Develop Secure Attachment using the PERFECTS Method

You. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on developing secure attachment with good orderly direction. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Today we're going to review or define, depending on how long you've been watching this channel, secure attachment and the input impact of it on mental and physical health. Then we'll define good orderly direction and how it promotes secure attachment and explore blocks to parenting with good orderly direction and strategies to improve. Secure attachment is basically the person's ability to feel safe, empowered, supported and loved for who they are. Even if they make mistakes, they're not going to be rejected, they're not going to be abandoned. Secure attachment, when people have it, then they have an absence of excessive abandonment and rejection fears. Now excessive is an important word because when you go into a new situation, you may fear being judged. You may have a little bit of anxiety about, you know, maybe people aren't going to like me. That's normal. That's normal in social situations. What I'm talking about is the excessive and oppressive fears of abandonment and rejection. If a child is securely attached, they know at least one person is going to be there for them. Now not everybody has a lot of secure attachments, that is true, but you have ideally will have a few. They know they are less hyper vigilant to signs of rejection or abandonment from others. If you're, if you know that somebody loves you, if you know you've got a safe space to go back to, if you know that you've got that support system, then what other people think isn't nearly as important. If you are constantly afraid that you're going to be abandoned by your support system, if you're insecurely attached, then you're going to be constantly looking for somebody else to fill that gap to just in case they go away and ideally find someone who, who is a secure attachment. But when you have a secure attachment, you don't go looking for more. Most of the time you start developing healthy relationships. But it's not like you're desperate to seek out another secure attachment. When a child's securely attached, they learn to love, support and empower themselves in the same way that the parent or caregiver supported, loved and empowered them. Children learn what they live. And I'm going to say this a bunch today. And if the child learns, hey, I am lovable, even if I screw up, great. If the child learns how to identify their emotions and manage them by watching their caregiver, by assistance from their caregiver, great children learn what they live secure. Attachment is characterized by the mnemonic cares, consistent responses and presence from the caregiver. That doesn't mean you have to be around all the time. It means you need to be consistently there, you know, in the evening. You know, pay attention to what's going on with the kid, not be sometimes paying attention and other times completely checked out, either on your mobile device or drunk or whatever else that's not helpful. The child needs to know that when I need caregiver, I can connect with caregiver somehow or caregiver surrogate attention. And I could say proactive attention here, because when we respond to a child, which we're going to get down to in a minute, that lets them know that they're safe and that their caregiver is going to help keep them safe. But when we give them proactive attention, when we say, what would you like to do? I want to spend time with you, not because something's going wrong, not because I need something, but because I enjoy spending time with you. Think about what that says. Remember behaviors, communication. Think about what that says to the child. Even if you don't say those words. If you say, hey, I really want to spend the afternoon with you, the child goes, hey, that's so cool. Caregiver wants to spend the afternoon with me. And that helps them start to feel confident in themselves, which as they progress to initiative versus guilt and industry versus inferiority and then into independence. In Erickson's developmental stages, they're going to remember that it's like, okay, this person wanted to spend time with me, so maybe other people do. This person thinks I'm great. Maybe other people will. Then we get down to responsiveness, to eustress, which is good. Stress and distress. When the child comes home from school and they have had an awesome day, they made the team, they got an A, whatever. We need to be responsive and celebrate with them. When the child comes home and they've had a bad day, they got cut from the team, they didn't get a good grade, they had a fight with their best friend. We need to be responsive to that as well. We don't only want to be responsive when there's a problem. We need to embrace everything. And that helps the child know that when I'm having these feelings, I have someone to share them with and some that someone that will help me manage them. When they feel overwhelming, insecure attachment, the caregiver provides encouragement to try new things and live authentically. The caregiver says, you can do this. You know, try Stepping outside of your comfort zone. If you want to. If you want to try out for the team, great. Go ahead, give it your best shot. And if you make the team, wonderful. If you don't, then we'll figure out what to do from there. If you still want to make the team, then maybe we'll get you private lessons, you know, whatever it is. But the caregiver says you're going to fail sometimes. But as we grow, we've got to get outside of our comfort zone. We've got to be encouraged to try new things and decide, do we like them? Is it a good fit or is it not? Not for us. And finally, safety, unconditional positive regard. The caregiver is always there. You can always come home. You can always, always tell mama what you did. I may not like the behavior, but I'm going to always love you. And that is the overarching message. You have a crappy day at school, your friends turned on you, and you know, you, you failed a test and you got cut from the team and something else bad happened. It feels like the world is crashing in. That's okay. Come home. I will help you weather the storm. I will be responsive and I will love you. Even if. What do each of these behaviors look like? I want you to think about with if you're a parent or we've all had parents. If your caregiver was consistent in their responses, you knew if you told them this, they were going to be fine with it or they were