Tag Archives: parent-child connectedness

In Praise of Special Time

Pillow Play GirlsRecently, my 4 year-old daughter and I have been doing Special Time every day for around 10-20 minutes (lately its either before bedtime or after I’ve fetched her from preschool on days when I don’t have to go back to the office). We also do some Playlistening (mostly rough and tumble and cuddles) in the mornings before we do anything else.

A few Fridays ago I was feeling really rotten after a long and stressful week at work and I really was not in the mood to be parenting! I had the afternoon off work and it was just me and my daughter and it wasn’t going terribly well. My daughter was cranky and I was restimulated and it was all I could do to stop myself from racing out the front door and running away (with the thought of the entire weekend looming ahead)!

Then my daughter suggested Special Time. It hadn’t even occurred to me to offer it (that was the kind of state I was in). At first I groaned inwardly but then I realised the genius of it and my whole attitude shifted. Then my daughter said, “I need Special Time right now because I’m feeling cross.” I was able to be present, offer her warm and loving attention and she was able to reconnect with me and herself. Initially, she was really grumpy in her Special Time, and because I could just be there and listen to her wholeheartedly for those few minutes, she was able to shrug that off and move into playing with delight and enthusiasm. By the time we had done 20 minutes of Special Time we were both feeling bright and happy and connected! It changed the whole afternoon and set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

That weekend we did an hour of Special Time both on Saturday and Sunday. I have never been able to manage that amount of time before with such ease. And since then we have made those longer weekend Special Times a tradition. What a difference it makes to the weekend. As a single parent I get pretty worn out when it’s just me and my daughter for long stretches of time. Weekends are the hardest. These long Special Time sessions counter the heaviness of the days stretching ahead when all I feel like doing is curling up and taking a break. It’s counter intuitive that putting more energy and love into parenting when you’re feeling exhausted can turn things around – but that’s exactly what it did! Hooray for Special Time!

It is clear to me that my daughter would not have asked for Special Time on that Friday afternoon if we weren’t in a regular practice of it. In fact, I’ve noticed that when we stop doing it for a while, she stops asking for it. I cannot praise the genius of Special Time enough. It’s clear that it makes a difference in my child’s life but what is equally rewarding is noticing how it makes my life as a parent so much lighter and more fun!

When we are doing Special Time consistently, our relationship is more intimate, loving and co-operative. My daughter is more relaxed in all areas of her life. There have been times when we have stopped doing it (for instance, when we are on holiday and staying in someone else’s house and our schedule gets interrupted). During those times I can feel the difference. Even though we’re on holiday and I’m with my daughter every single moment of every day, even that kind of quality time cannot replace Special Time.

What I have discovered more recently is the profound effect that Special Time has on me. I feel happier, more relaxed and I feel good about myself! The consistent practice of Special Time has made more of an impact on me emotionally than I could have imagined. I had always thought that Listening Partnership time was the most important listening tool for me as a parent, and I have certainly gained tremendously from it. But I am now convinced that Special Time deserves credit for freeing me of feelings of guilt and regret as a parent, and bringing back a childlike zestfulness into my life and my family! Special Time has done more to re-energise me than any amount of rest could have done!

~ Liesl Orr, Johannesburg, South Africa

Parent-Child Connectedness Takes Us Beyond Emotional Intelligence

I couldn’t have stopped crying even if I had wanted to. I don’t remember now why I was crying, but I remember the look on my father’s face as he begged me to stop. “What am I going to do with you? All the neighbors are going to think you’ve gone crazy!” It was summer and the windows were open. And I was experiencing heartbreak like only a four-year-old can.

All Rights Reserved

Forty years later, what has stayed with me is the deeply jarring alienation brought on by my father’s inability to cope with, let alone understand, my emotional experience. He just wanted it to stop. How could my father, who I adored beyond words, plead with me not to express an experience that clearly needed his comforting and attention? Shame and confusion were layered over whatever the original hurt may have been. If my father complained that I no longer told him anything when I was a teen, he was reaping seeds he planted when I was very small and needed him to listen.

