow us, they do
follow on behind, they don't want to be left behind. So I think part of that as
well is about looking at who is there, who's putting coal in the fire,
who's helping me drive this engine and who isn't, because it's Taren doing it on
your own. So, we need to get the children to secure attachment station. That's such
a good point. It is tiring doing it on your own, absolutely. Another thing you say
that really resonates in this establishing yourself as a safe base is to respond to
the child, not to the child's demand. Can you give us an example of what you mean
by that? Yeah, sure. So, I always say It's about looking at what our children need
and what our children need is different to what they want, although they're very
good at telling us what they want. So for example, my child might have a phone as
a teenager and they might break that phone now that that might be broken on purpose
through sabotage, whatever. The child is likely to say to me, I want a new phone,
I want a new phone, I have to have a new phone, I'm going to hear it 100 times
a day. If I don't get a new phone, I'm going to die.
perhaps get a phone another way, but it's going to take a while, it's not going to
be immediately replaced. So it is about, and I might even say that to a child, you
know, I know you think you really, really want another phone, but it's my job to
look at what you really, really need. And I think a little break from your phone,
we're very helpful for you. Okay.
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All right, so the third element for establishing a base after setting, establishing
routines and setting yourself up as a safe base. The third is be honest about their
story, be honest about the contacts agreements, be honest about the things happening
in their life. Let's talk some about that. Why, first of all, is that so important.
First of all, the child knows what has happened to them, even if they don't hold
it in their active memory, their body knows. So their body will remember frightening
things that have happened. There'll be things that trigger them like smell, like
certain environment, certain sounds, that kind of thing. They already know it. So if
we try to fob the children off by saying something like, "Oh, your mum and dad
couldn't look after you, that doesn't resonate very well with the child because what
they hear there is you, they couldn't look after you so does that mean they could
look after somebody else is that because there's a problem with me. So I found with
my children and the children I work with now it's very important to say do you
know what there are some people who are unable to look after children we don't know
why sometimes we know why sometimes we don't they're unable to look after children
and
This is how your birth parents work. This is what happened. This is why we think
it happened and it's very sad and I'm here for you.
- What I noticed about that story is you also, we're not putting their birth parents
down. You weren't saying derogatory things even though you likely feel them. - Yes,
yeah, that's right. That's right, because when you do that, really, you know, we
never do know the whole story. We never do know. And although my children's birth
parents did behave appallingly and were very, very dangerous,
something made them that way. So something happened to them to make them that way.
And I don't know what that was. So it's not my position to judge, but it is my
position to assure the children that it was not their fault. ever happened was not
down to them. - All right, the fourth element of establishing a base after routines,
setting yourself up as a safe base and being honest about their story without
filling in the gaps that you don't know. The fourth one is establishing clear,
strong boundaries. On its face, that is obvious, kind of goes back into the idea of
teens being very clear about what you want. But what do you do when these
boundaries are crossed? - Well, I think that's gonna be kind of where I'm at in
point five around consequences and what we do with that. But we have to be very
clear about how we set those boundaries out in the first place in order to make
sure the children understand. So for example, language is very important. I remember
saying to the children, can you empty the dishwasher, please? Well,
what I know now is that my children heard that as, are you able to empty the
dishwasher? They didn't hear it as me saying it's your turn to empty the dishwasher.
So I learned to change my language into, it's your turn to empty the dishwasher.
Time to do it now. Thank you. So part of boundary setting is around really looking
at our which you're making sure we're giving clear direction to the children, which
can't be misinterpreted. And if we have given that clear direction and set out those
boundaries, then if those boundaries are transgressed or they're not met in some way,
then we as the parent have to make sure that we are allowing consequences to occur,
natural consequences or logical consequences to occur. And that is the fifth element.
So perfect. Great segue. All right. So using natural life or life or logical
consequences. Let's talk some about that. What do you, first of all, how does that
differ when we hear people say, I'm going to give you a consequence versus using
the natural or the logical consequence? It's really interesting,
I think, because what I always asked parents to think about is, who is that for?
