Latest / Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist / S2E21 - Presence: The Art of True Engagement with Your Child

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S2E21 - Presence: The Art of True Engagement with Your Child · 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 Dr. Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.
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  This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where
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  I give you insight awareness and
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  enlightenment about your parenting and your relationship with your kids.
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  In today's episode, we are going to talk about
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  your presence with your kids.
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  So we spent a lot of time talking through the reflective responses.
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  We spent a lot of time talking about
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  the pillars and actually how to practically
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  implement those with your kids at home.
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  But
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  I've recently had a lot of instances where
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  I've seen parents and their kids physically together
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  but
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  not engaged or attuned to each other at all.
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  And I feel like this is a huge hindrance
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  to creating the kind of relationship with our kids that we need.
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  So we're going to talk about what it means to be engaged, what it means to be present,
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  what it means to be attuned with our children.
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  Because if we miss those components,
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  it's really difficult to establish the kind
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  of relationship that we've been working toward
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  with the play therapy, parenting approach
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  The path to calm, confident and in control parenting starts now.
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  Ok. So I just went on a trip, my family and I went to Kansas City and to Arlington, Texas
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  and we are following the Rays to all 30 ballparks. So we caught the Rays
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  versus the Royals and then the Rays versus the Rangers.
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  And so we were gone about a week, we were on
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  lots of different airplanes because we had one way
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  tickets to all of these places
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  and on the way home, coming back to Tampa,
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  I was sitting in the row with a dad and his son
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  and it was a 2.5 hour flight
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  and I was so pleasantly surprised
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  and it filled my heart up
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  at
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  the way that dad
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  spent time that entire plane ride
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  to engage with his son.
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  They colored together,
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  they cuddled together, they talked with each other.
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  They watched a show together,
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  they
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  looked through pictures of the little boy at one point said I miss mommy
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  and the dad got out his phone and went into his albums and
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  showed his son pictures of his mom because he was missing her.
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  And I spent, I was reading a book,
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  but I spent the entire 2.5 hours going.
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  This is play therapy, parenting,
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  this is the presence, this is the attunement, this is the engagement
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  that forms the connection
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  that we want
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  because we can be physically present with our kids.
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  We can be sitting in a seat next to them on a plane.
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  We can be sitting in a car with them, we can be sitting in a room with them,
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  we can be sitting at the
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  the dining room table with them.
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  But it does not mean that we are attuned present or engaged
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  because being physically with someone is not the same
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  thing as emotionally or mentally or psychologically present.
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  And what do we talk about over and over and over again?
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  If we want
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  to have the kind of parent child relationship,
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  we have to focus on the relationship
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  that we want.
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  It all comes back to a relationship.
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  And if you started listening in season two,
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  I encourage you to go back to season one because
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  I spend a lot of time talking about the relationship
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  in the earlier episodes.
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  Why?
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  Because the relationship trumps everything.
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  If you don't have the solid relationship with your kids
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  that you could,
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  you lose your influence,
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  you lose your bond, you lose the trust,
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  you lose communication
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  and I can go on and on.
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  I mean,
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  literally a laundry list of all the things that are affected when
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  you don't have the kind of relationship that you could have.
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  So when I was looking at this, dad and his son in my row on the way home on the plane,
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  I just thought to myself,
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  this is what play therapy parenting is all about. This is it embodied in real time.
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  Ironically, my office manager took a picture, we have
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  cameras in all of the offices and all of the rooms at my center.
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  Obviously, we work with minors.
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  So we for safety and security and liability. We have cameras in every room
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  and we have an area specifically for children and parents to play
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  while they're waiting for their appointment. Or if it's a sibling, waiting for
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  one of their other children,
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  you know, their brother or sister that are actually in a play session,
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  they have a place to play as well.
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  So my office manager took a screenshot
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  of a father and daughter in the play area.
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  The daughter sitting at the table playing with something,
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  the dad is sitting right next to her and he's staring at the screen of his phone
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  and she sent me that picture with the email that said something like how
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  sad is this or how tragic is this or something along those lines.
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  And, you know, I think about that
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  he would probably say
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  innocently. I mean, obviously he wasn't trying to ignore his, ignore his daughter.
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  That wasn't my implication,
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  but he would probably innocently say, oh, I was playing with her.
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  I was in the room with her like we, yeah, we played for the whole hour,
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  but you were physically present. Only
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  your mind was somewhere else. Your thoughts were somewhere else.
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  Your attention was somewhere else. Your engagement was somewhere else
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  that's not forming the relationship that we need
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  to make sure that we build
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  the kind of parenting
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  approach that we want
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  So what do we need to do to ensure
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  that we have the presence and attunement and
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  engagement that we ideally need to have.
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  So number one
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  work on having eye contact with your kids,
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  it's really hard to be disengaged when you're looking at your child.
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  So if that means you need to put your phone away,
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  if that means you need to close your laptop,
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  if that means you need to turn the TV off,
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  if that means you need to stop paying bills at that moment.
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  One of the principles that we talked about ages
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  ago in season one was a 30-second burst of attention
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  when your child is trying to get your attention.
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  We often are notorious for saying, hang on, hold on, I'm busy. Wait, I'm talking.
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  You need to be patient.
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  Uh You don't interrupt, I'm right in the middle of doing.
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  But a 30-second burst of attention is I can give you 30 seconds.