going to be really angry. You knew if you behaved a certain way, it was going to be approved or disapproved. But it wasn't one of those, you know, maybe it'll fly and maybe I'll get in trouble. What does that look like in terms of parenting behaviors? And I kind of gave it away. A lot of times it's being mindful of, of what's going on and making sure that the boundaries and the rules stay the same. They're consistent. What's okay on Monday is okay on Friday. What's not okay on Monday is still not okay on Friday. That proactive attention, spending time with the child. It can be 15 minutes, it can be five hours. But regularly spending time with the child helps them feel important because you're taking your time being responsive to their good and their bad situations. Sometimes that will look like just listening. Sometimes that will look like starting at the very beginning. With young children, they have to learn how to down regulate. So it may look like saying, I see you're really angry now. Would you like a hug or would you like to go out on a walk? Whatever it is that helps them down regulate, but they don't know how to do it. So we need to help them identify the feeling and identify the strategy or a strategy to downregulate encouragement to try new things. What does that look like? If you're being the, you know, ideal parents that promote secure attachment, what does it look like? How do you encourage children? What's the difference between encouraging and pushing? It's a fine line. It's a fine line. We want to encourage them to try things, but we don't want to make them feel like our love is conditional upon whether they do something. Secure attachment in, in what ways do secure attachment behaviors help the child feel safe, empowered, supported and loved? So these are the same, this is the same mnemonic. I just didn't have enough room on the last slide. But when the caregiver is consistent, the child feels safe. They know what's going on, they know what's expected, they know what to predict. They may not like it. You know, know if they know you're going to get mad, you know they're not going to like it, but they know what to predict. So they know what's going to happen. If you're communicating safety, they know that cons with consistency, you may get mad and you're still going to love them even though you don't like that behavior. When children feel safe, they can turn down that sympathetic stress response. They don't have that constant need to be hyper vigilant because they don't feel constantly threatened. That goes a long way to help them regulate their stress response and their autonomic nervous system, their gut microbiome, their systemic inflammation. The more we can help children learn how to manage their stress because there's going to be stress. The less illness they're going to have, the better they're going to sleep, the better they're going to learn. In terms of helping the child feel empowered and supported, that goes to responsiveness and encouragement. When the child feels completely overwhelmed with grief or anger. We're not just going to let them sit out there and flap in the breeze. We are going to support them. We are going to help them identify the feeling down, regulate, explore the what triggered it and what the options are. And then we're going to encourage them to choose the best course of action. So we're going to be responsive. We're going to support them as they manage this distress. We're not managing it for them because we can't tell them how to feel. We are helping them develop the tools so they can manage the distress and they can feel more empowered in their own skin, in because the next time they have this rush of anger, it's like, oh, I remember that tool that I did the last time. I remember the last time I got upset. Caregiver and I did this, that or the other. So we're teaching them and as they learn these skills, they're going to develop a sense of mastery and then loved. When we provide them proactive attention, we want to spend time with them. When we help them feel safe and loved, even when they make mistakes. And when we're responsive, when we take time out of our day of our life to spend time with them, the child starts to feel important. How cool is that? And finally, thinking again about this same mnemonic, how do these behaviors teach the child mindfulness? Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment. If the caregiver is consistent, they have to be mindful. They have to remember, how did I react the last time? What is actually going on in this situation instead of reacting in the moment. So if a caregiver is consistent, then something that irritates them a little bit on Monday is going to irritate them a little bit on Friday. Even if they have had a horrible day on Friday, they're going to be consistent in their response. They're going to separate their feelings and their stuff from their response to the child. The child starts learning how to be consistent, how to consistently reward and discipline or manage their own behaviors. They start learning that doing homework, I have got to discipline myself to do this every day, even if I don't like it. But I'm becoming more mindful of what needs to be done in the moment. And I'm becoming, I'm learning how to be consistent with myself. So if I skip my homework, not going to pat myself on the back, I'm probably going to give myself a stern talking to. Now that's older children. You're five, six, seven year olds. That's kind of advanced. But we want to help them develop mindfulness when we're responsive to them. You see your little child and they're very clearly overwhelmed or angry. They may not have words for that. And by walking up to them and saying, you know, Tommy, it seems like you are feeling really angry right now. That helps Tommy check into the current moment, helps Tommy learn the word for what he's feeling at that moment, and then helps Tommy figure out, okay, what do we do next? You Know the, the caregiver is there from the beginning and helps Tommy recognize, you know what I'm feeling tired or with a lot of children, when they start, or angry when they start feeling tired, they make more poor choices. And helping the child recognize that, you know, I see that you seem to be really tired today and I'm wondering if that's contributing to your poor choices. Distress tolerance is something else children learn. When we teach responsiveness to, to their feelings, we are teaching them how to tolerate distress. We are teaching them that feelings may be good, feelings may be bad. We