Connecting with children when they express their emotional experience supports the essential elements of the parent-child relationship. A parent like my father, who begs their child to stop feeling their feelings, at the very least misses a wonderful opportunity for connection, attunement and emotional closeness that could have been used to strengthen the parent child bond for life. Not that it’s always easy to connect with children in these moments. Setting aside your agenda and stopping to warmly devote your attention to a child screaming their way through the grocery store is farther than most parents would want to take this model. But building acceptance into a connected relationship wherever possible has clear, measureable benefits.

The Education Training Research Associates, (ETR) with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, conducted a literature review on the effects of parents developing a secure connection with their children early in life. Their paper, Parent-Child Connectedness: Implications for Research, Interventions, and Positive Impacts on Adolescent Health, 2004 provides an excellent guide for understanding the true impact a strong parent child connection can have on children.

ETR uses the term Parent Child Connectedness, or PCC, to expand the idea of attachment. They define PCC as, “seeing the interaction between parents and children not just as individuals but as part of an on-going, dynamic relationship” (ETR, 2004; p. 5). The parent-child connection endures beyond the early infant years, and is sustained in different ways throughout the life of the child.

ETR’s review of over 600 research studies concludes that Parent Child Connectedness is the “super-protective factor” against negative outcomes in adolescence. Having a close, connected relationship with a caring adult, an adult who listens to the child’s feelings, is the single strongest indicator that an adolescent will reach adulthood without experiencing teen pregnancy or violence, without becoming addicted to drugs or tobacco, and without dropping out of high school. Fostering this kind of relationship with our own children takes us beyond emotional intelligence, into a space where the emotion we each experience is accepted, experienced and processed.

While Emotional Intelligence is a wonderful place to start, the key for me has been remembering that experiencing intense emotion takes neurobiological precedence over thinking about that emotion. In other words, it’s hard to think and feel at the same time.

Dan Siegel’s work, The Developing Mind, explains the details of this process, but as a non-neurobiologist I imagine the available energy or attention moving through the three main parts of the brain. The brainstem makes sure you’re breathing, your heart is beating and the salts in your blood are balanced – it keeps your body alive first. Then the limbic system, the seat of emotional response, gets the energy next. If feelings have been triggered, they can highjack us until we are able to process them. This expression of emotion is a normal, universal human response to emotional stress. It’s as natural as the impulse to swear when you hit your thumb with the hammer. The higher cognitive functions are the last to receive the mind’s attention. Just the same way that you can’t balance your checkbook if you can’t breathe, you also can’t balance your checkbook when you are overwhelmed by strong emotions.

Children can’t talk to you about their emotions and feel their emotions fully at the same time. And they can’t fully process their emotions in isolation. The human mind is built to work in connection with other human minds. What I needed at four is the same thing kids of all ages need, a caring adult with whom they can share the full range of their experience without fear of rejection, shaming or condemnation.

Here’s Patty Wipfler’s explanation of the process from her booklet on Crying:

We are so accustomed to seeing the world only from our own vantage point. If we don’t feel sad, no one else should, either. But children’s feelings are like their own personal weather system, which is affected by forces often unseen by you.

To tell your child he should feel happy when he is sad is roughly as effective as telling a rainstorm to go away. Phrases like “I’m sorry you feel so sad” or “I’ll stay right here with you while it’s hard” give your child permission to address and work through bad feelings. Phrases like “It’s only a torn paper. Quit acting like such a baby!” only shame a child. They work against your goal of helping your child rebuild his sense of well-being.

As you listen, you are not necessarily condoning your child’s feelings, nor are you spoiling him. You are helping him recover. Children cry only when they are too upset to think. Feelings of upset can overpower a child and drive him to do things that don’t make sense. As you listen, you drain the power these feelings have over your child. His own good judgment will return once you’ve listened thoroughly.

What have you learned about the best ways to be present with your children’s strong emotions? Please share what works for you to build parent-child connectedness in the Comments.

-Julianne Idleman via The Parent Scientist
You can join join Juli for an online class on the Science of Parenting in January.

Stepping In and Listening

(C) Karen Barefoot 2006

My son, who is 4, my husband and I were all busy getting ready to go to a friend’s house on a Saturday morning. Our neighbors next door, who we are close to, have a 9-year-old. Although we are friends, we have had to limit the time our son spends with their child, because the kind of language he often uses isn’t appropriate for our son to hear. They were making preparations for a birthday party for their son and our son saw this. I told him as he was watching them that we were going to another friend’s, and that the neighbors would save some cake for him and he could have it later.

