Latest / Get Curious, Not Furious / Follow My Need

Transcript

Follow My Need · Get Curious, Not Furious

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Love your child more than anything.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: And some days they drive you crazy.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colette, a speech and language therapist, sense maker, and mom of three.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Get Curious, Not Furious.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Together let's make sense of your child and what's really happening in those moments that feel out of control.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Less reacting, more understanding.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're ready to get curious instead of furious, keep listening.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, welcome to this week's episode where I talk about the concepts of following your child's lead or following your child's need.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'll explore: can you do both these things at the same time?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are they in direct opposition to each other or can they coexist?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a busy week in my house.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's been lots of adaptation responding to different unexpected curveballs that came my way.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: This increased the demands on family life.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: The impact of this was that I had, you know, less time available for my children than I would have liked, I had less sleep than I would normally get, and that has a knock-on effect on how I'm feeling and what my capacity is like to parent in a relational way in the way that I want to.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: As a developmentalist, I'm always looking beneath the surface to see what is my child's need in this moment.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've also learned to actually do this for myself.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: What do I need in any given moment so that I can stay calm and regulated, knowing that staying calm and regulated 100% of the time is neither practical nor the objective.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: When I say that I'm always looking beneath the surface to see what my child's need is, I don't mean I'm doing this 100% of the time.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about this before.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't be healthy for me or for them or lead to healthy development if their needs were met 100% of the time.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not practical, it's not realistic, and it's not how relationships work.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've also shared the statistic from the research into circle of security parenting where out of edtronics research that uh parent being attuned 30% of the time was good enough parenting.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So for that 30%, like I've said in earlier episodes, sometimes that you know is enough in those healthy relationships where there's low risk.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: If the relationship is vulnerable or there's been trauma or relational um conflict or trauma, then the 30% may not be enough.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, let's say for argument's sake that 80-20 rule, 80% of the time we're attuned to our children's needs, and 20% of the time that we're not, well, that's you know, really setting the bar quite high.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So call it somewhere between 30% to 80% of the time, you can look beneath the surface and see what their need is.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's following their need as a developmentalist, which is my you know, framework that I'm sharing and that I use in my work and in my home.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the interesting things that I've learned over the years is as a speech and language therapist, you know, as a student many, many years ago, and then in my work, one of the things we were trained to do was follow a child's lead and focus of attention.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Working with children with speech and language delays, developmental differences, learning difficulties, where there's you know, speech and language and social communication skills are not where they might be expected to be for their age.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: One of the therapeutic approaches that we use in our therapy sessions when coaching parents and encouraging language development is following a child's lead and focus of attention.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Circle of security parenting talks about whenever possible, follow your child's need and whenever necessary, take charge.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: How are these approaches aligned?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: How can we follow a child's lead and follow their need if those two things aren't compatible in that moment?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or we as a parent are going, hmm, I can see where their focus of attention is, and if I follow their lead, yes, I'm tuning in to them and what they're focused on in that moment, but that might actually be what they need in that moment or what I need them to do in that moment.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: From a therapeutic and relational lens, I'm asking myself, what does their brain or body need in any given moment?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Can I follow their lead and meet their needs?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And can those things coexist?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you do both?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: What if their lead is not what you think they need in that moment?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who's right?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So their lead is they want to keep playing, and you know, oh, I think they really need to pause and have some food, or I think they really need to come in and you know put a warm jacket on, or or whatever it is.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are just some practical day-to-day parenting things where we go, you know, for my child's health and well-being, I need to step in and take the lead.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, from a safety perspective, their lead is to run across the road and check out something that's exciting they've seen on the other side of the road.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in that moment, you really do need to step in and keep them safe.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Though in that moment, following their lead would not be the right thing to do.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: But does that mean that their focus of attention and what they're interested in is is wrong?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, it doesn't.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to remember that they're children, there are they focus on the thing that's in front of them in that moment, and it takes time and maturity for them to develop that impulse control and to put the brakes on and go, no, well, I really want to see what's on the other side of the road, but I'm not going to run across because I might get hit by a car.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And depending on the age and stage of your child, you will know how much, you know, how safe can they be.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Are children great at making decisions around what clothing they need to wear?