Who is that consequence for? So for example, if you have a child who has,
for example, stolen something, they've taken some money or whatever, and you are
saying to them, well, you know, because you took that money, I'm going to take your
pocket money,
I'm not taking to the movies tonight, unrelated, completely unrelated, that's a
punishment and that's for our benefit, that's for the parents' benefit, that's to try
to make us feel better. For the child, that doesn't help them to link what they
did with what has happened. So one of the things our children really struggle with
is linking cause and effect because in their early life consequences didn't make any
sense a lot of the time. So what we have to do is we have to build these
synapses.
the TV doesn't work, that's a natural consequence. But when we want to perhaps do a
little bit more or we want to make those links a bit stronger, we might put in
something else. So for example, my daughter, she tried to jump out of a moving car.
Obviously very dangerous. And my husband grabbed her and pulled her back in. He
nearly said, right, that's it, you're not going to the party tonight. completely
unrelated. And I said, no, no, no, that's what's going on here. So I said to her,
because you try to jump out of the car, it's very dangerous. We need to keep you
safe until I can be sure that you're safe. I'm not going to take you in the car
for the next week. I'm going to just check the safe. So I'm relating her trying to
jump out of the car to something to do with the car. So I call that an extended
natural consequence. So you've got to do something. It's not something that just
occurs on its own, but you keep it as close as possible to the actual action and
event, so the child starts to learn, "I did that, and therefore this has happened."
Yeah, I'm so glad you raised the issue of recognizing cause and effect.
For neurotypical kids, that is a natural developmental stage. We don't expect it of
a two -year -old, but we do expect it by six, seven, eight, that the children are
beginning to understand I do something and or something happens and this is the
effect. I do something and this is the effect. But early life trauma, especially
perhaps prenatal exposure, and we know from prenatal exposure, for example,
that it actually changes the structure of the brain. You can look at the MRI of a
child who has been prenatally exposed to one who is not, depending, of course, on
the timing and the substances and things such as that, and it affects the area of
the brain that affects cause, that we use when we are developing cause and effect,
and early life trauma can do the same, and plus, honestly, trauma often makes our
children developmentally younger than their chronological years, so that also hacks,
understanding, again, we don't expect understanding of cause and effect of a two -year
-old, what further do we do of an older child? So I'm so glad you raised that
because it's so much of life is based on and behavior and getting along in the
world is based on understanding cause and effect. Absolutely. And certainly in my
five adopted children, you can really see that happen because my youngest child was
removed at birth and she has as many issues as my older children.
Yeah and not knowing the details but that's even prenatal trauma or prenatal
exposure. Yeah absolutely. It's such an important thing and you know the think about
a natural consequence and you talk about this But what we're really doing is helping
the child recognize that they can impact the world. And that is just fundamental to
all humans. Especially as we age, we want to know that we make a difference or we
can make a difference. So what a powerful thing following through with the logical
consequences could be. - Yeah, absolutely. Because if I think about early life.
For example, you know, one of them left in a cot wet, hungry. If he cried,
nobody came. If he wet himself, he stayed wet. So, like you say, there are no
concepts, it's like he made no impact on the world. And often our children don't
understand the impact they make on the world. So we're actually empowering them by
allowing them to experience these consequences. And I speak from knowledge on this
one, it is tempting when our kids do something that is either pushes our buttons or
noise they're ever loving out of us. It's so tempting that to allow the natural,
allowing the natural consequence to happen is not quite enough so we want to add an
extra dig in there. we want to do as your husband had wanted to do about saying,
well, if you can't ride in the car by golly, you're not going to go to the party
because that makes us feel a little better. But it's so important to combine not
even with nurturance. And part of that means not being gleeful, even in-- well,
it's probably OK to have a little glee inside. We are human after all. But let's
talk some about the importance of combining natural consequences with nurturance and
kindness and sympathy and empathy and all that. Yeah, and I can see when a parent
is in compassion fatigue or is really struggling, that's when the nurture goes. So
that's when I will see parents say things like, well, he lost his phone.