Then, as we were doing our preparations, he picked up a hockey stick and began hitting things–the couch, the floor, scraping it on a rock in the yard, and poking the cat. His father got annoyed, and said harshly, “Come on! You’ve got to get in the car or we’re not going!” Then our son said, “You b____!”

Before I’d read the Listening to Children booklets, I would have gotten into it, too, and scolded him for talking to his Dad that way, and for banging around with the stick. But I’ve been teaching myself to connect with him when things are bad. I actually figured that he was indignant for good reason–his Dad had spoken very harshly, and threatened him.

So I just decided to try to connect with him. I scooped him up in my arms, sat down on the couch with him, and said, “You really seem to be upset.” He looked at me like I was a stranger. I touched him gently and asked him, “Are you upset because you can’t go to the party?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “It looks like you feel pretty bad that you don’t get to go.” His eyes welled up with tears, and he began to cry.

I held him, and his Dad came in close, too. We listened to him for some minutes. When he stopped, I said, “Why don’t we call the neighbor, and make sure she remembers to save you some cake.” His Dad brought me the phone, and we stayed all snuggled together while I made the call. The neighbor said she would save some cake, and would save him a party bag, too. When he heard this, his whole body relaxed. It was clear that he felt heard, and felt connected again. It was a very sweet little time. He got his things together, ran to the car, and was waiting for us, for a change!

Since I’ve been connecting and letting him have his feelings instead of scolding or giving orders, he’s been so much happier. Instead of walking, he skips everywhere he goes. Listening to him is changing all of our lives!

~ A Parenting by Connection Mom

Saying Good-bye to a Pet

(C) Keiko Sato-Perry 2011

My five-year-old son caught a three-inch long skink lizard the other day.  It was very exciting for both my sons.  The lizard was given a name and a place to stay.

But, by the next day the lizard, which was so agile when caught, moved only slowly.  After a show-and-tell of the lizard at school, I asked my son to release it in nature. “Okay,” he said and let the lizard go in our backyard.

Right after my son released the lizard, he started asking me questions I didn’t understand at the time like, “Can we recycle a lizard?” and  “Can we get another hamster?”

I was confused why he was talking about a hamster and answered without much thought, “No, I don’t think we can recycle a lizard and about a hamster, we can talk about it later.”

Without further discussion, my son went in the house. I didn’t suspect anything went wrong, until I found him playing in the house with his shoes on. We take our shoes off in the house. He knows it and usually follows this rule.

“Shoes!”  I reminded. He kept looking down playing with his Legos.  “It’s time to take your shoes off.”  To this, he stuck out his tongue and blew raspberries at me. Then it finally occurred to me there was something going on. I went closer and bent down to his level, but he would not make an eye contact.

I put my hand on his shoe and repeated, “Let’s take your shoe off.”  My son tried to squirm away.  I kept my hand on his shoe and listened.  Right then, he started calling names so I tried to look into his eyes asking, “What’s up?”

“Nothing!” he answered and tried to escape again.  “Shoes off.”  I repeated.

By then, I came to realize it wasn’t about shoes. I went down on my mental check-list if I was calm, wasn’t upset and if the limit was reasonable. I kept watching him closely while holding the limit to take his shoes off.  I did not care about shoes in the house, but I did care about my son trying to tell me something.

Soon he was in tears. After about 10 minutes of crying loudly and squirming, he started telling me, “You made me lose my lizard. I didn’t want to. And I want another hamster!”

It started making sense to me why he was talking about a hamster when he put the lizard on the ground.  Last year, we lost a pet hamster, my son’s very first pet he had played with every day.  He has talked about her death once in a while.

I responded, “It’s hard to say goodbye.”  He cried more crouching on the floor with me on his side.  I said again very softly, “Bye, bye, lizard.”  He cried more.  Soon he started telling me, “You need to go get the lizard again!” in his tears.  I answered softly, “Okay, I will see if I can in a bit.”  My son cried awhile longer talking with me about the lizard and hamster.

Through listening, I learned about my son’s perspective, which I hadn’t understood initially.  I saw that he just lost his second pet in his life.  His saying good-bye to the lizard might have stirred up his memory of his pet hamster dying.