may not like how they make us feel, but feelings are not going to consume us. Feelings do not destroy us. And helping them learn how to sit with distress, how to sit with anxiety. They took a test and they don't know what score they're going to get or, or they tried out for a team and they don't know if they're going to make it right away. That information's not going to come in for hours or days and that can be a little unsettling. They may want to know. And helping them learn how to tolerate that anxiety can be really helpful. When we help with responsiveness and encouragement, we're teaching them accurate problem awareness and solving or helping them learn how to actually step back and identify the situation and say, you know what, this is what's going on. I felt like this was going on, but in reality it's not that bad. These are the facts in this context at this time. It helps them develop self esteem when they know what to expect, they know how to behave, they know what is going to have rewards and what's going to have consequences. When they have proactive positive attention helps them feel good about themselves. When they start developing the skills to manage their feelings, the good ones and the bad ones, it helps them feel a sense of mastery and a sense of self efficacy or confidence, which makes us feel good when we feel like, hey, this whole life thing maybe I can deal with helps them develop empathy. Caregivers, when they are paying attention to what's going on with their child, when they're being consistently aware, when they are being responsive, they're going to empathize with the child. They're going to say, I see that you're really angry right now and you know, I would be angry too. The child is learning how to empathize with others and how to respect boundaries. Empathy doesn't mean you have the same feeling necessarily. Empathy means you can understand what the other person's going through. And so when a Caregiver says, I can see that you're really upset, and I can see why you'd be upset over this. Oh, wow. The trial's like, really? You get it? Okay, now what do I do about it? Boundaries. When the caregiver is being consistent, attentive, responsive, encouraging, they're also respecting boundaries. They're not telling the child how to think. They're. They're not telling them what to do. They're saying, let's problem solve. They're not telling the child how to feel. They're identifying how the child feels and saying, okay, let's deal with this. Instead of saying, oh, you're making a mountain out of a molehill, just let it go. They're teaching the child to respect others and communicate effectively. Because a lot of this whole care stuff comes down to using your words. And children are not born knowing that many words. And by interacting with a caregiver throughout their growth and development, they hear what the caregiver says. They learn from the caregiver, which includes learning words to communicate how they're feeling, learning how to communicate with others, and respect their emotional boundaries in terms of positively impacting mental and physical health. Well, mindfulness, when you're aware of, of how you feel and what your needs are in the moment, you can better meet them. If you're not paying attention, if you're on autopilot all the time, then stuff gets away from you. You, before you know it, you're burned out or you're sick or you're in pain. So mindfulness helps us identify how we're doing. If we're doing great, wonderful. If we're feeling stressed in some way, when we're mindful, we're aware of that and we can take steps to mitigate that so it doesn't get worse. Imagine that distress tolerance helps people maintain a balance between their sympathetic nervous system, their stress response, and their parasympathetic nervous system, or their relaxation response. When people experience distress and they down regulate, they're turning on that relaxation response. They're telling their amygdala and their brain, hey, this is unpleasant right now, but there's no major threat and we'll figure this out. So the stress response goes down. You're no longer in fight or flight. You're in problem solving mode. And that is a huge tool. If we can help people. If the one of the only things we can do is help our children learn how to regulate, manage their relaxation and their stress response. We've done a ton to help them prevent disease, reduce Inflammation improve mental health, accurate problem awareness and solving. When we are in fight orf flight, we are perceiving the threats in the environment. We are seeing everything through a threat colored lens. And when we are in our our wise mind, we're seeing everything through more of a neutral lens. When we are trying to solve problems. When we're in fight or flight, we're not going to do very good because our prefrontal cortex where we do all of our executive functioning and thinking, it kind of checks out when we're in fight or flee. So if that's checked out, it's really hard to problem solve. Self esteem will go up when people start to feel more competent and confident in their own skin and knowing that they've got a person or a few people that they can count on. Empathy. When people are better able to empathize with others, they are better able to understand what's going on with those around them. They're better able to support those around them and recognize, and this goes down to boundaries, recognize the difference between them and me. You're upset right now. You're struggling right now. My heart hurts for you. I don't feel the exact same way you do because I'm not going through that. But I am going to empathize with you. I'm going to try to be supportive, but I'm also not going to take all of it on and I'm going to respect you enough to not try to take it from you. Everybody has the right to their feelings. It's not my business and it's not my right to take away somebody else's feelings. When we do that, it enhances our support systems, it enhances our interpersonal relationships, which helps us feel safer, more empowered and loved, which is going to reduce our stress. It's going to improve our physical health. And when we can effectively communicate to ourselves as well as others what our needs are, when we can effectively and authentically communicate again, we're better able to get our needs met, to know what our needs are and get our needs met, which again goes a long way to reducing stress, improving health and improving mental health. So let's move over to good, orderly direction. Good orderly direction is