So he hasn't got a phone now and I told him it was his own fault and they're
literally like ha ha ha and I'm okay so where was the nurture where was the
nurture remember therapeutic parenting uses natural consequences with nurture so I
would be saying oh it's it's real shame that your phone is broken you know let's
sit down and work out a way that I can help you to you know save up for a new
phone or or let's look at what the second hand ones that you can get in the
future. I'll give you a nice hot chocolate drink. There's got to be that nurture,
that empathy with the child because otherwise what happens is the child just becomes
more oppositional to us. We become the enemy and they know if we're doing it as
you say in a gleeful way they know and then we're the enemy and we're going to
get very stuck in that so it won't help any of us. - You know, one of the issues
that comes up with using natural or life or logical consequences is that sometimes
there isn't a consequence that is either timely or it just, it's just,
there isn't a, I used to, one of the things that was frustrating for me as a
parent was the lying. The natural consequence of lying is that you lose somebody's
trust. Well, that's not a very concrete consequence, in particular for a child who
is struggling with cause and effect and struggling and needs something more concrete.
And there are other examples of that where the logical consequence is far off in
the future or the logical consequence is too dangerous or whatever. What do you do
as a parent then when you can't think of the or you can't allow the logical
consequence to follow through. Well there's a couple of things so for example with
lying we know that children often don't know the difference between truth and lies
and they really struggle with that so that's something I wouldn't bother using
consequences or natural consequences with because I don't know if the child knows
what they're saying is true or not, so that's quite important. If I can't think of
something in the moment, I always say something like, well, you know,
it's very sad that this has happened. I wouldn't say that you did this. It's very
sad that this has happened and I'm gonna have a little think about what will happen
next. So that's a really good phrase to use 'cause sometimes you're so angry you
can't be straight. - Yes, exactly. - And just buy some time, you know, 'cause the
thing's already happened and quite often when you get away you can think of
something with lying.
biscuit. Sometimes I think your brain gets mixed up with what's true and what isn't.
And that's enough. That's enough to just tell the child you know the truth. We
don't have to prove. We don't have to waste two hours of our life proving that
we're right. Just tell them.
Yeah, absolutely. Let me pause here for a minute to tell you about a free
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you. You have what I particularly appreciate about your books and your approach to
therapeutic parenting. Is the practicality of it? It's clear that you have been in
the trenches and have-- because so often, theoretical is good. It's good for us to
know it. But in the heat of the moment, theory is the first thing that leaves our
brains. and I speak from experience. So I particularly like, you have what you call
the parents model, P -A -R -E -N -T -S model. And what I like about it,
it's what you need to think about when an incident happens. So okay,
something has happened and all of a sudden and you're feeling your cortisol levels
escalating rapidly. And so let's go through what the, obviously it's an acronym and
a good one. So let's go through, let's start with the P. What does the P stand
for in the parents model of how to handle an incident that's right in the heat of
the moment? - So the P is the critical pause, the pause where we have to just kind
of stop for a second and think and it's the hardest thing to do sometimes.
But it's the difference between often getting it right and getting it wrong and
literally it's like because if you and that pause doesn't have to be very long, it
can be a sigh. It can be looking out the window to focus on the fact that there
is another world out there, but it's just long enough for us to go. Okay. What's
happening? Why is this happening to ourselves, not to the child in our head. What's
going on here. And that critical pause changes how we respond to it.
Now, obviously, you know, sometimes we are moving straight into action. But throughout
the incident, normally there is places where we can take a pause and think, what
happened here? What was before it? How am I feeling? Is there anyone nearby? I can
get that kind of thing. And normally when we can build that pause in, that's when
afterwards we feel like, oh yeah, I did a good job there actually. - Okay, so then
the A. So now we have pause and I'm very glad you said, they're not talking about
a five minute pause. You're talking about taking a deep breath and trying to get
your own emotions. Thinking, get your brain, your emotions quelled and your brain in
action is what you're really at that point trying to do. You want to be intentional
with what you're doing non -emotional. There'll be time for emotion afterwards but all
right so we've talked about the P in the parents model. Okay now let's talk about
the A. So the A is assessed because what we're doing as we come into a situation
we are already assessing what's going on. Now if I've got a child standing on a
fourth -story window cell with the window open. There's not going to be any pausing
going on really. I'm going to walk in the room, see what's happening and I'm going
to take immediate action. So I do a little mini assess which is basically is anyone
in danger? Can I exit if the child's violent? Can the child exit if they need to
get out? Just a little assessment like that, is the dog here? is the dog at risk.
So I would just be looking around who's here, who's around, is there any risk to
anyone before we then move on? Because I think it's really important that we do it.
