Have you ever felt that no-one was looking out for you? Have you ever felt upset or resentful about that? Or have you just given up asking for your child and others to take you into account? Of course you matter! And because you matter, it is important not to just hope that your children and others will one day take you into account. SOMEONE needs to be determined to look out for YOU, and though it would be nice if this was your child or someone else, you mustn't leave it to chance or wishful thinking. Here is why not: 1. Attachment relationships are important for you and for any child's well-being. It is easier for a child to attach to and take a lead from someone who seems strong and confident and with good well-being themselves. Would you feel safe and reassured around someone who seemed stressed out and anxious?Probably not. 2. As an adult figure - you are a role model. Through your actions, and not just what you say, you are sending out messages to your child and others about your own value in the world. Your child will learn how to treat you and others by watching and copying how you treat you. So if you let yourself be trampled on, then it is much more likely that your child and others will just come to see this is normal and carry on with these same patterns towards you without taking you into account. 3. Your ability to think clearly and sensitively is vital to your long-term well-being and that of your child and others. If you or your child or others has additional complex needs or challenging behaviour, what is needed most is an adult who is willing to watch and wait and wonder about challenging behaviour and why it is happening - with a view to helping that child find a way to come through and overcome their challenges. You will quickly find yourself unable to do this if you do not invest time in caring for and developing yourself and your own skills 4. The time you spend with your child is important - you have a challenging but key role to play. Few other people will spend as much time with your child or have the longer relationship with your child that you will have. This relationship is not going to go away. So it is important to take a long view - investing in working for a good relationship right now will be an investment in your own future well-being as well as your child's. 5. In order for your child's brain to mature and develop healthily, your child needs experiences of learning good relationship skills with you. Brains develop - they are not fixed and it is never too later to make important changes. To develop improved social skills so that they can learn to manage relationships more easily, your child needs to have good experiences in relationships with adult figures who are caring and thoughtful. It would be nice sometimes to pass that responsibility onto someone else but when you invest in good relationships with yourself and with your child and your team this will translate into more healthy relationship experiences for your child. This will help improve behaviour and reduce challenges. And that is what you want! So what can you do? 1. Decide 'I Matter' 2. Put some time aside for caring actions towards yourself that help you refuel 3. Insist that your child and others treat you and others with respect and consideration 4. Ask determinedly for what you want and put effective limits on what you don't want 5. Invest time in your team and in your community - you cannot help a complex child on your own 6. Decide to include something new in your life that is important to you. Or look into one of our courses All Rights Reserved Copyright CBetoin
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Parent-Child Coaching is something that many parents do without thinking about it. It involves guiding the child towards undersatnding and skills that you know will be useful and helpful to them in their lives. I Matter Parent-Child Coaching has many similiarites. There are also 5 key differences: i) In comparison to everyday parent-child coaching I Matter Parent-Child Coaches start out with a much clearer map or guide to help you decide what to coach and why. Parenting can be very challenging with so many decisons to make. It really helps to have a map that explains how lots of ideas fit together. ii) Parents who are learning about I Matter Coaching are provided with some easy to understand assessment tools. These easy to understand developmentally informed tools are designed to make it very clear what key skills are important and why. They are also designed to highlight when further assessment is needed. iii) Due to the advanced training involved, I Matter Parent Coaches find that they are much more aware of what is happening and have much greater understanding of what they are seeing during the everyday challenging incidents of life with their child. This helps them to have clarity and focus. iv) I Matter Coaching places a very high emphasis on the role, skills and well-being of the adult coach themselves. The special thing about this approach is that it is very clear from the outset that in order to be effective and appealing you have to do the work that supports your own well-being first! Blaming others doesn't take you where you want to go. v) I Matter Parent-Child Coaching provides parents with a framework for a longer-term approach founded on strengthening the security and effectiveness of the adult-child attachment relationship that can join together other learning that parents access in other places. vi) I Matter Parent Child Coaching is suitable for all children where there is a concern to support social-emotional development. Children may be very typical, or they may present with some complex challenges. They may have a formal diagnosis of ASD or ADHD or ODD or something else, or they may have no clear diagnosis. This is a framework that focusses on primarily on the adults undesstanding and skiills. If you would like to learn more take a look at our courses Six