When he slowly stopped crying, he let me take his shoes off without any problem.  I went outside and found the lizard in the same place, and brought it inside again to show my son.

Later, my son and I released the lizard outside again.  This time, we did it more carefully and slowly, really saying good-bye to the golden lizard that was with us for 24 hours.

—Keiko Sato-Perry, Certified Parenting by Connection Instructor

Keiko Sato-Perry

Join Keiko in her upcoming Building Emotional Understanding online class starting April 22.  Register now!

Listen to a podcast of a recent teleseminar “Parenting: Going Deeper”, in which Keiko presented.

You can read more of Keiko’s stories here and learn more about Parenting by Connection in the Listening to Children booklet set.

I Want to Go to the Park

One summer evening when my son was 4.5, we were walking our dogs after dinner.  He really, really wanted to go to the neighborhood park.  I told him it was getting late, and we needed to go home and get ready for bed.  I promised that we could eat dinner early the next day and go to the park.  Usually my son is a very reasonable child, and this would’ve been enough explanation.

Playground SignHowever, that evening, he was stuck in “I want to go to the park” land.  He whined, cried and begged to go to the park.  I tried playing games with him to distract him, to no avail.  I made up a song about “I want to go to the park.”  He laughed a bit at that silliness, but soon returned to, “I want to go to the paaaarrrrk!!!”  I ran around him in circles and tried to get him to dance with me.  It only upset him more.  His responses to all my questions and actions were, “I want to go to the park!!!”  That was when I realized that it was not about going to the park.  He was setting himself up for emotional release.

So I let him.  I asked my friend who was walking with us to take the dogs home, and sat on the curb and held my son.  By this time, he was beside himself crying and trying to drag me toward the park.  He struggled against my arms, rolling around on my lap.  He kicked his legs back and forth like a pair of scissors.  I kept patting him on the back and telling him I loved him.  I said I was sorry he was disappointed but we could not go to the park that evening.  He kept crying and struggling.

Some neighbors walked by on the other side of the street.  They smiled at us when they heard his cry of wanting to go to the park.  I guessed they’ve been through that with their kids at some point, too.  I smiled back from the curb.  I was calm and didn’t feel I was being judged.  In hindsight, that was rather remarkable.  It may have been a turning point as a more confident parent.

My son continued to cry and began pushing me.  I let go of him and sat looking at him.  He walked a few steps away, then ran back and climbed into my lap again to cry.  When he pushed very hard, I would let him get up.  He would climb and lie down again in my lap, all the while screaming about going to the park.  As he cried, I held him and told him that I knew he had had a tough day.

In about 10 minutes, he stopped.  (Though it felt a lot longer at the time.)  He sat on the curb leaning against me.  The sky was just starting to get dark.  I asked, “Hey, where’s the moon?  Could we look for the moon on our way home?”  He calmly stood up and held my hand.  He found the pale crescent moon, and we listened for frogs as we walked home, hand in hand.  The next day, we did go to the park after dinner.

To this day, I don’t know what difficulties he had or what emotions he needed to offload.  I did learn from that experience that whenever my son appears to be stuck wanting something and starts to repeat one phrase over and over, it’s no longer about that thing he wants at the moment.  That signature behavior became my signal that some pent up feeling is bothering him, a lot, and a much needed Staylistening session is called for.  And more often than not, I’d be right about that.

–A mother in Fremont, CA

Read more about the Parenting by Connection approach in the Listening to Children booklets or hear Certified Parenting by Connection Instructor, Alaiya Aguilar discuss another example of Staylistening.

Starting Kindergarten

(C) Cienpies Design 2009

My five-year-old started kindergarten last week and he is almost finished with his second week.  It wasn’t an easy transition for him and here is how we supported him using Parenting by Connection tools.

Through summer, my son resisted to the idea of kindergarten.  “You are going to kindergarten, are you excited?” he was often asked and his answer was an adamant “No!”

Toward the end of a summer full of fun, Special Time and Staylistening my son’s response changed from an absolute “No!” to a “Maybe.”

But then, he kept resisting, not going into a classroom for kindergarten assessments, and we had to come back for the second day and still the teachers had to come outside their rooms to give him assessments in the playground!