And again, that would take seconds to do, to just have a look around you and check
where are your other children, for example, where are they, can you move forwards
and deal with this incident? Or is your other child about to walk out the front
door onto the highway? Well, Well, that's going to take priority. Mm -hmm. Okay. Then
the R is for reflection, and that's where I think we're trying to identify what
happened, what triggered this, what do you mean by reflection? Yeah, so it's like a
little mini -reflect, because obviously you tend to have a big reflect afterwards, but
it's literally like, you know, hang on, where has this come from? Is there anything
I can think of that's caused this? What, why is this child behaving in this way?
Is there, are there any obvious triggers? Is there something that, you know, that
I've missed here? So, yeah, so I would, I would look at that immediately as a,
just a kind of a like, how do we get here? We were okay a minute ago, something's
happened between now and then, what might that thing be that's happened? So it
changes my brain from what the child has done into why might this be happening by
doing that mini reflect. And that is so brilliant because we're shifting, we're going
back to the first thing we started with is that we have to understand the cause of
our children's behavior. And factoring in a moment, and again, this is a quick mini
reflection, factoring in a moment to try to think through and say, you know, it's
right before dinner or they've just come off of the bus. I wonder if something
happened there or just something. And that leads us into the E, which is empathize
rather than ask questions. And that one really struck me because my temptation is to
always start asking questions. So let's talk about what you mean out, empathize
rather than ask questions. - So I might, I would literally, I look at it as if I
become the mirror. So I look at the child and I say to them what I see. So I
might say something like, "Oh, I can see you look really sad." I wouldn't say, "I
can see you are really sad." I say, "I can see you look really sad." Or, "Oh, I
can see that you're really struggling with this." Or, "Oh dear, things are tricky
aren't they at the moment." Just literally saying what I see and saying what I see.
say, especially with very young or pre -verbal children, children can't express
themselves. So that quick bit of empathy there, but oh dear, I can see you're
really struggling with this, oh Paul you, oh no, let me help you, that kind of
thing. It's just a much stronger way to form that connection in the moment and to
show the child what it is that you're seeing. And you talk about respond to their
feelings rather than their behavior. Give us an an example of what language you
would use, let's say the child is tantrumming and has knocked lamps over and is
getting ready to do other, you know, is picking up something else that they're going
to throw. Give us some language. Now, at this point, we're trying to focus on their
feelings, respond to their feelings rather than their behavior. How might we handle
that? Yeah. So if I've got a child that's tantrumming, I would be saying that kind
of thing to them like oh dear you know you've got a really sad face oh dear
goodness me you are angry wow that's some big feelings you've got there so I'm
gonna reflect back exactly what it is that I see if a child's screaming I might
need to raise my voice so they can hear me but I'm not gonna do it in an angry
way as I wow that's a big shouty voice you've got there goodness me I can see
that things are really difficult for you at the moment so that kind of empathic
commentary I would
all right so I went over to the child and I said and she was very angry very
angry and punching the gate and I said to her oh goodness me Daisy you look very
sad now oh you look like you're really struggling here do you need some help she's
straight away stopped crying and said yeah and I said what is it you need help
with and she said open the gate please so mum was happy because the child had
managed I wouldn't have done that with my child mom was happy because child managed
to say what she wanted her to say, I opened the gate and she came through and she
was calm. I think that if we'd have gone the other way and that was just a
really, really quick, but I didn't need to do everything else, but just that bit
of, I can see you're strong because she can't open the gate. But I think that
otherwise there would have been a reaction of stop crying right now, you're not
going to, we're not going to let you mean if you don't stop crying? You're just
going to be there for two hours. Yeah, don't hit the gate, stop hitting the gate,
turn the handle or I've shown you a million times or any of those things are
clearly not helpful. So we've gone through we're working on the parents model, we've
gone through pause, assess, reflection, emphasize rather than ask questions.
