Latest / Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist / S2E15 - Keeping Your Relationship with Your Child at the Center of Parenting

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S2E15 - Keeping Your Relationship with Your Child at the Center of Parenting · 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 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, we are going to ground ourselves a little bit here.
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  So we've gone through
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  the four pillars, we've gone through practical application of the four pillars.
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  And ideally at this point, you have the four main tools in your tool belt
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  so that any given situation that arises with your kids,
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  you know how to handle it.
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  So if your child is emotional, you know, to reflect a feeling,
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  if a child is behaving in an unacceptable way,
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  you set a limit.
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  If your child is power,
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  struggling with you and or you want to build their self esteem,
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  you're going to give a choice.
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  And if you want to help them build an internal locus of control
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  and focus on their efforts, you're going to use encouragement.
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  So we understand the four pillars at this point.
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  And many of you have been writing in and asking questions. I'm so grateful for that.
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  Thank you for
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  emailing and checking in with me and giving me scenarios and I'm really
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  looking forward to answering those and hopefully I can do that every Thursday.
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  So I'm hoping to do a curriculum at the first part of
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  the week and a question on the second part of the week.
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  And as long as you keep the questions coming, we'll be able to do two episodes a week.
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  So that's coming. But here's why I want to kind of re-center us a little bit
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  because a lot of the questions that I'm getting
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  and a lot of the interaction with parents, even at my center
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  that I'm constantly having
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  to circle back to.
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  I'm trying to implement these skills.
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  I'm really trying to learn the pillars.
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  I'm really trying to focus on encouragement.
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  I'm really working on reflecting my child's feeling, et cetera, et cetera.
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  Here's what I want to make sure that we're aware of
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  the skills are only the method through which
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  we get to the heart of what we're really trying to do.
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  And that's cultivate a healthy relationship with our kids.
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  The relationship trumps everything.
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  So are reflecting feelings and choice,
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  giving and limit setting and encouragement.
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  Important.
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  Yes. Should you hone those skills? Yes. Should you practice those?
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  Yes. Should that become a daily part of your arsenal?
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  Yes.
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  But if all we focus on are the skills
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  and all we focus on are the principles
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  we're losing sight of the why?
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  So that's what we're going to dive into a little bit more today.
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  The path to calm, confident, and in control parenting starts now.
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  All right. So in many, many of the earlier episodes,
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  we have talked through
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  the importance of
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  kindness to our children.
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  And I believe that the child-centered play therapy approach
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  is one of the most kind ways to parent,
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  but it's not kindness that becomes the focus,
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  it's relationship.
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  Have you ever wondered why your child
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  throws a tantrum?
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  Have you ever wondered why they power struggle with you?
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  Have you ever wondered why they refuse or disobey
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  when you give them a request?
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  Have you ever wondered why they locked themselves in their bedroom?
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  If you ever wondered why they fight with their siblings?
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  If you ever wondered why they fill in the blank,
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  whatever it is that you're struggling with,
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  it all comes back to a fracture
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  or a breach of relationship
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  at any of those moments.
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  The relationship is damaged
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  and that's through no one's fault necessarily.
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  You shouldn't blame yourself. You shouldn't blame your child.
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  It, this isn't a blame game.
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  It's not a, well, this is your problem. This is because of you.
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  You did this which caused whatever,
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  that's not the point.
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  But the point is if we understand that every single time our child
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  is behaving in a way that is creating some kind of issue,
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  we can
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  almost always,
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  I don't wanna use an absolute because I suppose there might be outliers, but
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  we can almost always
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  trace that thread back to fracture or breach in relationship.
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  Why?
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  Because
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  when we focus on the issue,
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  when we focus on the frustration
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  on the annoyance on the behavior, on the attitude, on the words on
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  whatever is happening,
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  we lose sight of the child.
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  And when we lose sight of the child,
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  we forget how important the relationship is.
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  So why do we constantly circle back to the child-centered principles?
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  And why are the four pillars important?
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  And why is reflective, responding so powerful?
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  Why do we constantly work
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  at these?
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  Because they preserve the relationship, they honor the relationship,
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  they focus on the relationship.
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  It's impossible
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  to not
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  deeply care about your child
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  when you're reflecting one of their emotions.
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  Have you ever noticed that you can't do that flippantly?
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  You can't go, you're really annoyed right now.
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  We would never, we would never do that because it's incongruent
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  and it doesn't
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  honor the relationship
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  when we are truly looking into our child's eyes and we're
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  truly making sense of what their emotion is in that moment.
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  And we say back to them,
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  you are so proud
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  or you're really angry right now.
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  That is 100%
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  honoring and preserving of the relationship
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  when we set limits with the three step model.
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  Because if we just threaten,
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  if we just say if you do that again, I will,
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  if we just yell,
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  if we say, don't you dare open your mouth again.
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  If, if we do any of those things, which we, we do those things, right?
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  But if we do any of those things,
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  we're not honoring and preserving the relationship,
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  we're damaging it.
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  But when we say
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  you would really like to go be with your friends,
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  so you're angry and yelling at me.
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  But I'm not for speaking to you that way,
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  you can choose to tell me why you wanna go
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  see your friends so much and we can talk about it
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  or you can choose to go see your friends after dinner. Which do you choose
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  that's relationship preserving
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  when we encourage contributions and efforts that our children
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  provide in a scenario,
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  you're not giving up, you keep trying, you're working hard, you'll figure it out.