Similarities Between Children Diagnosed with ASD, ADHD, ODD and Attachment Difficulties14/12/2015 As a clinical psychologist, I get to meet with a lot of families who are feeling stressed and confused, wondering about their child's behaviour. I get to hear a lot of questions that take the form: "Well has he got.... ASD or ADHD or OCD... or ODD?' Sometimes when further investigations are pursued it turns out that the child in question might meet the criteria set out by one of these diagnostic labels. Then families are usually hoping that someone is going to 'do something' about it. This is when the next stage of confusion often sets in. In a system in where long waiting lists are a common feature of children's services, I get to hear a lot of parents speaking about their bewilderment that 'nothing, or not enough has been done'. The child has sometimes been prescribed with some medication and sometimes this has appeared to help for a while, and sometimes it hasn't. Sometimes the family are able to find a supportive group of parents who seem to share some similar challenges, and sometimes they haven't. Often however there is or has been a lot less help available than the parents were hoping. Sometimes the pursuit of the right label takes families away from some of the key issues that urgently require more attention. Let's look at some of the similarities between children who are given these sorts of diagnostic labels 1. Presence of challenging behaviour and confusion Most often the parent is reporting some level of challenging or unusual behaviour that is difficult to understand. 2. Presence of parental stress Most often the parent is feeling pretty stressed themselves and bewildered by the sense that their efforts don't seem to be making a difference. In the confusion they have often found themselves becoming more isolated 3. The adult-child relationship is under strain Most often as a result of the above the adult-child relationships is under significant strain and may have been so for a considerable time. There are few opportunities for enjoying time together. 4. The child has some delays in their social-emotional development and needs the care of a younger child Most often when we look closely the child is demonstrating delays in their social-emotional skills - in understanding others and in the area of managing frustration 5. The adults in question are going to need to acquire advanced parenting-caring skills. The challenging truth about caring for a child who is displaying challenging behaviour is that to make a difference, the adults are going to need stamina and advanced skills. 6. Adults need to take a long view around the needs of the child and themselves The other challenging truth is that in order to make a difference the adult is going to need the strength and persistence to support the child in making progress in building confidence over long periods of time - the child is going to require higher levels of active input from adults than the child who is developing more typically. The good news is that child development and brain development provide a very solid foundation to build an intervention and support process upon. The fact that there are so many similarities in what makes a difference means that we can get started fairly quickly on the basis of the above and can observe what happens as do. We also know that to make a difference, there are no short cuts to putting healthy adult-child relationships at the centre of any actions. If you are interested in finding out more click here to find out about our courses Did you know that infant brain development is not only very important it can also be very, very interesting! If you are pregnant for the first time and are wondering what to do with while waiting for the birth, why not use your time wisely and learn about how your attachment relationship with your new born infant will influence the way that their brain actually develops? Here are a five reasons that this will be time well-invested! 1. Your baby's brain will not be fully developed when he or she is born - there are really important things that your baby will only learn to do well if you provide the right sorts of opportunities. In fact the well-being of your baby across their whole life will be influenced by what happens in these important early infant years of life. 2. Becoming a parent is one of the most challenging role changes ever. The greater your understanding of infant brain development, the more you can enjoy the early years of their life because you are more likely to understand what you are seeing - you will understand why your child is behaving in certain ways. 3. There is lots of evidence that if a child is having difficulties it is best to get help as early as possible. If you understand about infant brain development and how it is affected by your relationship with your child, you will be more confident about knowing what to do to get your baby off to a good start and also about when to ask for help and more confident about knowing what actions you can take that will help. 4. If you really understand what your child is needing for you and why, it is easier to plan your time and approach in order to be helpful to your child. A lot of difficulties can arise when a baby does not get what is needed in their relationship with parents at the right times. 5. There is a very close relationship between adult well-being and child well-being. The good news about this is that from day one, anything you can do to improve your own confidence as a parent will help your child become more confident - AND - it is NEVER too late to make a positive difference. Learning about what your child needs from you and why, earlier rather than later, can pay life long benefits for both of you. If you would like to learn more click here |
Dr Cathy BetoinClinical Psychologist, Teacher and Parent Archives
September 2016
I Matter Parent Blog
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