Monthly Archives: February 2010

Emotional Project – Toilet Troubles

Sometimes our children are holding on to BIG feelings that can’t be released in a smaller amount of listening time. We call these issues “Emotional Projects”.  Below is one mom’s story of how she used every listening tool, from Staylistening to Special Time to Listening Partnerships and more to help her son overcome his sudden fear of using the toilet.

Photo (C) SSkies 2009

After a big trip overseas my son had stopped wanting to do his poos.  He would hold them in as much as he could which meant he was uncomfortable all day and each time his poo would come he would clench his bottom and walk on tippy toes, with fear in his eyes and body.

He would often have little bits of poo come out so we would have to change him a number of times during the day. This also meant I had him in nappies again some of the time rather than in undies.  The constant changing of his nappies/undies and the fear he was experiencing was really triggering for me.  We were both really stuck and I felt like I couldn’t help him through it.

The first thing I did was take my stuff to listening time.  I cried, raged, talked, shook, growled, banged and stomped about how hard this was for me.  I wanted a magic wand; I wanted it to stop; I wanted it to be fixed; I wanted someone else to come in and fix it for us; I wanted to know that it wasn’t going to be like this forever.  The more I took time to focus on my feelings about this issue, the less triggered I felt by his actions and the more I felt it was possible to help him work through the issue.

I also asked for help!  I emailed Patty and she was able to help me see what was happening for my son and to give me the key I had been missing in attempting to use the listening tools – go slow!

Of course, I wanted to make it all disappear as quickly as possible, so I had to take these feelings of mine back to listening time.

When I was ready to work with my son, I talked to him about his poos and how important they were and how he really needed to let them go.  I told him that I was sorry he was feeling so worried about it, and that I would be there to help him through it so he would be happy to do his poos again.

The next time I saw him on tippy toes, with a worried look on his face, I moved towards him and put my arms around him.  I said “Hey mate, it looks like you need to do a poo. I’m going to help you”.  That was all he needed to start crying – he fought hard against me as he cried, “No, No, NO! I don’t want to.”

I held him, but didn’t make any attempt to move anywhere and I just reminded him that he needed to do a poo and I was going to help him.  He cried and cried and struggled against me.  As his cry subsided, I reminded him again and I slowly moved him towards the toilet.  He walked with me and as soon as I could feel his panic and fear resurface I stopped and held him and listened, reminding him how much I loved him and how he really needed to do his poo and how I was going to help him.  This process went on for some time as we slowly made our way to the toilet and onto the toilet.

We had a number of sessions like this, some lasting up to an hour and a half.

Another Staylistening session we had was on the change table.  As well as not wanting to go to the toilet to do his poos, he also hated it when I would change him and get the poo out of his pants.  One time, when I had noticed that he had a poo in his nappy, I set the limit and moved in and told him I was going to get the poo out.  He started to struggle away from me and was desperately trying to avoid getting his nappy changed.  I slowly made it to the change table and as he lied there, we spent over an hour and a half with him crying and struggling and sweating and kicking as I held the top of his pants and told him I was going to take his pants off.  I didn’t take them off and I didn’t hold him there, I just listened and poured my love into him as he worked through the big pain he had been holding in.

The Staylistening sessions were intense and regular over the first 4 days and they slowly reduced over about a week.  It was after one session in the toilet while his nanna was around that he started to do his poo in the toilet again.

As well as the Staylistening, I was also doing regular Special Time with my son over this time to ensure we had a strong connection and to ensure that he knew our relationship was also about fun and games as well as the hard work we were doing together.  In special time he could take the lead and make me do whatever it was he wanted to.  We played a lot of football and games in the bed.  I would delight in him and shine big beacons of light on everything that he did.

The Playlistening we did over this issue was tricky for me.  Because I was so stuck in the issue as well, it was hard for me to find the funny side of it.  I tried being scared of the toilet, but that didn’t make him laugh.  I tried running around and pretending to do my poo everywhere but the toilet, and that only made him laugh for the first time.  I tried making light of the poo in his pants by saying things like, “Oh no! A sneaky poo has landed in your pants!  How did it get there?  Did it fly in from the window?  What are we going to do about that?  Where should we put it?”  This worked pretty well, especially after we had done a couple of Staylistening sessions and I had done lots more listening time, there could be more of a relaxed spirit around it and we both were a bit more open to it being a funny topic.