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, again, this is a skill that they need to learn and develop.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And children with sensory differences will find it much harder to recognize whether their body's hungry, thirsty, hot, cold.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so we might be able to see, well, their body needs to be warm or their body needs to cool down.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: If we let them take the lead on that, then chances are they'll become dysregulated.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely, we as parents do need to take the lead.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But how can we take the lead in a way that meets their needs or at least acknowledges what their needs are?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is not for a child to make decisions that put them out of orbit in terms of their attachment.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean by this is if we let children make all the decisions and take the lead, then that upsets the relational dynamic that is optimal for healthy development.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Gordon Newfeld has proposed a theory of what he terms alpha children.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: What he terms alpha children are those children that have taken the lead.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're bossy, they're demanding, they make all the decisions, they can't be guided, oppositional, rude, defiant.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Adults need their role is to take the lead in the relationship, and the child's role is to depend.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: We as adults need to make it safe for our children to depend on us.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you kind of kind of think of it like a maybe not quite a scales, but draw a picture in your mind of an adult, kind, caring, loving, responsive adult taking the lead, and the child being able to rest in the in the care and connection of that adult and depend on them, to know that that adult's going to be there for me, they're going to guide me, they're going to see what I need, and they'll also be able to, you know, follow my lead when when the time is right to do that.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: What are some times where we might need to take the lead?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm sure if you think of any parenting day you've had recently, you will know that there are many, many times where you do need to step in and take the lead.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: You need to take the lead in setting the routine and the predictability of when it's time to eat, when it's time to sleep, if there are homework or chores to be done.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Children haven't developed those, you know, executive functioning, higher-level thinking skills to be able to organize and manage their lives.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to be realistic as parents in terms of how much we expect them to do.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if we expect them to do too much and we're expecting them, you know, trying to hurry up their independence, then we're inadvertently putting them in that role of taking the lead for all their decisions.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then we might wonder why they don't want to follow our lead or our expectations when we ask them to?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: We will face resistance.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: What do we do when we face this resistance?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do we get rigid, be inflexible, and persist that because we said it has to happen right now, it must happen right now?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are there times where we can pivot, where we can build in a little bit of flexibility?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Does this mean that we're giving into them?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't mean that we're giving in.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: We can hold a limit in a relational way.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a difference between holding a limit in a relational way and rigidly saying, do this right now because I told you to.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sort yourself out.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's unhelpful.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Both ends of that extreme ends of the continuum, that's not what we're aiming for in terms of attuned relational parenting.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: We absolutely need to take the lead, and we can do that while also meeting their needs.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Children were never meant to be the ones in charge of their relationship with their caring adults.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's our job.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: If we do let them take charge all the time, only following their own lead all the time, then you will see lots of defiance and oppositional behavior when you do come alongside and try to set a limit or lead them and guide them.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: In my therapy sessions, most of the time, children are not ready to wrap up.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we're playing, it's because we're having fun.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: We use strategies like visuals, letting them know what things they're going to do in the time they're with me.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'll also cue them and let them know this is our last activity, and then it will be time to go home.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on the age of the child and their language skills, then I might use more or less visuals, I might give a longer instruction, a shorter instruction, and that's adapting to you know what their need is.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there was one session earlier this week, and the child really didn't want to finish, he wasn't ready to go.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had to let him know we're gonna finish this game and then it's time to go.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: What I did in that moment of transition when he put the brakes on, it looked like he was ignoring me, didn't want to, you know, put the toy away, and his mum was trying to hurry him along and say, you know, come on, now we've said it, you're finished.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: What I managed to do was incorporate the thing that he was playing with into the transition, so I was able to guide him to, you know, playfully put the thing away.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I allowed his knee to, you know, in essentially finish playing.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I gave him a couple of more minutes, and then that led to a smooth transition.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't upset, he could see that you know he knew where he'd put the toy, it was going to be there for him when he came back the next time.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I did that bridging strategy you've heard me talk about before.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to seeing you next week.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to playing this with you, it will be right here, and that helped him move on.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if we had done the opposite of going, I told you to put it away, stop playing right now, put your shoes on, well, a few different things might have happened.