something we talk about a lot in recovery circles, but ultimately it's a framework. It's a framework that can help us make good choices and implement behaviors that are important to us. Good orderly direction is an overall strategy to create a secure environment and help you care about your children. Good orderly direction is defined as prudence, which is a combination of Patience and knowledge. Always good for your parents to be prudent. Endurance of challenges, even when the child is on your very last nerve. Being able to endure that respect for self and child, you know, that goes back to those boundaries. And understanding that we're all doing the best that we can do on any given day. Forgiveness of self and child because we're all going to make mistakes and fall short sometimes. Earnestness. And that's keeping our promises if we tell them we're going to do something. Following through truthfulness with self and child. Being truthful and authentic about your feelings about what's going on. And then selflessness with the child. And what. What I mean by selflessness is assisting the child in a way that supports and empowers them. Without this, this part's important. Without negatively impacting your mental or physical health, selflessness can be taken too far where you give until it hurts and you actually start enabling the child or doing things for them that they could do for themselves. As I mentioned earlier, children learn what they live. So let's think about prudence. Remember, this is combination of patience and knowledge. Patience means taking a minute before instead of being on autopilot and instantly reacting to what's going on. It means taking a minute, taking a breath, figuring out what is actually going on based on the facts in this context at this time. And that's where the knowledge comes in. We react when something happens. We react emotionally. So patience says, let's downregulate. Let's get out of our. Our emotional mind and get the facts about what's going on. A lot of parents find that they have difficulty being patient and acquiring knowledge because they're overwhelmed. You have two kids at home and they get into a fight over something and they come at you with, you know, Johnny did this to me and Sally did this to me. And, you know, they're just bickering back and forth. And the caregiver can feel overwhelmed and be like, well, both of you just be quiet and go to your separate rooms. All right? That may be a timeout, I don't know. But ultimately be. When the caregiver reacted, they didn't stop. And get the children to stop as well. Assess the situation and get the facts about what actually happened. Okay, Tommy, you tell me your side. Sally, you tell me your side. Mental or physical illness, being on autopilot or mind causing you to be on autopilot or mindfulness. Mindlessness. When we're in pain, when we're exhausted, when we're depressed, when we're anxious when we are, you know, fill in the blank. Sometimes we can be so overwhelmed or so caught up in our own stuff that we don't even really think about what's going on. We just react with this knee jerk reaction. When this happens, you know, I'm going to yell when this happens. I'm going to send them to their rooms. Instead of trying to understand why did that happen. You get called to the kids school, be, oh, you know, I'm so angry. Okay, reasonable reaction to have for a lot of reasons. But we also don't know exactly why that happened. Maybe the child was intervening and trying to protect somebody else from a bully and was not actually a primary aggressor. I'm not saying that hitting him was right, but I'm saying we need to get the facts in the situation before we decide how to react so we can be more consistent. If you're telling the child at home, you've got to stand up for, for people and help them protect themselves from bullies and then you punish them when they do what they think they were told to do, that's inconsistent. So we need to be consistent. But recognizing for adults, caregivers, being aware of how your status impacts your ability to be mindful, to be prudent, making assumptions and jumping to conclusions. Tommy is 15 minutes late getting home from his date. He's 15 minutes past curfew. You know, he was being irresponsible. That's my, I'm jumping to that conclusion. Maybe Tommy stopped and helped somebody fix it. Fix a tire, Change a tire on their car. We don't know why Tommy's late until he comes in and tells us, yeah, I lost track of time or I was driving and I came past this older lady who was having difficulty changing her tire and I stopped to help her. Okay, one I'm going to be frustrated about, there's going to be consequences. The other I'm going to feel proud about that my child took a minute to help that person change their tire. Now, I might say in the future, it would be respectful if you would text me if you know you're going to be late. Even if you're, it's because you did something really good. Just text me so I don't worry. And then lack of effective support and resources. Oh my gosh. Kids are not born with an instruction manual. And when you start going on YouTube and to the library and wherever else, there are 40 different ways to parent. So which way is right? I don't know. All of us have to use our own Moral and mental guide, which is where prudence comes in. Our knowledge of what makes. What kind of a parent do I want to be? What does that look like? And if a caregiver doesn't have effective support to down regulate, to bounce things off of, to get another perspective, it may be hard for them to take that. Take that beat and say, all right, give me a second. Let me figure out what's going on. So what do we do about it? Consistent mindfulness for the caregiver. Being aware of your ability to be present. Being aware of what's going on with you so you can separate your stuff from their stuff. You. So what do we do about it? Consistent mindfulness for the caregiver. Being aware of your ability to be present. Being aware of what's going on with you so you can separate your stuff from their stuff. You had a bad day at work, you know, and you're just. You're over it. It was a long day. And your child comes in, they misbehave, they had a bad day, something. Not overreacting to them or getting angry with them because they're just one more thing on your plate, but separating it and saying, okay, I had a crappy day. Let me set that over here. You had a crappy day. Let's figure out how to deal with that. Because children don't have the tools to deal with it. So sometimes it may be, I had a