This was a big emotional project for my son.  I still can’t be sure exactly what the big fears he had been stuck in were all about, but I have a lot of clues.  Going through the process of working through such a big issue has made me feel like I can work through anything.  It gave both of us confidence in our capacity to deal with feelings, it strengthened our relationship and it gave my son more emotional space.  After working through this issue he has been much more relaxed and happy.  He can laugh more easily, he has started to become more creative and adventurous.  He tackled new skills more eagerly and best of all he was finally all out of nappies and using the toilet in a relaxed way.

- a Parenting by Connection mom in Australia

If you’d like to arrange a one-on-one consultation to discuss your unique family situation and get specific suggestions on how to apply our tools, reduce parental stress, and minimize conflict click here.

Supporting a Child in School

Photo (C) Robert Michie 2009

My daughter had just entered the first grade and she was having a tough time of it. She came home upset during the first week of school, saying her teacher told the class that they mustn’t be crybabies, and that crybabies would be sent to the corner of the room until they were ready to come back to the class.

She felt shocked and worried, and didn’t want to go to school. I listened to her feelings about it, but also determined to try to support her by volunteering in her class. My wife works during the day, but I work graveyard, so I could adjust my sleep schedule to help out there.  I went to the teacher, and was told in no uncertain terms that parents were not welcome in the classroom. She didn’t want the extra work, and was doing fine. I was so surprised! I didn’t want to give up, though.

I went to the first parent meeting of the year at the school, and raised my hand to say that I wanted to volunteer in the classroom, and asked how I could manage to do that. This time, the principal responded, and told me in front of everyone that they had a school policy of no parents in the classroom. End of discussion. I felt humiliated. By the end of this meeting, I had a huge headache. But I got some listening time a few days later, and cried about feeling like a failure at supporting my daughter. It was an awful feeling. I wanted to make school safer for her, but didn’t know what to do next.

After the listening time I began to think of how the teacher must feel. If she was calling the children crybabies, she must not be feeling very good herself. And, she didn’t know me. She didn’t know what my reasons were for wanting to be in her classroom. I thought I would make one more try.

One morning I “happened” to see the teacher as I dropped my daughter off, and told her what I appreciated about the job she was doing. I had about five or six things I could honestly say I liked about her, her classroom, and what she was doing with the children. I told her I hadn’t wanted to come into her classroom to bother her, but wanted to be there to do whatever she would find helpful, and that I was good at following directions, in case she ever wanted a hand for something special. And that I worked graveyard, so I had morning time available.

A week later, I attended another evening event at the school. My daughter’s teacher came and found me there. She told me she had gotten permission for an exception to be made to school policy in my case, and that she would like to try me in her classroom once a week for a month to see how it would work out. She was friendly, open, and warm.

Looking back, I see that the listening time helped me get my own feelings out of the way, so I could think about what the teacher needed to hear. That headache I got reminded me, “‘Hey, my feelings are really stirred up here-it’s time to figure out what’s going on for me!”

-A father in Chicago, IL

Helping a 10-Year Old Give Up Thumb-Sucking

I was helping the child of a friend, who was 10 and still sucking her thumb. She had been trying to stop sucking her thumb for a long time. Her parents had tried many things to help– reminders to her at home, the bad-tasting thumb paint, and even putting gloves on her hands at night. She had agreed to these things because she really wanted to stop. At 10, you can imagine that she and her family had been dealing with this a long time. In spite of all this, she still sucked her thumb frequently.

I spent some “Special Time” with her, playing until we felt like we knew each other. Eventually, she told me that she wanted to stop sucking her thumb. I said that I would stay with her while she tried to think about taking her thumb out of her mouth, but that I wasn’t going to make her take it out. I figured that plenty of adults had already tried that, and it hadn’t worked. She needed my encouragement, not my interference.

I stayed close to her, touched her hand gently, and touched her thumb. I said, “It’s really brave of you to try to do this. I’ll stay with you, and I know that you can figure this out.”

I touched her thumb very gently while she was sucking it. I said, “I’m very glad to be with you.” That’s when she started crying. As she cried, she told me, “I just hate doing this!” She also cried about how hard it had been to have this habit, saying, “I hate it when the kids at school tease me!” She cried hard with me for about 15 minutes, as I sat close, touched her thumb with one hand, and put my other hand on her shoulder. The things she cried about began to change, and she told me, “And I still don’t even know how to ride a bike!” The hopelessness of giving up her thumb somehow connected to other things that felt hopeless, I guess. So I said, “You can learn,” in my most encouraging voice. She said, “No, I can’t,” and cried more. I gently said, “Yes you can, I know you can.” I think part of what helped her was that I could be hopeful for her.