Despite his resistance, I could tell he wanted to give kindergarten a try.  For example, he would talk about going to school. or choose to have his Special Time in the kindergarten playground where we played his favorite “mom-ster” game- I play a feeble monster (“mom-ster”) and try in vain to catch him while he swiftly runs away.

His first week at kindergarten came and he went very reluctantly.  On Friday, I was told that he became quite upset, crying and trying to run away after his dad dropped him off.  I had a meeting with the school counselor who listened to him that day and she graciously offered for us to use her room for any other separation upsets in the future.

Both my husband and I felt it would be really difficult to make him go the next week.

Over the following three day weekend, we decided to focus on his feelings around separation; my saying goodbye before going on an errand, playing physically together and playing hide-and-seek, and making our bedtime earlier to give my son a chance to express his feelings on separation.  Also, each son had one of us parents for half a day including an hour of Special Time.

The morning of second week came.  My son was half-naked without his pj shirt waking up.  After five minutes of Special Time in bed, I suggested putting on his day shirt.  He wouldn’t.  It was a small and quiet sign expressing his inside feelings.  I said very softly, “It’s time to put on your shirt.”  He ran out of bed to the other room.  I followed him, saying “Let’s put on your shirt and get ready for school.”  As soon as he heard the word, “school,” he tightened up and ran away again.  I tried to play, but he wouldn’t laugh.  “It’s time to go.”  This time, he tried to kick me.  I guarded with my arm, held his legs as gently as I could and said softly,  “No, no kicking.  It’s time to get ready for school.”

He started making some noise, wriggling, then crying loudly saying, “I don’t want to go to school!”  I listened.  His crying continued.  I encouraged, “I know your teacher is waiting for you.  She likes you.”  More crying and “No!”  “You are going to make more friends.”  He cried more.  We kept on going like this for 45 minutes.

Luckily that morning, my husband was able to take my older son, so they left.

I had barely an hour before work that morning, so I debated inside whether it would be a good idea to spend time on his crying at home like this.

It wasn’t easy to decide to stay and listen to him as his crying seemed to be getting nowhere and I started to wonder if my sitting next to him listening quietly and encouraging him once in a while would look like I was doing a good job of parenting.  But I had witnessed enough to decide to invest my time and attention then while I was calm.

Gradually his crying shifted and he would look around commenting like, “Oh, look at the bird outside.”  When I nudged him again in the direction of starting a morning routine, getting dressed, eating breakfast and eventually going to school, he would cry a while more.  By then, he was lying down on my lap, sobbing.

Finally, he looked more relaxed with his eyebrows lifted, looking at me in the eye, talking about things he remembered from school.  He got up and did all the morning routine with an attitude of “I can’t wait to go!”

We were half an hour late for school, but the transition went smoothly. My son had no difficulty walking into the classroom and waving goodbye.  And I wasn’t late for my work.

It’s the end of the week and my husband just called to say that the school drop-off went smoothly today and “whatever you did on Tuesday is really working!”

—Keiko Sato-Perry, Certified Parenting by Connection Instructor

Keiko Sato-Perry

Join Keiko in her upcoming Building Emotional Understanding online class starting April 22.  Register now!

Listen to a podcast of a recent teleseminar “Parenting: Going Deeper”, in which Keiko presented.

You can read more of Keiko’s stories here and learn more about Parenting by Connection in the Listening to Children booklet set.

Five Minutes Makes a Difference

special time in the mornings can make for a great day!

I’ve known for an embarrassingly long period of time that our days would be sooo much better if I could find a way to have special time with my oldest son first thing in the morning. It’s been a challenge because my husband leaves early and I’m on my own with three boys, rushing to get them all ready for their days. Oh yeah, and I have  to get myself ready as well!  In addition, my boys don’t generally wake up on their own either so I always have to get them up.

A few days ago, my oldest son woke up on his own and before his brothers. I was in the shower when he barged in and yelled, “YOU DIDN’T WAKE ME UP!” I said, “Good morning!” with a big smile on my face. “YOU DIDN’T WAKE ME UP!” he accused me yet again. I said, “I’m just in the shower, and I was going to let you sleep and wake you when I was out.” “NO! LAST NIGHT! YOU DIDN’T WAKE ME UP WHEN YOU GOT HOME!” Ahhh! Now I got it. He was upset because I hadn’t woken him up, as I had promised I would, when I got home late the night before. He always asks me to wake him up when I get home, if I’m not there when he goes to sleep. Though I promise to, I generally just give him a kiss and tell him I’m home. Very rarely does he wake up. So, now I at least knew what he was talking about – yelling about, rather.

