The Pros and Cons of Common Parenting Practices

Parenting is a hard job and our society does not offer parents the support they need. Parents need techniques that work–preferably now!

What seems to work alot of the time is rewarding or punishing our children’s behaviour. We try to get them to stop doing something we don’t like, or continue doing something we do like. Sometimes we can get kids to behave by

• raising our voices
• taking away their favourite things
• time-outs or sending them to their rooms
• grounding

The heavy price of focusing on children’s behaviour

These techniques work in the short-term because they are alarming to children. They threaten the most important factor in a child’s life–their connection to us and what they love.

When a child feels alarm, their nervous system gets activated. If their nervous system gets activated too often or too strongly, it can get stuck in overdrive. A child’s emotional development can get stuck as a result.

Problems arise when children’s emotional development gets stuck

Signs that your child’s emotional development may be stuck include

• not listening, arguing, and disobeying
• avoiding school, bullying/being bullied
• anxiety, obsessions, and compulsions

Reconnection is the antidote

How can we help a child who is feeling disconnected and is misbehaving?

By moving in closer and offering warm, loving support along with guidance and limits. Warm and loving support calms the child’s nervous system. A child who has a calm nervous system can learn, listen, and cooperate.

The idea of offering warm, loving support when a child is misbehaving is counter-intuitive. But parents who have practiced this method are amazed at their children’s recovery from emotional distress and how the troubling behaviours tend to evaporate.

If this approach feels right to you, I can offer you the tools to recover the warm emotional connection that will make your parenting satisfying and fulfilling. And your children will thrive.

“It is the experience of being in connection that fulfills the longing we have to feel fully alive. An impaired capacity for connection to self and others, and the ensuing diminished aliveness, are the hidden dimensions that underlie most psychological and many physiological problems.”
                            –Laurence Heller & Aline LaPierre, Healing Developmental Trauma (2012)