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: He might have, you know, begrudgingly complied with that, put his shoes on, but would probably then have like left our time together with that feeling of, oh, that didn't end very well.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was made to do something, and may not have been able to reflect or remember on what was all the fun things that we'd done together.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to be gracious and allow a couple of minutes, and I was able to model for his parents that sometimes just allowing a little bit more time is what you do.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that you're giving in.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when we do this at the end of a session, or maybe during a session and we feel a particular activity needs to change or go away, then we need to allow time for the upset.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay for a child to be sad that something needs to finish.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're sad if and annoyed when something needs to finish, but maybe you've learned to shut your feelings down, or maybe you've adapted and you've got that resilience to go, yeah, I'm disappointed, I'm sad that I need to finish doing that thing, to move on to something else, and I know I can come back to it later, and it's okay.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't allow time for that upset, then that upset gets stuck in frustration and anger, or our child withdrawing and shutting down.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you like it when your feelings are hurried?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you like it when you're made to rush from one thing to the next?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, you don't.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do, if you go like, yeah, no, it's fine, I would encourage you to pause and really think about that.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is that because you've learned to adapt and always do things to keep other people happy, rather than actually going, you know what, I'm really upset that I need to finish that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you do allow the upset, don't be fooled into thinking that you'll have to do it every time.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's something that you know gets in the way of us as parents allowing time for our children to be upset because maybe we're afraid that they'll learn that every time something has to finish they can have a meltdown and then they'll get more time with it or whatever it is.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's definitely not what I'm saying.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that you're a push-over parent and you give in.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is there's a difference between doing that and taking the lead and meeting their needs.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think as parents, we worry so much about getting it right and that behavioral thinking is still really prevalent.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: If I let them have their way this time, they'll always expect that.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: That is not what attuned relational parenting is about.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: I see it as an interaction, these interactions as being as an opportunity for our children to build their skills, build their capacity, and build their resilience around disappointment, around things ending, and knowing that you can feel that and be upset and still keep going.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can bounce back from that.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's because, let's face it in life, there are so many times where we do need to follow somebody else's agenda.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm suggesting you try is letting go of your own agenda and your time frame for when your child will develop these skills.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a fixed thing that happens at one age or another.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's unique to your child and to the experiences they've had building those skills.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to be realistic.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Also, hurrying up their independence doesn't actually get us anywhere.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: How can we take charge in a way that's not overpowering, demanding, inflexible, scary, or intimidating for our children?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because what happens when they only comply out of fear?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about this before.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: It sets them up for power imbalances in their relationships, with their siblings, with their peers, with teachers, with you as their parents, with their future partners.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know that's not the kind of child that you want to grow up.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to grow your child up to be afraid and to do things out of fear of others, and neither do you want them to grow up to be a bully intimidating others to get what they want.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So how we can take charge in a way that's not overpowering or intimidating is following their need in that moment.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where the conflict arises, if what they need in that moment doesn't align with what we want them to do in that moment or what our expectations are.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday morning was a great example.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: One of my children put the brakes on about going to school.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was all ready to go, got up, got dressed, had a bit of a little bit of breakfast, and then all of a sudden realized, oh my goodness, I only have two minutes before the bus comes.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for him in that moment, it was too much.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: He in his head was like, I'm not gonna make that bus.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The world's ending, I'm not going to school.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, because I know him, because I know how to read his cues, and I could see that he was, you know, getting very agitated and angry and upset.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I chose to back off.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't insist in that moment, well, you need to go get on the bus, it's time to leave immediately, because I knew if I had done that, it would lead to an escalation.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard me talk in earlier episodes about the concept of the watchdog brain where they're, you know, building up for a tech.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I have learned that backing off, allowing him some time, was actually going to be the best way to get the outcome I wanted, which was for him to go to school.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: What I had to do was to let go of my agenda of how that was going to happen.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Was it annoying?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Was it inconvenient?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Was it infuriating?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, yes.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: In my head, I was going, here we go again.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have time for this.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Could you just get out the door?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you're on the next bus.