(a starting point & by no means extensive)
Reminders for Parents
~ A lot of parenting is about learning to regulate yourself and notice & name what is being triggered within yourself BEFORE turning to your child and supporting them to regulate. Children need a calm & safe adult to help them with their own big feelings. This looks like co-regulating hundreds of times before children can learn how to self-regulate.
~ Connection before Correction- Make time every week (even 15min) to have fun one on one time with your children, where you are totally focused and present to them and enjoying being together. Enter their world without judgement and with caring curiosity. See this time as letting them teach you about who they are, what they like and reflect back to them you see them and enjoy them. THIS IS GOLD TO A CHILD.
~ Rupture & repair- Repair is something I’ve gotten pretty good at from so much practice. And I believe one of the best gifts I can give my kids and myself. We all make mistakes, all the time. Saying sorry from a place of openness and humility and owning my tone, judgment, reactivity etc re-establishes & restores connection as well as modelling how to come back when we’ve stuffed up, how to re-engage and re-connect with self-compassion.
~ The four S’s- children need to feel safe, seen, soothed & secure (Dan Siegel’s work). Keep coming back to these 4 S’s even when you stuffed up or lost it with your kids- stop, pause, breathe & begin again. Using this for yourself and your partner also is a great way to connect more deeply and build healthy and secure attachments.
~ So much of good enough parenting can be NAMING back to kids their big emotions and showing that you SEE THEM. This simple practice isn’t always easy but goes such along way to help kids move through the big feelings. For more on this go to Dr. Becky’s work.
~ Watch and rewatch Dan Siegels Flipping your lid hand demonstration to understand the role of the amygdala and how it tries to protect the system and teach it to your kids. Google Dan Siegel hand model of the brain.
~ Self-compassion practice- parenting is hard and triggering, exhausting and at times lonely. There are no perfect parents and no perfect kids- just human parents and human kids doing the best they can at the time with what they have available to them within their own system and the system in which they are situated. Tara Brach (You-tube, Spotify) is a good resource for how to begin a self-compassion practice as is the Meta loving-kindness meditation which you can also find many versions of on You-tube. As is the work by Kristen Neff https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/
~ Bring beauty into your life, into your kids lives. It can be as simple as walking together and noticing that the leaves have changed colour or picking flowers and leaves on a walk and putting them in a jar of water when you get home. Reading fairy tales and poetry and listening to music together. Let the kids choose. Try pumping it up and have 5 minutes of dancing in the kitchen. Whatever it may be for you, bringing beauty in can be like moving towards the sun and warming everyone. Again it doesn’t have to be grand. And it may go pear shaped. Try to keep it light.
~ Self care - parenting is hard work. There is so much output. So prioritising looking after your selves is a must. You can’t give from an empty cup. With small children this is imperative..finding small ways to refuel, nourish and take care of your needs. And as a couple one another.
Books
~ Dan Siegel, The Whole Brain Child
~ Dan Siegel & Mary Hartzell, Parenting From The Inside Out (if you were to get nothing else I recommend this book)
~ Dan Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson, No Drama Discipline
~ Dr Becky Kennedy, Good Inside
~ Dr. Shefali, The Conscious Parent
~ Mona Delahooke, Brain Body Parenting & Beyond Behaviours
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Websites and Social Media
~ Dr. Becky- her YouTube channel & IG offers so much good free content. Also her website has specific workshops and a membership. The reparenting workshop is highly recommended as is her work on Deeply Feeling Kids.
~ Dan Siegel on You-Tube- parenting, mindsight, hand model of the brain, the 4 s’s https://www.youtube.com/user/mindsightinstitute
~ Thriving Littles https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6D5MDfs_XUSs_cfbbwSQGA/videos and her IG
~ This is a online membership community with support and resources to do together with you child for a reasonable cost- https://www.calmkidcentral.com/
~ https://beaconhouse.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Dan-Huges-24.pdf -a guide for raising your troubled or/& sensitive child pdf
And of course please reach out if you have any questions or need support.
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