-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-

Hayley Simons is a Child Development and Behaviour Specialist, Certified Child Sleep Consultant, and owner of Hayley the Parent Coach. In her Canada-based practice, Hayley supports millennial parents who want to parent in a way that honours and respects their child, and breaks the cycle of punitive parenting patterns. Learn more at www.hayleytheparentcoach.ca.

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 

• To enjoy playing with a child, pay close attention to their interests and find activities that both of you enjoy. 
• Gather hints about their interests by paying attention to their environment, and find gateways to connection.
• To help the child create a secure attachment, try to understand and respond appropriately to their specific needs. You are trying to build a safe world with a level of predictability. 
• In difficult moments, the trick is to maintain the connection. Children often feel adults don’t understand what they are going through. Instead of trying to change or stop the behaviour or create a power struggle, connect with the child, get down to their level and look at the world from their perspective. 
• Use simple direct questions to help the child connect with how they were feeling. Did that make you feel bad? What about this didn’t feel good? Focus on simple, accessible language. 
• When giving agency and autonomy, make sure they are age appropriate. For instance, you can offer two options instead of a broad question asking what they would like to eat. The result is that the child can feel more control over their environment. 
• You can apologize to your kids when you make a mistake. 
• If you receive criticism of yourself as a parent from your children, receive the comments with grace without taking things personally. Perception is reality. No matter how hard you try, they won’t like something you did.  

IDEAS: 

• Kids naturally don’t care about you doing the right thing, or filling the space with conversation. They just want to play with them on their level. 
• Kids like concrete, specific words and questions, not vague questions about the past or the future (ex. What are you doing today?)
• Play schemas are the ways kids make sense of the world through repeated behaviours. Help them find a healthy expression of the schema. 
• We need to model how to sit with emotions without viewing them as good or bad. 
• Often when they are being punitive, parents are feeling a loss of control and are focusing on the surface level difficult behaviour. 
• Children don’t know how to emotionally regulate, that is our job. It’s not helpful for the adult to freak out. They are still learning what is socially acceptable and how to express themselves.
• You can’t force a child to do something don’t want to do or aren’t ready for. Kids are people and we cannot control them. 
• When we set boundaries with children, we are doing it to teach what is ok and what isn’t ok, without shaming and while keeping their dignity intact. 
• Filling your own cup as a parent is important. As a consequence, you can show up for your kids more consistently, with calm, patience and the level of responsiveness that is needed. 
• Parents need a support system. They need to understand that they can do it all, what their own needs are, what makes them feel good, how to set boundaries, and how to sit with uncomfortable feelings.  
• It’s ok for things to be hard.
• There is no need to try for perfect parenting, that doesn’t exist. 

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