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: All this story was going in my head.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Could I feel myself simmering and starting to get furious?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Whew, I certainly could.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And even now, talking about it and thinking about it, I can feel myself getting all stirred up.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I have had lots and lots of practice of pivoting, pausing, going, okay, what does he need in this moment?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: If I had purely followed his lead, I would have gone, oh, you're not going to school.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine, I'm going to work.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: See you later.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't going to do that.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: That would be irresponsible of me.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the right thing to do.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had the presence of mind to go, oh, okay, what's really going on here?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: What does he need in this moment?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew what he needed was a little bit of space and time to deal with the unpredictability of not getting the bus that he wanted.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: I stayed calm.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm not gonna fight.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can see you needed a little bit of space.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I backed off and I, you know, went and did a couple of other things that needed to be done.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment, if I'd said to him, you need to go to school, you need to go to school right now, things would have erupted and got worse.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can hear some of you thinking, ah, he was just trying to manipulate you.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was just trying to get out of going to school.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, he wasn't.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do I know that?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm attuned to his communication, I'm attuned to his body language, I'm attuned to that cycle of um, you know, eruption and getting outside his window of tolerance.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was all ready to go to school.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: He'd gotten up, he'd put his uniform on, but then the curveball that derailed him was, oh my goodness, I've lost time, time's disappeared, and I'm going to miss the bus that I really like to take.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: He likes predictability and he can tell me that.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I can also hear some of you saying, Well, you should have just let him learn his lesson.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what if he's late for school?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: He can just learn and get the next bus.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if I'd taken that approach, he would have gotten angry and escalated and possibly not gone to school at all.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I hear you, you think I'm a push-over parent.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not a push-over parent.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to go in this moment.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: What we need is to de-escalate the situation.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I need to take the lead on that, and the best thing I can do in this moment is to back off.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do I know he wasn't manipulating me?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because he now really does enjoy going to school.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if he was manipulating me to do this, then he would do it all the time.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: But this is not a daily occurrence.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something he does all the time.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't believe that children who are in right relationship with their caring adults where they know that they can depend on those adults, that those adults can take the lead.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that those children actually want to manipulate us.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to manipulate somebody that you love and care about and feel safe with?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: You might be wondering, did he win?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Did he learn that he can have a meltdown and be like late for school every day?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: He experienced me coming alongside where he was at, meeting his need in that moment, then bouncing back and finding his resilience and flexibility to go to school.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: What actually happened?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I gave him, you know, maybe he sat on the couch for five or ten minutes, and then when he was ready, he came out to the kitchen and said, I need some food.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Made himself some food.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ten minutes later, off out the door, happily on the bus to school.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, he was probably 20 minutes late for school.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not saying that's ideal to be late for school, but what I am saying is by me taking the lead and follow recognizing what his need was, he got to school, albeit a little bit later.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what we did do was I talked about it with him last night and went, okay, what do we need to do so that tomorrow morning goes smoothly, so that you have enough time to get up, have your breakfast, and be on time for the bus.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: We did that and this morning went smoothly.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday I knew he was hungry, I knew that food would help him, but me offering that in that moment of his rage and upset, he wasn't ready to hear that.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: What I did yesterday was there was a lot of out loud self-talk to stay calm.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I did say, I'm going to walk away, I'm not getting into a fight.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Part of that was for him to hear, and part of it was also for myself.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Was it easy to do?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, yes and no.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is something that I have practiced a lot.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a more well-rehearsed pathway in my brain now.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always how I would have responded.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there are days where I will fall short of that, where due to my own demands being outside my window of tolerance, demands of my other children, that maybe I might flip my lid and go get out the door and go to school right now, or else that never turns out well.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I did know in my head that I had a bit of time to spare to be flexible.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: I really dislike being late.