Somewhere inside me I mustered up some patience and a relaxed tone, and said, “How about we do five minutes of ST [special time] before your brothers wake up?” He stopped for a moment and then started whining and yelling at me about how you couldn’t do anything in five minutes. I repeated my offer with the same relaxed tone. He calmed down and took me up on it. I said, “If you can very quietly sneak back into your room and get yourself dressed without waking up your brothers, I’ll go get dressed as well, and I’ll meet you in the living room for five minutes of ST before your brothers wake up.” By now he was getting into it. He had a smile on his face, and he snuck into his room very quietly and got dressed without waking anyone. When we met in the living room, I set the timer for five minutes and said, “OK, let’s do special time!” and I pressed the “start” button. He immediately started yelling at me not to start yet because we hadn’t figured out what we were doing. I said calmly, “I’m sure you’ll come up with something soon.” He whined for about 30 seconds and then said, “Let’s make Topps Attack cards!” I agreed, and asked what we needed. He instructed me to bring paper and scissors and a specific kind of marker. Then told me how to cut the paper, and we each worked on a card. He did Babe Ruth, and I did Cy Young. He told me what to write and where, and he drew my picture of Cy Young because we agreed that he would do a much better job. I must admit that when we started the five minutes, it really did seem like we wouldn’t have time for anything, but in the end we had produced two baseball cards and one much more connected kid! It was fabulous!

The rest of the morning went so much more smoothly than normal. I didn’t have to ask him multiple times to brush his teeth, get his backpack, etc. He was cooperative and even kind to his brothers. Even that evening he was more easygoing and, most amazingly, said “Thank you!” to his father at least once. For him, this is HUGE. I haven’t made another morning ST work yet, but I now realize how little time it really takes, which makes the goal seem more attainable.

~ Tosha Schore, Certified Parenting by Connection Instructor
Tosha teaches a special Building Emotional Understanding class for parents of boys starting September 12th

Staylistening and Playground Politics

Antics on the playground can lead to solid cries at home

One afternoon when I was picking up my 1st grader from school, his friends told me he had a bad day.  According to them, he was tripped many times in PE and got excluded in the playground as he “bended” the rule and received, “You are fired!” from others.

I talked about my feelings about this with my listening partners as I was bullied at his age.

My son was certainly cranky the last 10 days or so.  I talked with his teachers and my husband about it.  I gathered information from other parents too.  His teacher dismissed it, said it was nothing.

A couple of days after his friends told me he had a bad day, My son was speaking harshly to his little brother.  I went in and reminded him that we would want to speak kindly to each other.  Instantly, he went into a big struggle and crying.

I harnessed him, reflecting inside if I had the right mind to do this.  My Listening Partnership earlier really helped, as I now had more attention available.

I hoped I was doing the right thing even though I was worried if someone were to come in and see us, that they might think I was hurting him.

I made sure he was safe, safe from furniture, safe from me, and safe from himself.  I spoke to him, “I want to hear more about what happened today.”  More thrashing.  ”You can say I can play by the rule, let’s do that again!”  I almost got hit and kicked really hard.  ”I know you are a good boy.”  More screaming and intense feelings.  Then he stopped crying and thrashing, coming into my arms sweetly.

This was all while I had to be cooking dinner.  Rice and curry turned out to be a bit chewy as I couldn’t attend the stove.  However, my son ate a lot and he was in a good mood.  He was relaxed, sweet and cuddly all evening.  He would give me small presents and even offered me a massage going to sleep, even though he is the one who normally gets one.

My son didn’t share much about school events verbally.  What he shared with us grownups was that he actually liked what happened to him.  His body language seemed to tell me otherwise, but his teacher saw nothing problematic.

When I paid attention to him, his tone of voice, body language, and his mood, it told me something else.  His daily crankiness and his friend’s story gave me a small clue to what may be bothering him.

