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In This Issue
- Child Parent Relationship Training
- Weekly Heart Circle
- Parenting from the Inside Out
- Well-Being Manifesto
- Autumn...a time for releasing
- Plan a Seminar for parents or professionals at your school, centre or agency
- Training...for Professionals
Tips for Parents & Professionals
Consequences Aren't Punishments & Rewards
Consequences rely on reflection, which requires we notice instead of judge.
Three intentions behind consequences:
1. Intent to Punish: Goal is to make the child feel bad, relieving us of our inner conflict.
2. Intent to Rescue: Goal is to have the child avoid feeling, avoiding dealing with our inner conflict.
3. Intent to Teach: Goal is to help the child use his/her feelings to guide his/her behaviour, empowering us to be present and requiring we notice instead of judge.
By noticing children, we help them reflect on their choices. By judging children, we teach them to blame themselves or others for their choices. Judging divides your family or classroom and staff into the good, the bad and the invisible.
This promotes attention-seeking behaviours, apathy and "please me" development.
Noticing describes what you see, so all children are seen. This promotes equality and connection. Noticing stimulates the frontal lobes for moral development.
Problem Solving
Problem solving is the consequence to use with chronic issues.
The PEACE method for problem solving will help you structure family or class meetings to deal with chronic behaviours. PEACE involves stating the problem (Problem), asking if it is a problem for anyone else (Explore), brainstorming solutions (Alternatives), committing to a plan (Commit) and determining how you will know the problem is solved (Evaluate). The chart below outlines the process for you. Display these steps in your home or classroom.
PEACE Problem Solving:
Problem: I've noticed____. It's a problem for me because____.
Explore: Is this a problem for anyone else?
Alternatives: What can we do differently?
Commit: As a family/class, we will_____.
Evaluate: How will we know the problem is solved?
Tips on Promoting a Secure Attachment
What is Attunement?
Attunement is being present with another person. It is non-judgmental focusing on the inner world of another person (child) to such a degree that each of you feel "felt" by the other.
From that unified state, each person feels vibrant, alive, understood and at peace. Social attachments sustain the emotional systems in the brain that promote life-long mental and physical health.
"Attunement creates the most stable, most flexible, and most adaptive state known for healing and learning. To attune with others we must first learn to attune with ourselves." -Daniel Siegel, MD 2007
Your feelings are your inner guidance system. Attunement is the sense that we are known from the inside out, and is the scaffold for taking responsibility for our actions.
Attunement is focussing our attention on our child's inner world (rather than their behaviour) and sounds like:
You look ____.
You wanted____.
You seem ____.
You were hoping ____.
You sound ____.
Discipline Styles Yield Different Results
AUTOCRATIC Parenting Style Produces:
- Rebellious Children who grow up to be Power Over people
- Overly compliant or submissive children who grow up to be Power Under people
PERMISSIVE Parenting Style Produces:
- Willful Children
ASSERTIVE Parenting Style Produces:
- Responsible Children
Power Struggles
People create power struggles when they feel powerless.
This usually happens for young children after an adult gives a command.
This usually happens for older children after an adult attempts to deliver a consequence.
ALL POWER STRUGGLES END IN ABUSE... We must learn to calm ourselves and teach children to do the same.
FEAR is at the core of all power struggles.
There are three types of power:
- Personal Power...demonstrate responsibility
- Power Over...controlling others
- Power Under...pleasing others.
Who is your power going to?
BLAME is an escape from responsibility and a way to give away your power.
RESPONSIBILITY is not a weight to carry, but a key to reclaiming your power. |
Welcome to our first e-mail newsletter Firstly, thank you to all of the wonderful messages of support for our new "Centre for Children's Emotional Well-Being". As many of you have recognised, supporting and nurturing our children and young people is the key to a sustainable and peaceful future.
The Centre is now home to INSIDE OUT's Counselling Service for children, a weekly Heart Circle for parents and professionals and has been a wonderful and nurturing space for special events, such as the viewing of "Kanyini" on the day of the government's apology to the stolen generation. The centre will also be used for up and coming training for parents and child professionals.
Thank you to all of you who have blended your wonderful energy and blessings into our centre and I invite any of you who are interested, whether you're a parent, grandparent, carer or child professional, to come along to the centre and engage in the wonderful atmosphere, workshops and training opportunities. Heartfelt love,
Monique Rutherford
Child Counsellor & Psychotherapist, Parent Educator
Child Parent Relationship Training
 Parenting can be difficult...
Do you sometimes feel you have lost control of your role as parent?
Do you find yourself yelling at your child more often than laughing with your child?
Do you feel you have lost touch with your child...don't feel as close as you'd like?
Do you feel frustrated and find yourself saying the same things over and over, with no results?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, CHILD-PARENT-RELATIONSHIP Training can help!
Learn skills that will make a difference to your life and the life of your child.
C-P-R Training is a 10-session skills development program for parents of children under 10 years of age.
