Latest / Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist / S2E10 - Reflecting Feelings with Your Child at Home: From Theory to Practice

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S2E10 - Reflecting Feelings with Your Child at Home: From Theory to Practice · Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist

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  You're listening to the
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  Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
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  Hi, I'm Doctor Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.
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  This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast
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  where I give you insight awareness and enlightenment about
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  your parenting and your relationship with your kids.
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  In today's episode, we have completed the four pillars.
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  So we kind of did a reboot started season two,
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  addressing some of the foundational fundamental stuff
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  from the child-centered play therapy perspective.
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  So now we're going to look at those four pillars broken down in individual episodes,
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  but from a practical application standpoint, in other words,
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  now that you know what the skill is and how to do it.
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  Now we're going to look at what scenarios and
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  what that looks like day to day with your children
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  so that you can actually implement and practically
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  apply what you've learned about each individual pillar.
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  So we're gonna go back to the reflecting feelings pillar,
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  which was the first one that we covered.
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  And
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  it's,
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  for me, it's really interesting because
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  what we've learned as a child-centered play therapy field
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  is that even the most highly trained child-centered play therapists
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  use the reflecting feeling skill the least often.
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  So that says something I think this is actually
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  a very tricky one and it shouldn't be right.
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  It seems so simple, it seems so clear you feeling word, you know, how,
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  how difficult is that really?
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  To say you're excited to a child.
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  But there are a lot of details in the reflecting,
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  feeling skill and it can create quite a
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  bit of hesitation and unknown and discomfort.
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  And there's lots of reasons why I think that it's a struggle.
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  So first of all, if you find it difficult know that you're in good company,
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  so do the professionals,
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  so do other parents.
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  But I think that if we think through scenarios and we actually
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  understand what that would look like on a day to day,
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  moment by moment basis with our children,
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  it makes things feel a little bit less overwhelming.
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  So that's what this episode is all about.
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  The path to calm, confident and in control. Parenting starts now.
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  All right.
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  So the beauty of the reflecting feelings pillar is that
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  kids give us so many opportunities to use it.
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  Think about
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  over the course of a day, how many emotions your child expresses
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  and or over the course of an hour, how many emotions your child expresses expresses?
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  How about over the course of a minute sometimes.
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  Have you ever noticed how a child can go from
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  blissfully happy to fuming mad in about 6.7 seconds.
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  So the emotional roller coaster nature of children
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  makes it really,
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  really conducive to using this skill once we're comfortable with it and we feel that
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  we have a handle on when to use it and how to do it.
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  So as they are emoting, right?
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  And let's go back a little bit set, set a foundation here,
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  kids are emotional beings.
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  They live in the moment
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  they are here and now whatever feeling is driving
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  that specific moment,
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  that is what is, is it going to emerge from your child?
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  They're likely not going to talk,
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  they're not likely not going to have a conversation with you,
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  but they will demonstrate the feeling that they are experiencing.
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  So when we circle back to the idea that kids aren't rational, right?
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  They don't have the logical, reasonable
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  intellectual process that we do.
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  Everything about them is emotionally driven,
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  which really makes it very convenient, right?
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  Because that means we have all kinds of opportunities
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  to acknowledge what they're feeling.
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  So what does that look like? Practically speaking
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  throughout your day?
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  Let's start with positive emotions first.
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  So your child comes home from school and
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  shows you a grade on a test, shows you an art project. They made
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  shows you the work that they completed.
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  Whatever the scenario is,
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  you can reflect
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  that they are proud, you can reflect that they are glad
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  you can reflect that they are excited.
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  So you feeling word and then optional qualifier,
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  you're so proud of your grade.
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  You're so excited about your work.
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  You're so glad that you got to bring your art project home.
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  You're happy to show me what you made.
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  So notice that
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  whatever
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  you sense the child is feeling and let's go back. Right.
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  We look for the child's at the child's eyes, for the q
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  whatever you think the child is expressing
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  in that moment,
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  you say it back to them.
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  You can do this all day long.
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  Every time your child smiles, every time your child laughs,
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  every time your child communicates that they are feeling a positive emotion,
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  you just want to say it out loud to them
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  and your tone of voice and your facial expression needs to be congruent.
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  So if it's an, it's a positive emotion,
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  you're going to elevate the tone of your voice and you're going to have a happy
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  emotional expression on your face.
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  So notice that I don't say
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  you're proud of your art,
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  that's not congruent.
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  A child's not going to understand why you would say
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  that phrase in that tone of voice.
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  So we have to make sure that there's congruence there. So we would say
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  you're really proud of your art
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  because that sounds like it matches the scenario.
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  And if you were looking at my face,
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  you would have noticed that my face matched that scenario.
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  OK? And then conversely, if you're
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  noticing that your child is expressing a negative emotion
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  and by the way, for clarification's sake, let me make it clear
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  when I say negative emotion. I don't mean that as a judgmental word, negative.
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  In other words,
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  I think it's bad that they're expressing this.
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  It's if you look at the emotional spectrum,
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  if you
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  divide it up half and half the central point of that would be a neutral feeling
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  and then everything to the right of that would be all of the positive emotions
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  and then everything to the left of it would be all of the negative emotions.
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  So just for category sake, we're talking about positive and negative, not that
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  I have any kind of
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  problem with the fact that they are expressing
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  a less than happy emotion. Ok?
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  And we need to be careful to categorize it as such.
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  Not that we don't like it when our kids are upset and we like it when they're not upset,
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  that's not what I mean by positive and negative.
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  Just wanted to make sure that was known.