I wanted to tell him that I loved him, that he was a good boy, that he could be himself and still find a place in this world and change the world.  I am glad I now can convey that, instead of having just another cranky child receiving a lecture, a time-out or a yell if I hadn’t known better.  I am grateful that my son and I feel closer at the same time he feels more relaxed and confident.

—Keiko Sato-Perry, Certified Parenting by Connection Instructor

Keiko Sato-Perry

Join Keiko in her upcoming Building Emotional Understanding online class starting April 22.  Register now!

Listen to a podcast of a recent teleseminar “Parenting: Going Deeper”, in which Keiko presented.

You can read more of Keiko’s stories here and learn more about Parenting by Connection in the Listening to Children booklet set.

Hair Washing Glee!

bathtime can be a great time for playlistening

When my son was about 21 months old, he started to hate having water poured over his head when I washed his hair in the bath. He would scream and scream every time, even when I was meticulously careful not to get any suds or water in his eyes.

After a few weeks of this battle, I remembered what Patty told us about Playlistening. One night, during his bath, but before washing his hair, I took the special hair-washing cup and (discreetly making sure it was empty first!) held it upside down over my head. I shrieked, pretended to cry, and shook my head back and forth. My son howled with laughter!

He kept handing me the cup over and over again with a big smile on his face, and he laughed uproariously as I feigned intense distress. In between mock cup-pourings, I would smile at him to let him know I was okay. Gradually my hair got wet from the traces of water in the cup, and he was fascinated to touch my wet hair and rub the top of my head, which was now quite wet.

Later in the bath, when I washed his hair, he clearly did not enjoy it much, but he sat still and did not actually scream. Over the course of the next week or so, I always preceded washing his hair with play-washing mine, complete with loud shrieks and cries. He continued to laugh with abandon, and touch my wet hair with fascination. Now he has taken control of the cup, and insists on being the one to hold it over my head! It took three or four baths, but now he does not object to his hair being washed. In fact, what was once a torture session for both of us, is now one of his most gleeful games. In the evening when I say, “bath time!” he runs into the bathroom to get the cup, and runs over to me with it, laughing and holding it out to me!

- A mother in Pacifica, California

Wanting Mama

a good cry can be the best way to recover a smile

My daughter is 3, and she’s going to pre-school now. My husband and I have recently separated. Ella loves school. She talks about it enthusiastically when she’s at home, and she likes being there, but has a very difficult time when I leave her there. She wraps herself around me, clings tightly, and won’t let me get out the door. This has been going on for awhile.

Yesterday, after we got home from school, she was feisty and cranky. I was fixing her a snack, and I could tell that bad feelings were close to the surface. The last straw for her was that the chair I had set out for her was in the “wrong” place. I knew that this was an opportunity to help her with how she felt, so I didn’t fix it.

She ran across the room, upset about the chair. I went over to sit next to her. She was trying to cry, but wasn’t crying yet–it was a kind of “fake” crying. I sat with her, and told her as gently as I could, “That chair is just in the wrong place,” trying to help her feel her upset fully. She said, “I don’t need you!” and ran away from me. I moved to about 4 feet away from her again, and said, “I’m going to stay nearby, I don’t want to leave you right now.” She kept moving away from me, across the room or into another room, and I kept moving near her again. Each time she became more upset and getting closer to a real cry. Finally, as I moved in towards her she didn’t run away. Instead she lay on the floor kicking and repeating, “I don’t need you!” Then, I said, “I’m sorry I can’t stay with you in the morning at school, but I just can’t.” She began to cry hard. I asked, “Does it make you mad?” She nodded no. I asked, “Does it make you sad?” She nodded no, then she nodded yes, and began to cry really hard. I told her again that I was sorry I couldn’t stay with her in the mornings at school. She kept crying hard, and began to say, “I want Mommy! I want Mommy!” She was sobbing, and she came and curled into my arms and cried hard for awhile. It was lovely to hold her and help her with these feelings. At some point, she just stopped, as though we’d been having a conversation and the subject had changed. That was all.

The next morning, when it was time for me to leave her at school, she ran up to me, gave me a big hug and a kiss, and said, “Bye, Mommy!” and then ran off to play. What a change! I have to tell you that the morning after that, she was feeling things again, and clung to me–I think because our life has been unsettled at home, she isn’t finished with this yet. But it was great to see what a good cry could do for her.

- A mother in San Francisco, California