And the end is for nurture. All right. Yeah. So nurture,
we're keeping in mind this is at the heat of it. This is at the heat of the
moment. Let's give some examples of nurturance that we can use at the heat of the
moment. Not, I mean, it's, you know, when everything is calm and you're talking with
a child afterwards. It's easy to nurture then or usually is at the heat of the
moment, not so much. So let's talk some about that. So this could be something you
know like an offer of a warm drink you know so I might say something like oh Dean
I can see you're really upset and I think I'm going to make you a nice warm drink
now that also allows you to exit if you need to exit say the child is perhaps a
little bit dangerous and you might need to give a little bit of space but it could
be something as simple as just touching the child lightly on their shoulder just
like stroking their arm a little bit, if they allow you to touch them, you know,
nurture can be done through touch, through a sympathetic or empathic face, through
just being there, just sitting down next to the child and being physically present
and saying, it's okay, I'm just going to stay here, I'm here, I'm just going to be
here for you. That's actually a very nurturing thing to do, to just be present with
the child. To say, I'm not leaving. Yeah, I'm not leaving. Yeah, I'm not afraid of,
you have big emotions right now, but I'm not, I'm not afraid, so you don't need to
be afraid, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, then T, we knew we'd have to come to the
thinking part. So the T is for thinking, thinking about the next action to take.
Again, speaking in the heat of the moment, what are what type of what do you
think, what are you thinking about at that point?
But this might happen during the incident even. So if we, I mean, I've certainly
had been in incidents with children where it's taken a long time, the calming down
has taken a long time. So I might be sitting next to them and stroking their back
and helping them to calm. Well, while they're calming, I might be thinking then or
it might happen afterwards, you know, when the child's gone and gone on with their
day. So what I'm doing here is I'm thinking about, I'm going back over it and I'm
thinking, you know, why did that happen? Well, I think I've identified a trigger.
Was that right? Is there something I can do? Is there something I can change to
remove that trigger for the future? Is there actually some kind of logical
consequence that needs to be put in? Is this all resolved and I'm happy that it's
okay? Or is something, you know, further need to happen that I need to revisit with
the child? Or are we able to draw a line under it and I might want to take a
bit of time to think about that. I definitely don't want to be making that decision
if I'm angry or upset or emotional. I'm going to buy myself a little bit of time.
So yeah, so I want to think about the strategies that I've used and if they worked
and what worked and what didn't work and if there's anything else that I could do
to perhaps move this on, I might need to have a conversation with the child. I
might need to assure them that I still love them and it's all okay. And it may be
that there is no action that needs to be taken. I like how you said that draw a
line under it. Yes, I mean it's possible that it is not everything needs to have
to be handled into the future. And involving the child, not at the heat of the
moment, but later helping them understand it sounds to me that I'm wondering if
you're not struggling at school and therefore wanting to avoid going to school. And
is that part of this?
Or whatever, how can we set up our life so that this trigger doesn't happen?
Obviously, school is not one of them. But there are-- sometimes we can set things
up about-- I'm wondering if you're hungry, that when I notice that when you haven't
eaten, that you really have a hard time. So maybe we need to have fruit sitting
out on the counter and just know that you can get at any time or that type of
thing, talking with the child. Yeah. Yeah. And naming the need,
you know, so that's a lot about saying, "Oh, I see, I see why you did this. I
see what happened." And that often comes later within our thinking time. When we say
about the child, we explain to them why we think they did what they did. Right.
And the last of the parents model, it's plural. The last is self -care.
And I think that is so important because after an incident, especially a big one,
I mean, we have incidents throughout the day, but a big one, we're drained and
we're emotionally fragile at that point. So recognizing that we are not human,
even though we might want to think we are, that we have to take care. And I think
of them sometimes with self care as mini breaks. I think we think of self care as
a pedicure or a massage. And that's a, but not that I love massage,
but I, but if that's our idea of self care, it doesn't mean we can do it on a
regular basis. So yeah, so what do you say from the self care standpoint? So I now
talk about self -care as essential maintenance because when people used to talk to me
about self -care, when my children were growing up, I would literally roll my eyes.
I don't have time for bath bombs. I couldn't even turn the taps on the bath before
the children were banging on the door. So I felt this was unobtainable. But what I
realized was that if I didn't do essential maintenance, which was making sure I had
a little bit of space away from the children so that I could free my brain to
think about what was going on. Everything would actually come crashing down. So those
self -care bits, those essential maintenance bits, it can be as simple as going out
in the garden with a cup of tea. It doesn't have to be a spa break, although of
course a spa break is lovely, but it is about making sure you've got that time,
making sure that when you make arrangements to see friends that you go, making sure
that you have baby sitters. And do you know what? Your baby sitters will not do it
exactly like you do. They won't. And you accept that because your break is more
important because you can come back refreshed. Yes. And many, many self -care,
many breaks, making certain that a friend of mine would, she had to have two hours
at the end of the day. So, she was and put the kids to bed earlier, that was
just huge for her. She would pop popcorn, she would curl up with a movie and if
she didn't do that daily, that was her recharge and she needed to do it. Guys,
I want to tell you about one of our partners, in fact one of our longest standing
partners and that's Children's Connection. They are an adoption agency providing
services for domestic infant adoption and embryo donation and adoption throughout the
U .S., as well as they do home studies and post -adoption support to families in
Texas. Thank you, Children's Connection.
