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S2E30 - Reflecting Feelings and Giving Choices: Tips for Overcoming Resistance · Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist

• 0:02
  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 I give
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  you insight awareness and enlightenment about your parenting
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  and your relationship with your kids.
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  In today's episode, I am answering a question from Alison.
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  That's actually a pseudonym. She asked to remain anonymous.
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  So I'm gonna read parts of Alison's email and then we'll dive in
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  before we get into that. I wanted to update you on a couple of things.
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  Many of you have been referred to the podcast by a child-centered
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  play therapist with whom you and your family and your child are working.
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  So I wanted to say hello and welcome. If you have been referred by
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  a therapist, I also have a therapist podcast.
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  So many of the child-centered play Therapists, listen to my podcast
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  as the clinical therapeutic side of it
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  and then refer parents to the parenting podcast. So kind of dual track of CCPT
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  Child Centered Play Therapy,
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  but really glad you're here and happy to have you
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  also, if you would like to reach out to me to have me answer your question,
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  you can do so in two ways you can email me brenna@thekidcounselor.com
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  or you can if you are in the States,
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  call 813-812-5525 and leave a voicemail
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  and I'll be able to answer your question after hearing your voicemail. So,
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  welcome. Glad you're here and thank you for your commitment to your children.
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  All right.
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  So we'll read Alison's email parts of it
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  and then we'll dive into processing this together.
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  Hi, I love the podcast and I found the four pillars very helpful with my son.
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  We are starting with a play therapist and she recommended your podcast.
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  I've always tried to validate his feelings and give him desirable choices,
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  but we are still struggling. The first issue is sometimes
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  when I start to validate his feelings, he will cover his ears and yell. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Just stop talking.
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  He did this tonight while practicing guitar.
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  He missed a note, not a big deal, but to him it was
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  and he shouted, guess I'll just start all over.
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  I started to validate his feelings and he covered his ears and yelled at me.
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  The second issue is around choices
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  I'll use last night as an example.
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  He's a very picky eater and had already eaten most of his preferred foods that day.
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  I said you can choose between grilled cheese or you can choose peanut butter toast.
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  Which do you choose?
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  I should add both of those are typically agreeable meals
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  to which he said neither. I don't want either of those.
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  There's nothing new under the sun, y'all. This is common.
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  Even when we give him choices, he is demanding more control.
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  Hope you can answer both questions.
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  All right.
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  So Alison,
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  thank you so much for the email and we will dive into each of these questions.
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  So the first about validating his feelings,
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  we need to unpack this a little bit
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  because this is actually a very common frustration
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  when parents start to implement some of these things. So let me share my thoughts.
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  The first is
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  you have taken it upon yourself to learn a new way of interacting.
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  You're listening to the podcast, you're practicing
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  and you have started talking differently.
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  So that is your choice and it was a willful decision on your part.
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  Your children are at the mercy of that decision. And what I mean by that is
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  all they know is that you've started talking differently
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  and anything new is usually uncomfortable.
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  It's just a growing pain
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  of you changing and forcing the dynamic in
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  your relationship with your child to change.
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  So that's just kind of to normalize for you.
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  It's very common for kids to push back when you start
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  integrating new strategies because it's not comfortable for them.
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  They're confused, they're not sure what's going on
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  and normal has been erased and new normal is difficult.
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  Also, one of the major reasons that kids will push back is they
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  don't have an emotional vocabulary,
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  which ironically, that's one of the main outcomes of reflecting a child's feeling
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  is so that they develop an emotional vocabulary. But when they don't possess one
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  and you say
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  you're frustrated or you're irritated,
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  you're excited,
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  you're glad,
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  whatever the emotion is,
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  they don't feel a connection to that
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  and it makes them again uncomfortable. I, I hope that you're seeing the thread here.
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  This is a discomfort issue with your son.
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  This is uncomfortable. He does not know how he feels.
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  He does not know the emotions for it.
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  He does not know why you're telling him how you think he feels.
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  He is just struggling because it's all new.
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  Third consideration is that when a child hears
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  his or her emotion reflected,
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  sometimes it makes it more real.
