Does ‘gentle’ parenting mean no limits?

Does ‘gentle’ parenting mean no limits?

When looking for parenting input it’s important you sound out the approach to make sure it’s one that really answers your questions. Some parents have concerns that the Hand in Hand approach may offer the nurturing input that kids need but not give enough guidance on boundaries. Read on to find out more about the approach and how we set limits in a loving, warm and trauma-informed way. Not permissive but authoritative You can be reassured that our approach is not a permissive approach; instead we encourage limits, as many as needed and at the earliest point possible.  You will learn how to set non-punitive limits with warmth and feel really clear about what intervention is needed when. In terms of common issues such as a child hitting their brother, this of course needs to be stopped. We suggest it’s good to uphold a zero tolerance policy to anyone getting hurt in your family.  A different approach to limits I would also offer a slightly different emphasis from the more traditional ‘Stop that, we don’t hit, that’s not nice’, which leaves a child with a sense of shame and further disconnection. Instead of making children wrong for their behaviour, the responsibility for what happens actually falls on you, the parent. We know that when a child is hitting or teasing it’s a signal that they are physiologically out of whack. They have lost their sense of connection with others; their prefrontal cortex is down. Their thinking has gone wonky and from this warped state, they hit their brother.  When you leave the responsibility for making the hitting stop to...
Are you a Distancer or Pursuer parent?

Are you a Distancer or Pursuer parent?

I notice that in our parenting we tend to fall with varying degrees, into one of two camps; distancer or pursuer. Although these are terms traditionally used in the context of couples (it is a universal pattern that in relationship one partner takes the distancing role and the other pursues) I think we also have these tendencies in relationship to our children. The reason we fall into these dynamics are due to our attachment patterns. As babies if we had enough experience of being able to trust that our caregivers would respond when we needed we would become securely attached. If our caregivers weren’t always responsive, but connection was a good thing when we got it, we were more likely to be anxiously attached; constantly seeking out and reaching for connection. If our caregivers were more frightening than reassuring, we learned to keep our distance from them to feel safe, known as avoidantly attached. If we had a parent who was sometimes attentive and sometimes frightening and we couldn’t predict when, we may have developed a disorganised attachment (meaning that due to this unpredictability we couldn’t rely on an organised strategy that would ensure our needs were met so we swing between anxious and avoidant strategies in a disorganised fashion). As adults we are still governed by our attachment patterns from babyhood. You may notice you have a different pattern with your partner than you do with your kids. We can also vary either with different partners/children, or in different contexts. These patterns are hardwired in us. I’m going to describe these patterns, slightly playfully, with the awareness that...
How befriending your life story can make you a better parent

How befriending your life story can make you a better parent

I spent the first 5 weeks of my life in an incubator. I must’ve cried as many times as babies do during those weeks, except the nurses would only come every 4 hours. When they did come I imagine it was either to ensure I received formula via tube or to perform sometimes painful procedures. My mother came to visit each day. Apparently I used to become lively as soon as I heard her voice coming into the neonatal unit. She sang to me and held me. This experience of being sometimes so loved and sometimes so neglected left me with what they call an ambivalent attachment status. It has permeated my adult relationships, leaving me anxious and distressed when an attachment figure goes off radar. It was only through my quest to become a better parent that I uncovered the relevance of this. Attachment researchers Mary Main et al discovered something incredibly enlightening in a study they dubbed the Adult Attachment interview. What they found was that they could predict with 85% accuracy, a child’s attachment status based on the coherency of their parent’s biographical narrative. What this means is that the hurts that Life deals us can impact on how coherently we can tell our life story. All the hurts we have endured; physical and emotional, accumulate in the body. When we are holding a certain level of upset from past hurts, we tend to skip around when we tell our story. Feelings come up, we go off on different tangents and remember details in the wrong order. Conversely, when we have processed these hurts, we begin to tell...
When our childhood trauma shows up in parenting

When our childhood trauma shows up in parenting

Click here to open pdf   When my first child was born I was so ready for him and longing to meet him. My body however wanted to freak out and be taken care of so it generated a uterine infection that left me sweaty and comatose for the first 5 weeks of my son’s life. This was the exact duration I had spent in an incubator, separated from my mother when I was born; a childhood trauma lying dormant in my system. Fast forward a year or two, being with a toddler felt mostly intolerable. The months blurred by, but the days were each one an epic, painstaking marathon, that required seemingly impossible levels of determination. The only thing preventing me from enjoying this sweet little, curious, funny person was an internal chasm of latent, unresolved feelings which made a normal day feel like I was drowning. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is usually something we associate with war veterans or people who have witnessed shocking events. But Complex PTSD is something slightly different. It can occur through a longstanding sense of not being seen and upheld by those around us when we were growing up, or an accumulation of relatively minor but frightening, neglectful or confusing experiences. Things that we tend to normalise like a parent becoming scary when angry, or never being allowed to express our emotions, or not receiving the attention and delight that we really needed, can all become internalised as complex trauma. Flashbacks are less visual and more visceral than typical PTSD flashbacks and we often don’t realise we are having one. The...
Are you missing signals for connection from your pre-teen?

Are you missing signals for connection from your pre-teen?

Do you ever get kinda hunkered down when it gets to bedtime, on a slighted fixated mission to just get the kids in bed? I do.   My kids were doing the usual multiple procrastination stunts and I was fielding them, on autopilot; herding the kids into bed. No you can’t have a snack you just ate a huge supper. No I’m not going to read another story. Finally they settle and I sink into a hot bath.    My 11 year old’s face appears round the door. ‘Can I get in the bath with you?’ he asks and immediately I’m telling him to go to bed, that I’ve still got another hour of work and I can’t go to sleep myself until I’ve finished it. And suddenly I interrupt myself, noticing that he obediently walks away, shoulders hunched. I’m so caught up in my own frenzied to do list and tiredness that I miss him reaching out to me for CONNECTION. He wants some time just with me while his sister is in bed. And of course I feel like the worst mother and shout after him to join me.   It’s easy to miss as our kids get older. They seem so much more independent and they reach for us less often. And when they do it can be easily missed if we are preoccupied.   Here are some of the ways I’ve noticed they reach out:   Asking you to do something for them they can do by themselves Asking to climb into your bed/bath/come with you on an errand/hang out with you and your friends...