When she finished crying, we found a bike, and I asked her if she wanted to try learning. She did. So we spent the next bit of time working on bike riding. She wobbled a lot, stopping and starting again, and after about 15 minutes, and many false starts and wobbles, she rode the bike! I actually don’t know how long she dealt with the thumb sucking after that afternoon–she lives far from me, and we didn’t see each other again. But I do know that she was elated about the bike, and felt deeply hopeful. Years later, she wrote me a card and thanked me for that day.

- Patty Wipfler, Hand in Hand Founder and Director

Regaining Confidence in Artwork

My daughter asked me to draw a princess for her. She had been drawing herself often, and recently she had stopped. She had begun asking me or my husband to do it for her every time. I knew that she was judging herself harshly, and I wanted to see if she could work through it.

I heard her request and told her, “No, honey. I know you can do this.” She whined and cried, “No, all I do is scribble-scrabble!” I asked her if someone had told her that and she said it came from school. I just stayed with her, letting her know I love her and that I believe in her and I know she can draw a princess. She cried and wailed and screamed “scribble-scrabble!” for 30 minutes. I kept loving her and reaffirming my belief in her. Finally, she picked up a crayon and started drawing. She was happy, willing and confident the rest of night.

I did question myself at first. And of course, I would love to draw a princess, but I know she loves to draw and it was painful to see her being so hard on herself.

Staylistening was a really comfortable way for me to set a limit without feeling like I was walking away or giving myself away. I knew I could really help her through this. It was really great to see her release that hurt – I didn’t want to jump in and save her. I had confidence in both of us.

After her cry, she was happy and confident. She has been drawing princesses, and more, ever since and has been giving them to me as presents. She hasn’t described her work as “scribble-scrabble” since. I even heard her sticking up for her little brother when another kid told him he was coloring scribble-scrabble.

–a mother in San Francisco, CA

Helping My Son Sleep in His Bed

The night before last my almost 3 year-old, the youngest of my three boys, awoke at 4:30am crying and very scared.  He kept asking, “Is someone gonna come?” He had watched Kung Fu Panda with us earlier that day, a movie that he’s seen many times and likes, but this time it seemed to get to him – at least subconsciously.  I had gone to sleep very early, and actually wasn’t so tired when he awoke.

Something similar had happened about a month earlier where, after watching something that didn’t seem to scare him in the moment, he awoke scared in the night. It was a week where I was not rested, so when he woke up and came to our bed, I just cuddled him up and we both fell instantly back asleep.

The problem was that this went on for several days, and I was starting to feel resentful – not to mention exhausted. My husband was also moaning about how he was falling off the side of the bed. All in all, this “solution” was not working for 3/5 of the household.

So, the night before last seemed the perfect night to put my limit setting to the test. When my youngest woke up and wanted to come to our bed, I said in a loving tone, “No. I’m going to go sleep with Aba (dad), and you are going to stay here in bed with your brother.”

The terror and tears came flowing out. “No! I want you to stay with me all night!” I tried laying him down in bed and lying across the bottom of the bed, holding his hand. This quieted him, but no matter how long I waited before gently removing my hand from his grip, he would sit upright, call my name, and grab for my hand. I realized this was not going to get me anywhere. A couple of times, I did “escape”, but no more than a minute later, he would show up at my bedside again wanting to sleep with us. I took him back to his bed and repeated that he was going to sleep in his bed and me in mine, and, again, the tears flowed. (This is all, by the way, being said in a very loving tone.)

I sat on the edge of his and his brother’s bed and held him as he screamed and cried that he wanted to sleep with me. Then he quieted down and explained very creatively that I should get in bed with his brother and that he would go sleep with Aba. Uh, nice try!

Again, I set the limit and he cried and screamed. He actually woke his oldest brother in the bed next to us (my kids don’t wake for anything), and he was very sweet telling his little brother he could come sleep with him. But my youngest would have nothing of it. I just kept holding him and he kept crying and screaming for a whopping two hours. At 6:30 am he fell asleep in my arms, I laid him in his bed, and went back to sleep. I felt great knowing that he had been able to shed all that fear, and even greater when last night he slept right through as he usually does.

- T.S. a mom in Oakland, CA