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  And what I mean by that is when you ok, in that scenario, playing the guitar,
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  I'm not sure what you
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  tried to reflect. I'm not sure if you said frustrated,
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  disappointed, defeated,
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  angry. I'm not really sure what you might have said there,
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  but by saying it out loud and a child hearing it,
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  it forces the reality of what's going on and it makes it more real
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  and kids are emotional
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  until about the age of 13, they are completely in their emotions.
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  So they're feeling these things, they're experiencing these things so magically,
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  they're aware of how it makes them feel in their bodies,
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  but they don't necessarily have the word for it.
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  And that's why there's the phrase you speak it
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  into existence or you speak it into truth.
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  The reason why we say that is because once it's set out loud, it becomes more real.
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  So when you say, oh you're defeated,
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  you didn't play that the way you wanted to
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  it now forces him to think about what you're reflecting.
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  It's bridging the gap between the head and the heart.
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  So therefore, when he is in the emotions of that moment,
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  he's living in them.
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  But by saying something out loud, it forces cognitive processing
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  because verbal requires you to think about what's been said,
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  not just experience it as a feeling.
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  So this is also uncomfortable for him.
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  So the moral of the story, Alison,
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  what I'm trying to get at is these are
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  some considerations that I think are helpful for everyone.
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  But what the encouragement of this is, keep doing it
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  because even when he fights you and says,
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  yeah, yeah, yeah, stop talking.
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  Then you reflect that
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  and that would be more of a cognitive reflection.
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  You could reflect the feeling, but you could also say,
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  hm, you don't like it when I said that you were frustrated.
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  So now you're doing a little bit of reflection of content.
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  You can also reflect feeling,
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  uh
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  you're angry that I said you were frustrated.
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  And here's the strategy,
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  soften
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  your tone.
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  You might even whisper it
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  because if the child's just told you to stop talking
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  and you talk immediately.
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  That seems dismissive sometimes and that can
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  elevate the power struggle even more. This is a power struggle.
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  Let's let's call a spade, a spade here
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  with him saying, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stop talking, covering his ears, yelling at you.
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  It's a power struggle
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  because he's overwhelmed and he doesn't know how to handle it.
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  So he's grasping at power because he feels powerless. That makes sense.
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  But when we, when a child says,
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  stop telling me how I feel or stop talking to me or I don't want to listen to you.
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  And then we say, oh, you're frustrated that I'm talking to you
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  that seems dismissive and it can really ramp up the power. So
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  sometimes it's helpful to really, really quietly, sometimes even whisper,
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  oh, you don't like it when I say that
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  and it's in an attempt to honor the fact that the child has told you not to talk,
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  but you are not effectively using the skill without talking.
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  And a lot of parents will give up,
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  a lot of parents will say, ok,
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  my kid fights me every time I reflect feelings and I just,
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  it's not worth the fight and he hates it.
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  So I'm not going to do it anymore.
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  Don't be in that camp
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  lovingly encouragingly, do not be in that camp
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  because if you keep at it,
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  anything worth doing is difficult.
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  If you keep at it,
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  your child builds an emotional vocabulary,
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  your child builds emotional regulation
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  your child has a sense of how he's feeling
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  and he will better be able to
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  communicate and identify those feelings
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  as his emotional IQ increases.
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  So this is a battle of the wills.
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  And one of the things that I tell my therapist all the
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  time and one of the things I tell parents all the time
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  in a battle of the wills with a child, you're not gonna be the one that loses.
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  You just have to outwit at last, outplay
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  to
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  give a nod to Survivor.
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  So
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  you want to make sure that you go into it with
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  no matter how much he hates this, no matter how much he fights me,
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  no matter how many times he tells me to stop doing this,
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  I'm going to continue because he needs me to.
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  That should be the mentality.
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  So I hope that answers that question and is encouraging to you, Alison. OK.
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  Second question around choices
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  also very common, very consistent and no surprise. Again, a power struggle.
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  So when you give him a choice,
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  you are giving him some measure of control, but you have taken away some of his power
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  because now he's pared down to two options.