really crappy day, and I hear you had one, too. But you know what? Mommy needs to take 30 minutes to get my own head together, and then we will talk about yours. That's reasonable. I'm not saying I don't care about your day. I'm saying that I want to get into a head space where I can best respond to you. Have the caregiver define their rich and meaningful life because that will help them figure out what's important to focus on and what's not. Have them describe their vision of a good parent. You know, what does a good parent look like in your mind? If you had this perfect parent, and it may be very similar to how they were raised or very different, but what does that look like? How does the caregiver respond? If that's too abstract, which it may be for some people, okay, that's fine. Tell me what it looks like to be patient with your child. What would that look like for you? And then you can go through each one of these characteristics of good, orderly direction and identify, or each characteristic of secure attachment and identify. If you're going to be consistent with your child, what is that going to look like? When, what are you going to do the same and what do you want to do differently? Help them develop mindful awareness and get out of autopilot. So consistent mindfulness of how I feel, but also getting out of autopilot before I respond. And I made this decision very early in my parenting journey, before I responded to something that was going on with our children, especially something big. I'd take a minute because I didn't want to go with my first reaction because that's all that was, was a reaction. It wasn't a well thought out response. So I'd say, okay, you know, let's. Let's think about that. Developing distress tolerance is also important for caregivers because children, no matter what age they are, can trigger you. They know your buttons and sometimes they will push them intentionally to get attention, to get boundaries set. There's a lot of reasons they may push those buttons, but they will push them sometimes and developing that distress tolerance. So you're not acting in your fight or flight, you're not acting in your stress mind or your emotional mind. You're actually able to down regulate and, and operate from your wise mind. That's huge. That's huge. And knowing if you're in the grocery store and you're pushing the buggy around and your child is just kind of losing it, knowing where your tolerance is and saying, okay, you know what I'm about at my threshold, so we're just going to leave and I'll come back and finish the shopping later. Improving their own the caregiver's own emotional intelligence and emotional quotient. We talked about this mnemonic earlier, but we'll talk about it again. Idea, Identify the feeling and the purpose of this feeling. I feel angry. The purpose of anger is to let me know that there might be a threat. Just like a smoke alarm lets us know there might be a fire downregulate. You know, once I realize how I'm feeling and what that feeling is trying to tell me, I need to down regulate so then I can get the facts so I can explore what triggered that feeling and possible solutions, the facts in this context at this time and then make the decision on how I want to respond. So I'm acting with purpose. I'm not just randomly trying to make it all go away. Communicate with the child to get the fit cat to get the facts in this context at this time. Johnny is terribly whiny today and just kind of grating on your nerves. All right, you know, let's see what's good. Why is Johnny complaining and whining? Communicate with the child. Identify. You know, it seems like you're doing a lot of complaining today or you're being very whiny. Can you tell me what's going on? Are you not feeling well? Are you tired? Young children may not know why they're whiny. Heck, adults may not know why they're whiny. But helping them try to brainstorm and figure out why am I being more difficult today? Identify useful resources to consult regarding child behavior and parenting issues. There will be some books, some people, some resources that you agree with and that support your style or your belief in parenting. Wonderful. Seek that out so you know you've got resources. I had a couple of friends that I would call when something would happen. One of them was a nurse. I remember something happened with my son one time, and, well, I'll share. It'll make you. Some of you laugh and some of you just completely grossed out. But we had a dog who was getting older, and I swear he was angry with me. And. And Sean was still crawling at this point. He was. And so he was crawling around behind the dog. The dog dropped a turd. My son picked it up and ate it. I was like, oh, my gosh, he's gonna die. He's gonna die. I called my friend, who was the. Who was the nurse. I'm like, do I need to take him to the emergency room? She's like, no, he may throw up. He may have an upset stomach for a while. But, you know, wash his hands, wash his mouth, and, you know, just learn from it. And I was like, okay, yeah. So, yeah, that's one of the grocer stories that I know I've never told you guys, but having that support is essential. Having somebody that can say, take a breath. It's not the end of the world. Worse things have happened. Take a breath, and let's move forward. Endurance. Thinking about what parenting behaviors demonstrate a lack of endurance and what the impact is on the child. If a caregiver is angry at the child's neediness or angry at others for making your child feel bad. Ooh, I had that last weekend. My daughter, where she's working right now, she. It's a very unhealthy environment, and I just so wanted to go down there and tell people, you know, to stop it, to knock it off. And, I mean, my daughter's 21, almost 22. Obviously, it's not appropriate for mama to go down and start doing that. But I had to endure that while I was listening to it, I was empathizing and doing all those other things, but Mama Bear really wanted to come out. Avoidance. Sometimes when you can't endure it, you just avoid it. I know that they're going to come at me with problems, so I'm just not even going to answer the phone today. Disengagement. I can't deal with the whining, the complaining, the needing, whatever. So I am going to disengage. I am going to lose myself in social media world dismissiveness, invalidation. Telling the child that they're making a mountain out of a molehill and they just need to deal with it because you can't endure one more thing or doing it for them. Sometimes children like cleaning their