Now I wanna talk about some other parenting strategies for tools in our toolkit,
so to speak, for our harder -to parent kids. The first is identify your triggers.
And boy, that's, and it's often hard to know our triggers because it seems like our
triggers are, are logical. They should be. Dad gum and everybody would be triggered
by this kid doing that. So how can we identify our triggers? So I write a lot
about this in the survival guide. And it is literally about, first of all, you
notice it because what we are quite bad at really is squashing triggers down so for
example say your trigger is lying. Yes it was, thank you.
And the Charles lying to you, what happens is we tend to not notice that's
triggered us we are we just feel enraged, and we're not noticing. So that's part of
our reflection artists would go I wonder why you know when when I knew it was like
how did I feel how did I react well I reacted very strongly I wonder what it is
about the lying that triggers me what does lying mean to me and then I just kind
of play it back and play it back then what why is that important in my life was
there a time in my life when you know lying had a very big impact on me was it
that my parents were very, very strong on telling the truth. And there was
consequences if you didn't, you got, you can identify that yourself, actually.
But the first step is actually noting, like noticing you are triggered. Because
that's really, that's a real skill, I think. We tend to just keep going, just keep
going with it and not cycle back. So that's part of our reflection. Absolutely. And
we tend to think of our triggers as, well, of course, I'm triggered because they
did this. I mean, it's as opposed to realizing that our emotions were bigger than
the event. It takes self -reflection. All right, another thing, another one of your
tools, is to set realistic expectations. And that sounds obvious,
but with our kids who have experienced trauma or have experienced prenatal exposure.
Having our expectations be realistic is crucial isn't it?
Yes it is because you see the problem is our children are built for survival,
they're very good at looking like they're managing sometimes, they're very good at
smiling and saying everything's okay and you know it's very difficult when you've got
a child who is chronologically eight where you have people around you saying, he
should be able to, he should be able to do this. Well, you know, if you've missed
the first three years of life getting all those foundation stones in place, you're
gonna be stuck. It's not just at your three years behind because physically you
might be eight and emotionally you might be two. And then what we see is people
around us looking at our eight -year -old behaving emotionally too and saying they
shouldn't be doing it and it gets very very difficult for us but if we understand
and the way we do that you ask yourself one little question when you see the
behavior and you watch what your child's doing you ask yourself at what age would I
expect to see a child behaving like that and when you do that you get the
emotional age your child is at right now so and then you respond to them at that
age not at the fact you know you don't get them to say well why are you still
crying for a drink you know it's 10 look at night and you're eight years old you
should learn to go to sleep what I'm thinking is this is a 18 month old they
can't settle what would you have done with an 18 month old you would have sued
them you'd have rocked them you'd have given them a drink of milk let's respond to
that emotional age because an unmet need remains unmet until it's met and we have
to go back and we have to meet those unmet needs so to help our children move on
to the next stage. Okay another tool you have is to use silliness or playfulness.
Give us an example of what you mean by that. So for example one day I was sitting
in the house with my youngest daughter she was the only one left at home. All the
others have moved out one by one, which was lovely. And the next one up came for
a visit. So as she rang the doorbell, or I think you heard her key in a lot, my
youngest Charlie was like straight away, she started going up straight away, she was
triggered and I could see. So at that point, my playfulness brain comes in, I need
to do something now to regulate her. So I jumped up, put on some really happy
music. I said oh I haven't done my exercises today come do my exercise with me
Charlie I started doing the you know these dancing about and she laughed jumped up
and started dancing with me so that lowers her cortisol levels and we know that
children can't feel fear and joy simultaneously so she's feeling joy the fear which
is fueling her anger about her sister coming in and taking taking her space, that's
gone away. So it's got to be in the moment and it's got to be pretty quick. But,
you know, I used to have quite a lot of laughs with it myself actually. And now
I'm afraid I'm the one who embarrasses my children and they're the ones that tell
me to stop. - Oh, that is the joy of parenting older kids. I'm right there with
you. Another tool is remove the audience. What do you me by that.