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  And so therefore in another attempt to have power and control,
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  he's going to say neither
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  very, very common. We get that in the playroom as well.
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  So here's the strategy for that.
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  It's always,
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  you can choose A or you can choose B which do you choose,
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  which is exactly what you said.
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  You can choose grilled cheese or you can choose peanut butter toast,
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  which do you choose?
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  All right. So that was very adherent, very on target with the choice giving process.
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  And then he says neither, I don't want either one of those.
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  We immediately realize that that is in fact a choice.
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  So let's be very
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  clear on that.
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  However, that's not part of the choice. That is essentially choice C
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  and the choices are A and B.
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  So that's exactly how you handle it.
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  Mm
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  And I'm just going to say your
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  son's name is Brandon. I don't know.
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  So you're going to say
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  Brandon, you are choosing neither but that's not part of the choice.
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  The choices are you can choose to have grilled cheese
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  or you can choose to have peanut butter toast,
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  which do you choose?
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  I said neither. I don't want either one of those.
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  Uh
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  You're really disappointed that there aren't other choices but the choices are
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  you can choose grilled cheese or you can choose peanut butter toast,
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  which do you choose?
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  This is again,
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  outwit outlast, outplay.
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  You will not be the one that loses the battle of the wills.
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  You might have to repeat the choice four times, eight times, 12 times.
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  You need to give about 60 seconds in between every choice
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  because kids take upwards of 60 seconds to process a choice
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  and
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  you need to be patient because the outcome that we desire
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  is that the child chooses A or B
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  and if you are a broken record that just continues to reflect feelings,
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  you're frustrated, you're disappointed. You wish there were other choices.
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  You don't like either one of those.
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  He needs to feel heard and understood.
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  Yet
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  you fall back on the choice
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  and the choice is grilled cheese or peanut butter toast.
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  And you just reiterate that over and over and over again.
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  And the child eventually goes fine
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  and they're mad as a hornet,
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  but they choose A or B
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  and then you with no reaction,
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  no emotion,
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  completely neutrally
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  say
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  you chose to have grilled cheese
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  and then you make a grilled cheese.
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  So you don't celebrate him for choosing, you don't give him credit for it.
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  I mean, you do say you chose whatever, but there's no,
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  oh I'm so glad that you finally chose because
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  that is going to incite another power struggle.
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  This is not
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  your agenda.
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  This is the child chooses and you just make
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  sure that the outcome aligns with the choice.
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  So even though internally we're very thrilled and excited that he chose A or B,
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  our response is neutral
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  because it doesn't
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  help and it does not adhere to the child-centered
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  model
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  to have a reaction ourselves based on the choice
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  and, and Alison, I'm going to go out on a limb here.
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  Not only are those what you say, typically agreeable meals, but you also said that
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  he will typically, you know, be ok with these, but you're also ok with these.
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  So
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  you really don't have skin in the game here.
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  As far as you care, he can have grilled cheese or peanut butter toast.
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  Therefore, there's no emotional tie other than
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  you won the battle,
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  but,
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  but he doesn't need to know that.
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  So you just neutrally the whole time
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  you can choose this or you can choose this fall back on the choice.
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  That's not part of the choice. You really wish there were other options.
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  And then when he finally chooses grilled cheese or peanut butter toast,
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  you just very calmly neutrally say,
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  oh, ok, you've chosen peanut butter toast
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  and then you put it in front of him on the plate and you move on.
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  And what that does is it reinforces that
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  there are parameters
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  and
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  the choices are provided within the context of those parameters,
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  but he does have a measure of control.
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  And so he has to learn how to make
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  decisions and therefore accept the outcome of those choices.
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  All right, Alison, thank you so much for the questions and the email.
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  I hope that that was helpful for all of you. Again.
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  If you want to reach out to me with questions or comments or just to say hello.
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  I'd love to hear from you brenna@thekidcounselor.com
• 14:26
  I appreciate y'all. Have a great week. Bye.
• 14:30
  Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast.
• 14:33
  With Dr. Brenna Hicks for more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter.
• 14:38
  Please go to www.playtherapyparenting.com.