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  You have a plan,
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  it honors the relationship
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  and there's kindness in that there's mutual respect in that
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  there's trust in that
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  there's so much
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  that is cultivated
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  when we focus on the relationship.
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  And I want to spend a second, I'm kind of taking a left turn here, but
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  I want to spend a second discussing
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  this notion of gentle parenting.
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  I
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  actually answered a listener question about it not too long ago.
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  A lot of
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  perceived
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  criticism.
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  No, that's not the right word.
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  A lot of what people perceive about the child-centered
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  model and what they tend to criticize
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  is,
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  oh, so you, we just let,
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  we just let kids just rule the roost. We just let kids run amok.
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  They just get to do whatever they want.
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  They never have limits, they never have discipline,
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  they never get in trouble that we just have to be, keep them happy.
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  That's not preserving of the relationship
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  that's not honoring of the relationship. That's not kind parenting.
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  That's not what child centered play therapy is.
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  Child-centered play therapy
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  is approaching your kids in a way
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  that says I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you.
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  Those are the be-with attitudes.
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  I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you
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  even when you're being a turd, even when you smart off to me, even when you disobey,
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  even when you hit your sibling, even when you had a terrible, horrible, no good day.
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  Even when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you just
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  have an attitude from the second you wake up even when fill in the blank,
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  I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you
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  and the way that I interact with you
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  with my reflective responses, with the four pillars
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  with keeping all of the rules of thumb in my head.
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  When I do those things,
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  it's kind
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  and it's because I care about the relationship
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  I have with you more than anything else.
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  One of the foundational tenets of this model is
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  what do I need to do or say in this moment
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  that will most preserve the relationship
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  with my child
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  that changes everything with the way that we approach any given situation.
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  So I'm hopeful that you are starting to realize yes, the skills matter.
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  Yes, we need to practice them, work on them, learn them,
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  implement them all of those things.
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  However,
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  we're not just mechanically applying these skills
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  as if we're checking off boxes on a to do list.
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  Ok. I reflected feelings today.
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  Ok, I set the limit with ACT All right, I gave a choice and man, I encourage, I,
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  I'm I get a gold star.
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  I got all four of the four today.
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  That's not what this is.
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  There is very deep, purposeful, intentional, thoughtful
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  reasoning
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  behind why these skills work.
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  But again, the skills are far less important
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  then what they allow us to do,
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  which is they allow us to make sure that the relationship is maintained.
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  The beauty of parenting
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  is that there's a built in relationship.
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  See, you need to understand from my side of things. I mean, I am a parent. Ok.
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  My son's 14,
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  but
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  I want you to understand therapeutically speaking
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  the kids with whom I work at my center and that all of my therapists work at the center.
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  We start from scratch.
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  We are a stranger to that child and the child is a stranger to us.
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  We don't have the luxury of having a built in existing relationship.
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  You do.
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  We have to work so hard to cultivate that relationship.
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  We have to create that from the ground up.
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  Guess what? You've been creating it since before they were born.
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  If you carried your child,
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  and if you're a father or a grandparent or a caregiver in any other capacity,
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  you have been creating that relationship since the
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  moment that you first interacted with that child.
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  So
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  you have the advantage
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  that the relationship preexists.
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  So now your job becomes to preserve it
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  and we use the child-centered principles to do that.
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  That is the most effective way in my opinion
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  to ensure that we are in fact preserving that relationship.
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  So I hope that that encourages you. I hope that that kind of
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  resets and grounds us a little bit
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  because I don't want us to get so caught up in the skills
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  that we lose sight of why the skills matter
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  and what the skills help us accomplish.
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  So I'm hopeful that that will give you some food for thought this week.
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  All right, if you would like to reach out to me,
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  I would love to hear from you brenna@thekidcounselor.com
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  You can shoot me an email to say hello. You can shoot me an email to ask a question.
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  You can fill me in on a scenario that's going on and ask for advice.
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  I want you to know, I do personally get every single email.
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  I know a lot of podcasters have people that kind of filter out their emails,
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  etcetera, etcetera.
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  I want you to know I do read every single email.
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  And so sometimes I'm a little slow getting back to you,
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  but I promise you they will come to me and I promise I will respond.
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  That's something that I take really seriously and
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  engaging with you all is why I do this.
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  So I would love to hear from you brenna@thekidcounselor.com. If you have a
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  question that you would like to ask and leave on our voicemail line, instead,
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  you can call 813-812-5525.
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  You can fill me in on what question you have and
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  then I can answer that on a future episode as well.
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  Also, if you go to playtherapyparenting.com,
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  you will get access to the archives of all of the episodes.
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  If you want to get caught up on some that
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  you have missed or maybe you're new to the podcast.
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  Welcome, by the way. So glad you're here.
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  And if you want to go back and listen to earlier episodes,
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  you can search all of them there
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  and you can also subscribe to my
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  newsletter once you're at playtherapyparenting.com.
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  All right.
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  So great to be with you. Thank you for spending time with me each week.
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  I look forward to this and
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  I'm hopeful that every single week after every single episode,
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  you feel encouraged and supported and ready to do the work that you need
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  to do to parent your kids in the best way that you can.
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  All right, I'm grateful for you all. 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 wwwplaytherapyparenting.com.