Parenting by Connection with Belynda Smith

Parenting is full of challenges we may never have guessed at. Today some of the limit setting I faced included my children swearing at one another, throwing a shoe on the roof, and refusing to eat the dinner I had cooked. Despite feeling like crawling under the couch and letting someone else deal with all this craziness, I know that what my kids need when they are having an off track day like this one is connection. On a good day, I approach these signals they are sending me with a wish to connect and with a wish to help them with whatever is driving their behaviour. On a harder day, and at times today was that, I lecture them and appeal to their sense of reason until I literally scream! In my many and varied conversations with parents, a common thread is how frustrating it is that we spend much of our day appealing to logic and reason in order to change behaviours. We say, 'No, please don't do that!' over and over again. We give good solid thinking around why not to beha...

Your child wants to feel good, connect well, play and learn. When things go off track for her, you can feel confident that this is NOT a choice she is making. To learn more about why it isn't a conscious choice, a little brain science may be helpful.  What we know about brain science is that there are three key parts to our brains. The brain stem governs life processes such as breathing and is in charge of the well-known fight or flight response. The limbic system, or middle brain, is our safety monitor and the seat of our long-term memories. This is the part of our brain that is engaged to determine connection, that tells children 'Yes! All ok here. Learn and play, share and have fun'. Finally, the prefrontal cortex is our higher brain, where our executive function happens. When the limbic system sends the message that all is well, this is the part of our child's brain that helps her reason, organise, play well, be considerate and think well. From Unspl...

by Arwan Sutan from Unsplash I'll let you in on a profound insight that changed my life.  Your kids don't need tantrum training but you probably do! No doubt you have always been shown and told that tantrums are a bad thing. I think you'll come to value them once you see how they can restore your child's good thinking. In our culture tantrums are perceived as something to squash, something to ignore, something to divert from. The Parenting by Connection perspective provides a very different view. The human brain is built for connection. From the moment they are born children's brains are hard wired to seek out connection and safety. When they feel warm, loving attention from a caring adult, children thrive. But life isn't always easy on our small people, and even things that seem harmless to us grownups can really upset a baby or a child. A door slamming noisily, or mum going into the next room, can throw your child's sense of connection right o...

Image by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash Parents want to make things go well for their children. We want to see them laugh joyfully, focus intently on their passions, and play beautifully with their friends. When things go wrong, we often move straight into fix-it mode. This can mean skipping over the child's feelings - 'No that didn't really hurt' or 'You're just being silly'. Parenting by Connection has a new insight into these moments. What if you don't need to fix anything? What if your only job is to stay with your child and listen, for as long as she needs to offload her emotions? At first glance, this may seem a strange idea, one that could encourage dramatics and crying. My experience and that of many thousands of others who have worked with the Parenting by Connection approach is the total opposite. If I minimise my child's feelings, he maintains a feeling of upset all day long. Everything is a problem. He is literally looking for a way t...