Chasing The Connection

What to do with our childrens aggression, in all its forms and how can play help?

We talk about using "I wonder..." to have empathic conversations with our children who display frustration. We discuss the kind of play which is 'escapism' and whether this is sometimes healthy and sometimes not.

'To fix or not to fix their behaviours'. A compliance-based approach tries to fix children. In contrast the LEAD approach is relational, child-led, and reflective. We reflect on what's missing, what's driving their behaviour and support the roots of their development, feeling safe and connected.

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to contact Laura to have a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

'To fix or not to fix their behaviours'. A compliance-based approach tries to fix children. In contrast the LEAD approach is relational, child-led, and reflective. We reflect on what's missing, what's driving their behaviour and support the roots of their development, feeling safe and connected.

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to contact Laura to have a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

As we start the year full of hope for our families, we consider an unlikely source of happiness......tears of sadness. When we, or our children, 'have a good cry', it helps our bodies release stress hormones so they don't get stuck inside. Crying helps us clear out the emotional stuff so we can think and function better on the other side.

References:

Facebook/Hand in Hand Parenting, to find a Listening Partner

Running on Empty by Jonice Webb

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to contact Laura for a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

Our New Year starts with a passage from Gerard Durrell as we explore his insights about mothering from his childhood memories; the importance of 'hope' in the face of what can feel 'hope-less'; self compassion as a predecessor to being compassionate parents and navigating the emotional storms with emotional buffering.

Refernces: books by Gerard Durrell, The Brave Learner by Jule Bogart

For moredirect support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to conact Laura for a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapiost with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

Our last episode for 2023 takes us on a brief reflection of past themes, as well as introducing the PRRR model as another way to summarise our parenting approach and WIN as a way of remembering to be empathic with our kids.

The PRRR model - Protect Relate Regulate Reflect - comes from TISUK (www.traumainformedschools.co.uk) which supports schools to become trauma and mental health-informed. WIN represents the following sentence starters: I Wonder, I Imagine, I Notice.

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to contact Laura for a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

We take a deep dive into Neufeld's 6 levels of attachment so we can better understand our kids relationship needs. We weave this in with having realistic expectations (not being the 'perfect' parent), and the importance of their freedom to play and freedom to rest in their relationship with us.

Here's a short explanation that summarises Neufeld's attahcment stages:

https://youtu.be/z7LHQwKpryw?si=kr3UHjb2gG94JGKd

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to contact Laura to have a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

This week we take a look at some of the places we experience our childrens' resistance and how that can lead to power struggles. We explain the natural instinct of 'counterwill' as our children feel our 'demands'. And we follow this up with lots of ideas! Once you understand your child's counterwill, it's a natural step towards reducing its presence, particularly when you want to be in your caring LEAD.

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to contact Laura to have a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

We all make sacrifices for the sake of our kids but sometimes they are very different to what we expected and planned for. There can be so much to let go of, from our vision of what it was supposed to look like. In this episode we explore what that looks like in our families and why this process of letting go is so important to staying in the caring LEAD with our children.

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, you are warmly invited to contact Laura to have a free chat at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in children and teens mental health and well-being.

Remembrance Sunday has brought up losses and nostalgia for when our children were younger, for all the things we wish we'd known then, for missed opportunities for connection. On the flip side, we talk about building our family now, embedding our values and creating opportunities for connection.

For more direct support with your parenting challenges, contact Laura at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com to book a free chat. Laura is a registered therapist with a specialism in childrens' mental health and well-being.

We value independence and getting ahead so we unwittingly push our children towards it earlier and earlier. But Nature has her own plan! Our children need to feel safe to depend on us so they can rest in the relationship and deepen their connection.

In this episode Amy, Mike and Laura talk about the importance of children depending on us, how all growth comes from psychological rest and how play can help us out when we are struggling with our caretaking provision.

For more direct support with your child or young person, book a free chat with Laura Newman MSc. RCSLT, The Attachment Speechie, at www.ReadySteadyConnect.com