Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin, LMFT and Ronda Evans, LMFT where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today is our second installment in the Attachment in Action Series: Pre-School Stage (3-4 years old). All Aboard !

1:00. A main developmental aspect of this age/stage is the growing ability of perception and absorbing information into informational processing and emotional processing systems. Their thinking is absolutist (black and white).

5:30. Being exposed to differing perspectives represents an opportunity to learn and practice the skill of negotiation in communication/language. This reframes negotiation as a helpful, adaptive skill to learn and practice in the safety of the dyadic interaction.

8:00. In negotiation, both kids and caregivers walk away with something, and not only a memory of a power struggle. The benefits of negotiation are: kids learn to consider differing perspectives; kids learn to translate their internal wants, not wants, desires into verbal language that an adult can understand (self expression, and an emotional need of feeling valued); and, the relationship is intact.

12:20. We use an example from the book Attachment in Family Therapy to describe the stressor (conflicting needs and priorities between adult and child) and different ways parents can respond in this moment.

13:40. Authoritarian parent/caregiver response. The downside of this response is it triggers a power struggle, and the child does not learn differing perspectives and needs of others, and learns to inhibit (not have a voice, inhibit feelings, and feels they don't matter). The pre-school years are a good opportunity to give your child "safe repetitions" (practice).

16:30. Permissive parent/caregiver response. The downside of this response is the child learns they are in charge and in control and they feel overlooked, and not secure. Kids are not provided a predictable structure, rules and sense of security. 

23:00. Re-capping the parent's response from the example in the book which focuses on helping the kid develop the skill of taking other people's perspectives through this negotiation conversation.

26:00. The parent response that values negotiation communication is parenting strategy that keeps the child's developmental stage and needs at the forefront of the dyadic interaction for the benefit of the child.

28:30. We must consider the context that families are in -- generational, economic, threats and dangers. Parent responses make sense in the context.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

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