Parenting by Connection with Belynda Smith

Siblings. They warm your heart when they share, cuddle and play well. But when big feelings take over it can be difficult for everyone! Parenting by Connection has a wonderful tool to use at times like these. It is quite revolutionary; it doesn't require you to adjudicate, teach or lecture. Just to listen. This tool is called Staylistening. It literally involves you simply staying with your child, and listening to whatever they need to say.  The truth is that when we quieten our children, their big feelings don't go away, they are just driven down inside them. Is it any wonder these feelings boil up and result in sibling fighting and hard moments? By allowing your child to 'let off steam' with your loving attention, you take the sting out of these feelings. When new to this approach I was sceptical, thinking this would encourage the feelings and grow them, but my experience has been exactly the opposite. With the loving attention of a parent, a child can let g...

Photo by  Eddie Kopp  on  Unsplash Aggression from our sweet kids can really throw us off balance. When our 2 year old bites a friend, our 4 year old whaps us in the face during playtime, or our children physically fight one another, we often feel confused, isolated and very angry ourselves. Parenting by Connection has some interesting and practically useful views on aggression; a supremely helpful idea championed by this approach is that an aggressive child is a scared child. A short explanation of brain science may help to illuminate why. The human brain can be viewed in a simple way by seeing it as a vertical chain. The brain stem at the bottom controls life processes such as breathing and temperature, and is the part engaged when the fight or flight response is triggered. The next level up is the social emotional centre of the brain, known as the limbic system. Here is where our long term memories are stored, and it is the part of the brain we use to scan...