So sometimes our children, you know, because they're testing us out and they want to
see if we're safe, they will do things to elicit a response from us. And it's part
of being that steam train and moving on. So one of the ways I did that, say, for
example, I'm getting ready to go to school, we've got a video on this actually on
YouTube. So we're getting ready to go to school, we're just about to walk out the
door, the child's got put their slippers on, but they haven't got their shoes, and
they're just being silly and I'm not going. So I know the more I interact with
that, the worse it's gonna get. I know that. So what I do is I do the opposite
and I go, oh, great, okay, well, we'll just wait here while I wait for a few
seconds. I've just got to make a quick phone call actually. So I'm removing my
attention from what's going on and I'm making a call, a pretend call obviously to
someone who doesn't exist and the phone is on silence so it's not going to ring
and I say oh hello you know yes we would normally be going to school but so -and
-so has decided to wear her slippers today that's funny isn't it anyway I'll put the
kettle on and now obviously your brain is thinking I've got to get to I've got to
get into school I need to but actually the more we engage ourselves and that
behavior the worse it's going to get well the child wants my attention back so
they've gone off they've put their shoes on "Mum, come on, I'm ready. Come on,
let's go. We need to go to school. They want me off the phone." So I'm able to
keep up my empathic commentary on the phone call. I can talk about the child and
say, "Oh dear," you know, I think, I wonder if she's worried about going to school.
I can stay present, but my tension looks like it's elsewhere. So that really helps.
Going into the kitchen and starting on dinner or going and drawing a bath for
yourself or something that our attention is often fuel and some things if we remove
the fuel the fire but dies out naturally. Absolutely. Here's another tool help kids
show they are sorry rather than demand they say they are sorry. That's a great one.
Talk to us about that one. Yeah so our children you know they do usually want to
put things right you know they do feel this kind of disconnect but they don't know
how to put things right and we can often get into a battle where we're demanding
that the children say sorry. I've been there and then they say you're sorry they
say they're sorry and they say it like sorry and you go no okay you got to say
it like you mean it then you think who is the adult in this room clearly not me.
Yeah and it's a really easy track to get into So like lying, you know,
we don't want to paint ourselves into a corner with that. So I'm not going to ask
my children to say sorry, I'm going to say, so for example, my son playing in a
soft play place with another child, because that's always what parents really struggle
with is what other people think, you know, he's bashed another kid and the mother
is going, oh, he needs to apologize. So what I do is I take my son over he's
with me and I say to the little boy I'm really sorry that William hurt you if he
could say sorry to you he would say this this is what he would say so maybe now
William and I would say the apology and now maybe William what we could do we'll
go and buy this little boy a little a little snack and give him that to show so
so we would go and and he would come with me. So I'm keeping him close to me. So
as we go by that, and then he gives the child. So he's showing the child he's
sorry, and the child is feeling better, and the mom's feeling better. But I'm not
saying again, you will stand there until you give me a meaningless apology.
Yeah, because that's a fool's errand. All right, you mentioned the phone strategy
above, but that's another tool. And you mentioned it as a way of diverting
attention. But there are other ways we can use our handy phones which are always
with us anyway. What I particularly liked was being able to pay a compliment but it
meant more to especially one of my children if it was not directed to them but if
they heard me on the phone to my mother or my husband or whatever saying oh you
know so -and -so did that the kindest thing today I was so impressed and I will
admit that every once in a while it was done without anybody on the other end of
the phone. So any other ways that we can use our appendage called the phone to
help us in parenting these kids? Yeah, absolutely. So for example, I used to take
photos in the moment of the child when they were doing certain facial expressions
because my children didn't know how to smile and I would do that and I'd say
that's what that's what you're smiling.
you stay on that lamppost that's that's great I haven't checked my emails today I'm
just going to check my emails and I just literally I'm looking at my phone and
just looking at it and of course the charts hold with the lamppost now they don't
really want to hold on the lamppost anymore there's no point to hold you onto the
lamppost and I'm like no no stay stay still lamppost I know where you are yeah no
I'm going now mum we're not we're not going to do it so I got handed I love your
concept of a payback time explain that. I used it and I love it.