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  So you get on the child's level, you look them in the eye
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  and you say,
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  OK, tell me,
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  show me
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  what
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  for 30 seconds, we can always give 30 seconds away.
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  But I bring that up to say you're on
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  their level and you're making eye contact with them.
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  You're not in the other room going. What?
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  That's, that's not relationship,
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  relationship is
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  eye contact. It's really hard to be distracted.
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  It's really hard to be disengaged when you're looking at your children.
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  Second principle,
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  you use the reflective responses.
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  So you're going to
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  say back to your child what they're saying to you,
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  it's really hard
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  to be focused on something else and hear your children.
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  And this is probably for a later episode,
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  but be mindful that there's a huge difference between hearing and listening.
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  Hearing is involuntary, listening is voluntary.
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  So even if you hear your children, it doesn't mean you're listening to your children
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  listen
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  so that you can respond back to them with what they've told you.
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  So when they say,
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  oh my gosh,
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  we were on the playground today and I went up to the
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  slide and it was so hot and the whole way down,
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  it was burning my legs.
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  That's a Florida example. I know sorry
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  slides get really hot in Florida on the playground.
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  You can tell where I've lived my whole life, right?
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  So your child says that to you
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  and you say
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  whoa, the slide was so hot. It burned your legs.
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  That is relationship building
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  because you're reflecting back to the child what they've told you,
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  guess what you listened,
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  you couldn't do that if you weren't listening
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  or you track their behavior.
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  So what you say what you see them doing, you say back to them
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  they are doing donuts with their bike in the
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  driveway and they're laughing and they're having so much fun
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  and you say whoa, you're going around and around in circles
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  that's tracking the child's behavior. But you had to pay attention to notice
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  or you can reflect the child's feeling.
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  So let's go back to the two examples.
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  The slide example, you could say that it shocked your child,
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  it surprised your child.
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  You didn't expect that.
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  That's a feeling reflection for that scenario.
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  The child going around and around in circles doing donuts with the bike.
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  You are so glad
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  to be able to ride your bike.
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  You feel ecstatic
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  that you're making yourself dizzy.
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  There's all kinds of opportunities. We have to reflect our children's feelings,
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  but we have to be engaged.
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  We have to be present and we have to be attuned to their feelings.
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  Remember they're going to demonstrate them nonverbally more often than not.
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  So we have to be looking and paying attention
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  and listening
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  so that we non verbally understand
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  what they're expressing to us
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  and then finally
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  to be really fully present and engaged and
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  attuned so that that relationship can be forged.
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  You really want to try to experience your child's world through your child's eyes.
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  And the only way to do that
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  is to really give undivided focused attention to your kids.
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  And and here's the challenge, right? I know our son is almost 15.
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  I work with parents all day every day. I have for almost two decades.
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  I know how challenging it is
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  to be engaged, present and attuned as a parent all the time.
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  It's impossible actually.
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  So this is not a call to
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  always be completely engaged with your child. You can't,
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  but you can
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  at least once an hour,
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  you can, at least
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  when you are aware of the significance of a moment for your child,
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  you can be purposeful that for this next 15 minutes,
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  I'm going to give you everything I have.
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  And if it's only 15 minutes a day,
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  that 15 minutes is so significant to your kids and
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  to the relationship that you have as their parent.
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  So give what you can.
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  This isn't, this isn't a challenge to be present with your kids every waking moment,
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  but it is a challenge to be present
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  and mindful of it.
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  Hey, I need to give my kids 15 minutes right now.
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  I need to really respond to this. I need to really pay attention.
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  I need to really watch. I need to be attuned. I need to be engaged.
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  I can't just be in the same room
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  or I can't be talking from another room.
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  It's not the same thing.
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  So you're trying to experience your child's world through your child's eyes.
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  What wonder do they experience? What awe do they have? What feeling are they
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  experiencing in that moment?
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  If you focus on experiencing your child's world through your child's eyes,
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  you have to be engaged in prison.
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  So I hope that that is an encouragement to you. I hope that you're able to take that
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  and, and be mindful of that this week because the more we work on the relationship,
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  the more engaged we become
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  and
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  we can be the parent that's staring at a
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  phone in the same room while their child's playing.
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  Or we can be the parent on the plane
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  that spent 2.5 hours just pouring into that little boy,
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  his son's name was Ryan by the way
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  and he was four years old
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  and
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  it was the most endearing sweet
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  interaction
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  and I just smiled almost the whole plane ride home in the midst of reading my book.
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  You know,
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  I didn't want to be that creepy person that stared at the other people in the aisle.
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  But
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  I just kind of smiled almost the whole way home because I was like, yes, like dad,
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  you did it, you did it, you got it.
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  You understand like thi this is what this is what parenting is
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  and that's the parents that we wanna be.
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  That's why you're listening to this podcast.
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  So I encourage you to be mindful of that this week. Relationship matters,
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  attunement, engagement, presence.
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  Those are your challenges for the week.
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  If you'd like to reach out to me, I'd love to hear from you,
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  brenna@thekidcounselor.com.
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  Thank you for the questions that you've been sending in.
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  I really appreciate those and I'll cover those each week as well.
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  And if you haven't already,
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  you can go back and look at all of my archived episodes at
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  www.playtherapyparenting.com
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  You can also sign up for my newsletter there and then I
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  can reach out to you with updates and other news that's noteworthy.
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  So, thanks for being with me this week. Thanks for sharing some time.
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  We'll talk 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