room. They may not do it the way you want it because they don't understand, or they may not do it the way the way that you want it done because they know if they drag their feet long enough, you'll do it for them. You'll reward their bad behavior. So a lack of endurance, a lack of being able to correct the child and sometimes micromanage until they do it right, can lead to rewarding unwanted behaviors. So solutions. Recognize what is realistic to expect of a child at different developmental levels. It's easier to endure a particular behavior if you recognize, hey, this is developmentally appropriate. They're doing the best that they can. What a 6 year old does when they're feeling overwhelmed is hopefully very different than what a 16 year old does. But recognizing that, recognizing when your child becomes a teenager or a preteen, their hormones are going to be all over the place. So their moods are going to be all over the place. And being able to endure the changes and lack of consistency in their moods is really important. So understanding that there's more going on under the hood for everybody than just what you see. Identify personal distress intolerant behaviors and address what triggers those behaviors. So if a child's doing something or somebody is doing something that makes your child unhappy and you get really angry, is it triggering your prior trauma or is this truly having to do only with your child? Do you feel like it's unjust? Do you feel like they're being punished in some way? That is unjust. Okay. That could be a trigger for you to have difficulty tolerating that distress. And again, does it come from your own sense of powerlessness from the past? Or are you just, you know, trying to protect your kid? I can't answer that. Explore what you learned from Your parents reactions to things. Do you want to repeat those same same behaviors or not? What do you wish they would have done differently in various situations? Because we can all look back, none of our parents were perfect. We can all look back and say, I wish would have done this instead of that. All right, they were doing the very best they could because you didn't come with a manual either. But we can be come more aware. We can look at some of these qualities that we're talking about today and say, my parent had that one, that one and that one, but not those three. Okay, how are you, what are you going to do differently and determine the impact of your lack of endurance on the child? If you have a short fuse and you can't endure things, you jump into action, you take over, whatever. How does that impact the child? Does it help them learn how to tolerate things and endure, or does it teach them that they just need to make it stop? What does it teach them about your confidence in their ability to handle things? Respecting a child's perspectives and boundaries goes a long way to helping them feel safe, supported and cared for. Having respect from the child is equally as important in terms of lack of respect of the child. When we invade their boundaries, their physical boundaries, they don't want to be hugged, we hug them anyway. Their interpersonal boundaries, when we tell them who they can and cannot be friends with. Now sometimes we've got to suggest, but ultimately, especially if they're in school, we're probably not going to be able to totally control that. So we need to potentially examine what are the benefits to being friends with this person. Emotional boundaries or cognitive boundaries. Telling them how they should feel or what they should think or how they should solve a problem instead of eliciting it from them. What do you think the best course of action is? How do you feel about that? And invading their environmental boundaries. Going into their room, going through their stuff, reading their diary, Huge boundary violation. Huge example of a lack of respect. Why do caregivers do that? Well, we can assume we can jump to conclusions, but a lot of times it's because the caregiver feels like they're missing something. They feel like they need information that the child is not forthcoming with. And there are other ways to get that information. Part of it by directly communicating with the child. Many disrespectful child behaviors are the child's attempt to get your attention because they're afraid or feel overwhelmed or just don't have the words to express themselves. Examples if they invade your boundaries, they may not know, you know, they may run up and grab onto you in the middle of the store and you're like, you know, don't. Don't hold on to me. Don't pull on my skirt so hard. They're invading your boundaries, but that's because they're scared. They are telling you how they feel and they're telling you you should feel this way or it's not okay to be happy because I'm angry. They may be having difficulty. They may not feel like you have validated or understand their anger because you're not angry. And that's a whole discussion to have when they're back talking, disobeying and procrastinating. We talked about that last week. Most of the time it's not because they don't respect you. It's because something else is going on that they can't identify or articulate. So we need to figure out what is the benefit to this, of this behavior, to this child at this point in time? What are they getting by doing this? Solutions for respect. Spend positive, proactive time with the child, which develops self esteem. Focus. When you're providing feedback on identifiable behaviors. Not your room is a mess, but it appears that you forgot to make your bed. Or I see that there's a lot of dust on your bookshelf. Can you please dust that? That is much clearer. Because if I say your room's still a mess, my son literally would look around and go, no, it's not. Because his definition of messy and mine were very different. Don't jump to conclusions about why the behavior occurred or what the child needs. When we jump to conclusions, we're being disrespectful because we're not allowing them to tell us their side of the story. Don't invalidate their feelings. They may say, I hate you. If you turn around and you go, no, you don't. Oh, that just invalidates their feelings. Or if they say, this is the worst thing ever and you say, oh, just wait till you're in your 20s, you'll change your mind about that. That's invalidating. We want to respect how they feel in the moment because their experiential vault is much smaller than ours is own and communicate your feelings. This is a huge respect thing. If I'm having a bad day, children personalize. So