Yeah, so this is like, so if if I've had to do something, which has taken me a
lot of time, then the child owes me that time back. So because sometimes that's in
that's really useful for these situations where you can't think of anything. Yes,
that's how I used it. Exactly. Yeah, where it's like, you know, it's nothing
obvious. There's no obvious natural consequence here. So for example, you know,
I had this rule, one of my boundaries, certainly as the children got older was that
I would do their washing, I would take it downstairs and then they would need to
put it away. We got to a point where they could more or less do that. I know it
was, it was very, it took a long time. But anyway, so I took the washing down,
put it on their bed, instead of putting it away, one of them would always kind of
hide it or crumple it all up and put it back in the washing basket. So that would
take me time to sort it out. So I would rather than say, well, you're going to
have
I need to use that for something else. So I'm sorry, I can't take you there. So
you need to help me with this so we can get it done quicker. So I might say, so
you can help me with washing up. That's gonna pay back some of the time and then
we're gonna get ahead of ourselves. So I would help get the child to help me to
make up the time that I'd lost, so yeah. - And you could also extend that to
energy. I've spent so much energy, I am now too tired to vacuum the living room,
even though I had planned on vacuuming the living room, but now I don't have time
to vacuum the living room, and I don't have the energy because I'm tired now from
having done all this. Thank you so much for being able to do that for me. All
right, and the last, you have lots of tools in your books, but the last one that
we have time to talk about is, and I want to, 'cause I think it is so important,
is admitting it when we make a mistake. and it comes naturally for some adults or
some parents and it comes really hard for some parents. Why is it so important that
we do it? I think it's about saying to the child, you know, we're human,
people make mistakes. I think that the error we sometimes can make, we can overdo
it. So I get a lot of parents that will contact me and say, oh, I made a mistake
and I did this and I'm so sorry and I don't know what to do and I'm such a
terrible parent. So I always say to me hang on a minute let's get a bit of
perspective because do you know what you know the amount of times I say to my
children yeah I'm sorry I had a bad day yesterday I know I was a bit short
tempered they would say were you did you it's often worse in our minds than it is
for the children so it's still important to acknowledge that and say you know I had
a bad day so I I was being tired and grumpy. My daughter once said to me, "Oh,
was that a bad day?" She said, "Oh, well, a bad day with you is like a day in
Disneyland compared to a good day with my birth parents." - Well, that's gonna say
for the rest of the parents out there, don't expect to hear that. - No, it's
wonderful if you would hear it, but you probably won't. - It was some years,
it was Some years on. Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you so much for talking with us
today about therapeutic parenting. And I truly appreciate it. Will you also share
with us about the new book now? You have two books. The first is the A to Z of
therapeutic parenting. But you have a new book that just came out, the A to Z of
Survival Strategies for therapeutic parents. So what prompted you, and tell us about
the new book, what prompted you to write an addendum, a sequel? - Well,
it's interesting. It's because, you know, the A to Z in England, the first one has
been like the bestselling book in adoption, fostering in the UK for four years now.
And I started thinking, you know, that's great for the children, for helping someone
about the children. And then I started thinking, you know, it can be so isolating.
Sometimes we do have these bad days. Our Facebook pages are full of parents saying,
I'm a terrible person. I'm overwhelmed. I don't know if I can do this anymore. This
is really difficult. And I just thought, I'm going to talk to that. I'm going to
talk to the fact that we sometimes have days when we get up in the morning and we
really don't want to carry on. It's But also, I wanted to make people laugh because
do you know what? Our lives are ridiculous. We do things, we get into situations
that nobody could possibly imagine. And so there's a lot,
there is swearing in it. There are some very funny stories in it. But it's
actually, it's all about us. It's all about how we carry on and how we do that.
and there's not a bath bomb in sight. It's all about practicalities, those anxieties,
those feelings of, you know, when people are criticising you, perfect parents,
extended family, what do you say, how do you say it, all of that. It's very
practical and I loved the actual, say this, say that, you know, that's,
I am immensely on the practical end of things and I so appreciated the practicality
of it. So thank you for writing it. Thank you, Sara Nash, for being with us today.
This has been great. I truly appreciate it. Okay.