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: People who know me through work and life will describe me as being very punctual and I like to get shit done.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I like to get shit done now, I don't like to wait, and I have probably an unrealistic expectation of other people functioning at the pace that I do and the efficiency that I have in my life.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's ironic.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Children can, you know, get in get in the way of efficiency really, really quickly.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe other people aren't so bothered about being on time.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I work with families who deal with the same pressures I do.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have compassion for them if they, you know, turn off to a therapy session late.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't I extend the same compassion to myself or to my children?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: What does it look like to follow their lead?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when do we want to do this?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: We want to follow their lead in play.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, play is safe, it's not for real.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's where they get to be creative, be spontaneous, and take charge.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Another time where we definitely want to follow their lead is if your child has delays in their language development, they've got attention differences, neurodevelopmental differences.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: We definitely want to follow their lead and focus of attention because what we want to focus on is building the relationship and the connection.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: This you might do for certain moments during the day.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: You might say, okay, well, for the next 10 minutes when I'm playing, I'm really going to follow my child's lead and focus of attention.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some examples of this, what this might look like.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: One of the language development programs that we use is one from an organization called Hennan, and they talk about OWling.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's the acronym to OWL, to observe, to wait, and to listen with your eyes and your ears.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: What that means is you observe what your child is doing, you wait and see what's going to happen, and then you listen and then you respond.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Again, a child with some attention differences, what might it look like to follow their lead and focus of attention?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you were talking about something and you notice they weren't paying attention, what happens if you do tune into what they're paying attention to?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Can you then bring them back around to what you were talking about or what you need them to do?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: When our children are stuck in a loop in their play, again, I've talked about this before, how can we playfully shift them?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can we recognize what their brain or body needs in that moment?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our children might be stuck in overdrive, running around seeking movement, but the movement that they're doing is actually not bringing their body back within their window of tolerance or meeting what their sensory and body needs are in that moment.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: This takes a lot of practice, and for many parents, it's not something that comes intuitively, and it can be where working alongside a skilled professional, whether it's a speech and language therapist or an occupational therapist or a physiotherapist, anybody who works with young children that can, you know, show you how you can tune into their cues and follow their lead to support their development.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a dance of attunement, it requires us to be grounded, it requires us to pay attention, and often it requires us to have some coaching where somebody else kind of points out to us, ah, did you see in that moment what your child was trying to communicate, and what would happen if you responded in this way.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, how does it feel when someone pays attention to what you're interested in?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how does it feel when someone has no interest in what you're interested in and they keep talking over you, change the topic?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know that that doesn't leave you feeling good about yourself, doesn't really want you to stay in a relationship with that person because you go, oh, they only ever talk about their own thing and they don't want to talk about me.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always easy to do this to follow the focus of attention and the lead of your child, but it is a way to build their language, social skills, thinking, and their relationships.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm inviting you to get curious this week about the difference between following your child's need or following their lead.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about giving in when we follow their lead, but we can be flexible and gracious.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: We can tune in and we can let go of our own rigid agendas of how we think it needs to be.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: There are very few times where we need to rigidly insist on something happening right now.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Health and safety, absolutely.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: If they're at risk or somebody else is at risk of getting hurt, then definitely you need to step in and take charge.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Approaching your relationship as I've got this, I'm in the lead here, I'm taking care of my child and their needs.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the mindset that I'm encouraging you to take, not a I'm a dictator and they'll do this because I told them to.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: If we insist, if we try to be the dictator, do this or else, then we're definitely going to trigger our own stress response, and we'll trigger a stress response in them.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: It will get us nowhere.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Might lead to more shouting, ill feeling, tears, anger, withdrawal, and a rupture in the relationship.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's not what you want for yourself and your relationship with your child.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can hold boundaries and take the lead, but how you hold boundaries, take the lead, meet their needs, and follow their lead and focus of attention.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: How you do that is what makes the difference.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear what's happening in your family.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a parenting question, challenge, or concern, send me a message.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Together we can make sense of what's going on.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you found this episode helpful, please like it, share it with another parent, and follow the podcast to help grow this community.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay curious.