if I'm having a bad day and I'm just grumping around, it's not good for anybody. But I recognize that I'm having a bad day and it's important for me to Say, you know what? I had a really rough day at work today, and I'm in a bad mood or I'm tired. Has nothing to do with you. I just, you know, I just had one of those days. And children have had those days, too. But owning it so they know it's not them huge. Encourage the child, but support them to move at their own pace if you think that they would be great at this. My daughter is excellent at art, and I made the mistake of trying to push her too hard at doing art and trying to sell art and get a storefront because I was so proud and so just blown away by her natural talent. And eventually she just quit doing it. And I'm like, what? What's going on? And she's like, that was about you, Mom. That wasn't about me. I was like, oh, I'm sorry. And, you know, we had to have a talk, and I had to apologize. I had to take ownership of being pushy instead of. I thought I was being encouraging, but I was being overbearing. And she has since learned to just tell me, ma, back off and. Okay, I get it. Another solution. Pick your battles. Let the child exert some independence. When my daughter was little and she started dressing herself, I didn't always like the. The clothing choices she made, but they were fine. She wasn't going to catch pneumonia in the winter, and she wasn't going to sweat to death in the summer. She wasn't. Not my ideal ensemble, but it worked for her. I wasn't going to pick that battle because that was her communicating her independence, communicating her personal tastes. The mnemonic think comes up a lot when we talk about respectful communication. Is what you have to say truthful? That's important? Is it helpful? Is what you're getting ready to say going to help the person? Is it. Can you say it in a way that's inspirational? Not you need to change this, but you would flourish if you did it this way. Is it necessary? And the N is what kicks us often in the butt. Because a lot of times it can be truthful, helpful, and inspirational, and we can say it in the kindest way possible, but it's just not necessary. They're doing it their way, and they don't need to know our way. Even though we like our way, they don't need to know it. So do we need to provide that constructive feedback? Is it necessary? Separate your love of the child from your dislike of some of their behaviors and always allow your child to experience natural consequences and then be there to Support them in trying again. They don't do their science project until the night before. Well, looks like you're gonna be staying up all night instead of jumping in to. To save them, to rescue them. All right, you know, you're gonna have to learn from your consequences. Forgiveness. Holding on to anger at yourself, your parents, or the child only serves to make it more difficult to think clearly and care. If you're still holding on to anger and resentment from childhood, there's part of you that's constantly in fight or flee. Holding on to anger also drains energy you could use to be more like the caregiver you want to be and have energy to nurture. The child blocks to forgiveness. For a lot of people, you don't know how to forgive and move forward. You feel like forgiving represents weakness or worse yet, the behavior keeps happening. So how can I forgive them if they keep doing it? Well, Ch children learn what they live. If you're holding grudges and hang on to resentment or constantly bring up the past, so will your child examine the costs and benefits of holding on to stuff, both on both you and the child? If I hold on to stuff, how does that impact me and how does that impact my child? Explore your childhood experiences and lessons about forgiveness. Explore how to accept and forgive in the most empowering way and recognize repeated behaviors as evidence that you didn't get the message the first time they keep doing it, they're trying to communicate something to you, and you clearly didn't get it the first time or however you're responding is rewarding. If I tell my son to clean his room and he doesn't do it, and I go in there and clean it for him anyway, even if I do it in a huff, that's rewarding. So the next time I tell him to clean his room, you think he's actually going to do it? Probably not. So we need to check ourselves. Did we miss the message or did. Did we reward the unwanted behavior? Earnestness means keeping your promises and doing your very best. And this supports consistency. Nobody's perfect. But the key is you try and, and you take responsibility. If you make a mistake, if you respond inconsistently, whatever, acknowledge it, say, I. I can see how I responded this way last month and I'm responding this way now, and that's. That can be confusing. Let me clarify. And maybe your perception changed. Maybe something changed, or maybe you made a mistake and you said, you're right, I shouldn't have, you know, gotten on you for that. Because I told you last month it was okay. Blocks to being earnest A lack of self awareness. If you aren't paying attention to the promises you make, if you're not paying attention to how you're reacting in the moment, you may be breaking those promises and not even realize it. And fear of rejection or being like my father, like my mother, like my whatever. If you admit you did something wrong, if you admit, hey, you're right, I did snap at you and that was unfair. That is me being honest with you and being respectful. I'm earnestly trying to be respectful. But if I admit that I snapped at you, does that mean that I'm like this caregiver that I had? That I still remember them biting my head off all the time? So does it separating your behavior from what somebody else did. And when you acknowledge your behavior, figuring out how to prevent it from happening in the future, what can you do to prevent snapping strategies? Say what you mean and mean what you say. If it's important, write it down and prioritize it. And help the child understand why you can't do something. If you can't fulfill a promise that you made to them, help them understand why it's not because you don't want to, it's because I can't for this reason. And I will make it up to you. You know, this is how we're going to do it differently. Compassion is this pre this is present in your this is present present in your responsiveness, encouragement, and safety Aspects of secure attachment. You have to have compassion to be responsive, to encourage without pushing, and to help