Read more here >>
Weekly Heart Circle
 Why let the busyness of life obscure the richness of the exceptional aspects of who we are? This weekly heart-space circle offers an opportunity to move beyond thought and words into deep reaches of feeling and intuitive knowing by drawing on the healing power of meditation and creative self-expression.
Do you feel the pressures of modern life building up? Would you like to relieve these pressures and spend more time on yourself? Would you like to discover ways to connect within that are fun, empowering and enhance creativity?
Read more here >>
When: Wednesday evenings | Time: 7 - 9pm
Parenting from the Inside Out
If you would like an approach to parenting that:
- builds the relationship and a deep connection between you and your child,
- enhances a secure attachment,
- increases cooperation,
- promotes your child's emotional well-being,
- empowers you in your role as parent, and
- is based on your own set of conscious values and beliefs?
Then "Parenting from the Inside Out" is for you!
This therapeutic parenting program is offered over two weekends and has the potential to change the way you see your role as a parent and the way you treat yourself and your child. The program is based on a range of information gathered from the work of many well documented parent educators such as Pam Leo's "Connection Parenting", Aletha Solter's "Aware Parenting", Lawrence Cohen's "Playful Parenting", Thomas Gordon's "Parent Effectiveness Training", Robin Grille's "Parenting for a Peaceful World" and Alfie Kohn's "Unconditional Parenting".
Book Here Now >>
Children's Well-Being Manifesto
All societies are profoundly shaped, for better or worse, by how we rear children. This has been the overwhelming conclusion of recent groundbreaking research across a range of disciplines. A new consensus is emerging on how we should care for our children. Throwing new light on how best to help children flourish, this knowledge offers compelling evidence as to the kinds of social policies that will help all parents in their vital task, thereby reducing a host of societal dysfunctions, improving public health and social sustainability.
The following propositions are based on the best initiatives that have been tried and tested in numerous countries, and/or withstood rigorous tests of cost-benefit analysis. Such investments in the wellbeing of children, psychologically as well as physically, have been convincingly shown to yield economic as well as social rewards far exceeding the investment. More significantly, they are measures aimed at supporting what is most important, irreplaceable and ultimately not measurable: familial love and emotional wellbeing.
The main source of children's emotional wellbeing comes from relationships - from their deepest attachments to mothers, fathers, grandparents and a few cherished others. Early childhood in particular is a time when children's wellbeing and capacity to flourish are overwhelmingly about love, attachment and connectedness, and so it is a time they should spend mostly in the presence of these vital attachment figures. In recognition of this universal truth, social policy must re-orient itself towards supporting young children's right to remain, for the first two to three years, as much as possible in the presence of their 'attachment' relationships.
In a world increasingly driven by imperatives of profit and market forces, we hold that parental and family love matters most, it is at the very centre of human and social wellbeing; and thus we propose the following ways to support parents in the most important job in the world.
Read more here >>
Autumn... A time for releasing
 Immersing children in the rhythm of the seasons assists their unfolding as spiritual beings in a physical world. Recognising rhythms of night and day, the seasons, lunar cycles, festivals and traditions are so important for the developing child.
Autumn is the time in which Nature's energies facilitate the process of letting go and for the planting of new seeds and endeavours. This season is a time to determine new values and to make new decisions and goals. It is a harvesting and assessment time for what has passed in the previous year and it is a time for setting goals for the coming year. The Autumn season is a time for shedding the old to prepare for the new, a time of transition. Opportunities abound to make changes. Whatever seeds are sown in Autumn will come to fruition by the following fall.
Our world abounds with gifts in Autumn, take a walk with your child to gather a variety of seeds and coloured leaves. The animals are very busy in autumn. It is time for migration and hibernation. Here in the tropics we see a variety of birds arrive for our warm winters around this time each year.
Family rituals are reassuring to children. The wisdom of nature makes perfect sense to our children's instincts. I hope you are enjoying reconnecting with seasonal rhythms as you share this with your children.
Seminars... for parents or professionals
Why not plan a seminar for parents or professionals at your school, centre or agency?
A single workshop or a series of two hour sessions can be conducted at your child-centred facility. Topics covered include...
- Preventing Power Struggles
- When TimeOut isn't working
- Transforming Aggressive Behaviour
- Therapeutic Limit Setting without Guilt
- Building Bonds: Guiding challenging children
- Disciplining the Traumatised Child
Book here now >>
Training...for professionals
Through the Integrated Skills Development Network (ISDN), a part of the Health & Community Workforce Council, Monique was invited to present a two day introductory training to professionals in the Hervey Bay region called "Promoting Resilience through Expressive Therapies & Sandplay". The training was a great success and Monique has been invited back to complete a further two day introductory training called "Introduction to Sandplay Therapy & Symbol Work" in early April.
In May, Monique will also be co-conducting training in Toowoomba for two days called, "Creative Approaches to working with Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse".
For further information about the above or about future training opportunities, please contact us on the details below.
Contact Us
PHONE: 0439 456 335
EMAIL: monique@insideout-counselling.com.au
POSTAL: PO Box 1794, BUDERIM QLD 4556
WEBSITE: http://www.insideout-counselling.com.au/ |