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  All right. So
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  when they're expressing a negative emotion, then
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  we want to make sure that our tone of voice is lower
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  and we wanna make sure that our face is neutral.
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  So then when the child says that someone was mean to them at school
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  when they missed their soccer goal,
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  so they were at practice and they tried to make a shot and they missed
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  when
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  they got in a fight with their sibling and
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  they thought their sibling was mean to them,
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  any of those scenarios, they're feeling a negative emotion.
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  So you would say
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  you're disappointed
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  that you didn't make the goal.
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  You're frustrated with your sister,
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  you're annoyed
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  about whatever happened at school.
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  So notice that your tone of voice and facial
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  expression needs to be congruent there as well.
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  And here's what I think is the biggest takeaway that will really
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  help you use this skill effectively and consistently with your kids.
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  You can't expect for them to give you a verbal cue
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  and reflect that
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  sometimes they do, especially if they're tattling.
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  It's really,
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  really helpful when they come and tattle because you
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  almost always can reflect a feeling out of that.
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  But if they're not going to come and tattle on someone or blame something,
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  it's a little bit trickier and then
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  you're not necessarily working with verbal expression
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  most often it's nonverbal.
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  So you look for their body language, you look for their posture,
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  you look for their facial expression, you look for their eyes,
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  you look for what they're not saying
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  and you reflect that to them.
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  So we can't always expect them to come and say
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  my brother just took my car from me and I was playing with it. Well, now, you know
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  what they're feeling because they told you the
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  situation and they expressed their feelings verbally.
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  But you can't count on that.
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  You have to get proficient
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  at being able to recognize and reflect their feelings when they say nothing.
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  And that comes with a lot of attention.
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  It comes with a lot of attunement
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  it comes with
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  purposefully engaging and watching and observing
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  and it takes time.
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  So this is something that you're going to have to work on.
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  This doesn't come easily. It seems like it should. Right.
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  Oh, I can reflect my kids' feelings. You're happy,
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  but it's far too easy to miss opportunities waiting
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  for a child to actually tell us something.
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  They're not verbal.
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  So the likelihood of them telling you their emotions
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  is far less than when we just have to
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  pay attention and we figure out what they're feeling
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  and their emotional vocabulary is the better for it
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  when we're able to reflect that back to them.
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  So my last thought for you is as you're working on this skill.
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  So let's kind of recap. So they're gonna give you all kinds of opportunities to do it.
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  You're going to make sure that your tone of voice
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  and your facial expression matches what the child is feeling.
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  And then my final thought is you do not need to add fluff, nor should you.
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  In other words, you don't need to say you seem, I can tell you must feel
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  you're obviously
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  whatever emotion
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  you can leave out all of those fluff words and just say
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  your
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  emotion.
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  You are sad, you are elated,
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  you are joyful,
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  you are irritated,
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  you are whatever. You don't have to qualify it with these hypothetical.
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  Maybe I'm kind of thinking you might be,
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  it's just far more effective to eliminate the
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  fluff and get right to the feeling reflection.
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  And as I mentioned in the pillar episode,
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  they will redirect you if you're off track.
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  So don't be afraid to just say you are whatever
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  because that actually is much more
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  effective for their emotional vocabulary development.
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  It's effective for your connection with the child.
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  And it makes it clear that that's what they communicated to you
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  and they always have the opportunity to correct you if they need to.
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  So I hope that is helpful.
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  I hope that that gives you some direction this week as you're working to practice,
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  that's what I would actually encourage you to do. Your challenge is
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  to really focus on reflecting feelings this week in lots of opportunities,
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  you're going to have hundreds of them,
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  maybe even thousands over the course of seven days.
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  So
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  it would definitely be helpful for you to practice, get used to it,
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  get more comfortable with it
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  and just keep those three things in mind.
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  And hopefully that will kind of make you feel like you have
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  a little better handle on what it looks like to actually apply it
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  with your kids throughout the week. In any given scenario.
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  I would love to have two episodes a week.
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  So a few of you have emailed me questions and I've been answering those on Thursday
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  if you would like to have me answer a question.
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  And this can be a question about anything,
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  any parenting topic whatsoever.
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  Any question you have any struggle that you have whatever is driving you nuts,
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  keeping you up at night,
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  whatever making you wanna pull your hair out and cry in the bathroom alone,
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  whatever's going on.
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  If you want to shoot me an email, I would love to hear from you,
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  brenna@thekidcounselor.com.
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  If enough of you submit questions every single week,
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  I will put out a Thursday episode as well.
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  I would like to have that two times a week
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  schedule, but obviously that depends on the amount of questions that I get.
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  So if you have been kind of struggling with something wondering about something,
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  please shoot me an email. I would love to answer your question on air.
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  And if you don't want me to use your name, you can just request that
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  and I'll keep you anonymous
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  and that way you can get your question answered and you don't have to make your name
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  public.
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  So I would love to hear from you if you would
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  like to reach out brenna@thekidcounselor.com two Ns
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  and it's a singular kid.
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  So brenna@thekidcounselor.com or you can
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  oh sorry if you can call me if you're in the States
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  813-812-5525. And that is a voicemail line where you can
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  record your question
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  that I can answer for you as well. All right, super grateful for you.
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  Love on your kids.
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  This week reflect their feelings and I hope that you see
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  the benefit of that as your kids feel heard and understood
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  and loved. That's a very powerful connection.
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  When we reflect their feelings, we'll talk
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  again soon. Bye.
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  Thank you for listening
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  to the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks
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  for more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter.
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  Please go to www.playtherapyparenting.com.