a child feel safe. In order to help them feel safe, you have to know what makes them feel scared. Blocks to compassion include expecting the child to understand it through adult eyes. What's a big deal to a kid may not be a big deal to you, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a big deal to that child. And having compassion. Thinking back to when you were six, how would you have felt in that situation? Expecting the child to have skills and knowledge? They do not. If the child is feeling out of control, you can have compassion for them because you remember. Or you can think about what it would feel like to be feeling all these intense feelings and not know how to deal with them, not have the skills and tools. If you think they can deal with it and but they're not, then you might feel angry, you might feel frustrated with them. But if you recognize it's not because they're not trying, they just don't have the skills. An inability to be present because you're burned out or overwhelmed. It takes energy to be compassionate and if you are just over it, if you're exhausted, it's going to be really hard to drum up that compassion because you're already your battery's done, your battery's dead. Solutions Empathy Think back to when you were that child's age. What would you have done or felt and what would you have wanted your caregiver to do? Responsiveness means being there to help the child identify what's going on, how they feel and the purpose of the feeling. Down Regulate. Explore what happened and what their options are and act with purpose. When we're being compassionate, we are understanding what the child is going through and we're being responsive. Engage in self care and maintaining boundaries so you can be present instead of constantly on your very last nerve. Truthfulness Children don't need detailed cold hard truth about everything, but they do need honesty. When a caregiver cares children are more likely to be honest. When they when the caregiver is consistent. When the caregivers responsive and encouraging and safe a children is a child is more likely to be truthful with you even if it's something bad, they know you'll get through it and you won't reject them. Blocks to truthfulness for the caregiver trying to protect the child from knowing what goes on out there. Thinking that your feeling or situation is not impacting the child. If I'm really stressed about something, the child picks up on it even if I'm trying to put on a happy face. So letting them know, hey, I've got this thing going on that I'm really stressed about and I love you and it's, it's all going to work out fine. I'm just stressed about it right now. That's fine. The child doesn't need to know the nitty gritty details. Guilt is another block to truthfulness for children. If they feel guilty about what they did and they're afraid of rejection, then they may not want to tell you. We need to let them know it's okay. If you made a bad choice, we'll deal with it and that goes along with fear of consequences. Solutions Consistent self awareness of what is going on in your life. How many times does that come up today and how it's impacting you? Caregiver physically, emotionally and mentally. Teach the child by modeling ideally mindful authenticity. I'm being mindful. I'm aware of my thoughts, wants and needs right now and I'm going to be authentic. If I need something I'm going to tell you what it is. I'm not going to lie, but because I don't think you want to hear it. Recognition of what the child needs to know and where they're going to and what they're going to learn elsewhere. Maybe you don't think they need to know it, but they're probably going to learn it either at school or on the Internet or both. So sometimes it's better to give them the correct version than to let them go out there and try to figure it, figure it out on their own. Process guilt with the child as self. Anger that teaches you how to be a better version of you. If you feel guilty, maybe you should. You know you made a bad choice. But that guilt is a feeling that's supposed to prompt you to figure out how not to do it anymore and how to be a better version of you. That's it. And explore with the child the benefits and drawbacks to avoiding consequences or lying. Because children will want to avoid that, they'll want to avoid punishment and. But it takes a lot of energy. And then generally when you find out they lied, the consequences are even worse. So helping the child really bring that to the forefront of their awareness that, you know, yeah, the truth sucks, but lying about it and then getting caught is even worse. And finally, selflessness helping the other person in a way that does not significantly impair your well being. Blocks to selflessness. Guilt if you're not always everything to the child. So some people will just keep giving and giving and giving until they're burned out and then they don't have anything left to give. They can't help the child anymore because they can't help themselves. Resentment at your own insensitive parents for not meeting your needs. It's hard to be selfless and help your child sometimes. For some people when they look at the child they're like, well, my parents did this and I was fine. So it may be hard to have compassion, it may be hard to want to go that extra mile, or an inability to assertively communicate to create a win win. I'll help you with this and you will help me with this other thing over here. You know, we're going to make it a mutual thing. Recognize what a lack of selflessness teaches the child. Do you want them to learn that they should give until they're completely burned out? Respond to the child in a way that meets both of your needs and help the child learn that a lack of healthy boundaries means you will eventually be totally drained and not able to help anybody anymore. Summary Consideration How Perfects good, orderly direction allows you to be more consistent, attentive, responsive, encouraging, and safe. So how do these Perfects behaviors help you create a more secure environment for your child? And the mnemonic again, Perfects is being prudent, which is patient and and patience and knowledge, endurance, respect, forgiveness, earnestness, compassion, truthfulness, and selflessness. All of these behaviors can help us be more consistent, have more energy to be proactively, attentive, responsive, encouraging, and create an environment that is safe where our children know we love them. We don't always like their behaviors, but we will always love them. Are there any questions.