Parents Under Pressure
Module 5: Connecting with your child and encouraging good behaviour - mindful play
A secure attachment to at least one primary care giver is one of the most important factors in ensuring positive outcomes for children (i.e., promote prosocial behaviour, interpersonal skills, high self-esteem, academic achievement etc). A secure attachment develops when parents are sensitive and responsive to their children.
Child centred parenting involves attending to a child, noticing what they do well, praising them, and so on. However, this can be done somewhat mechanically, without sincerity. Child-centred behaviours are most powerful when a parent learns to really connect with their child, when they are genuinely pleased, interested, or proud of their child. Parents who are under a lot of stress may not experience these positive emotions often, or feel them inconsistently. Negative emotions (feeling frustrated, angry with the child) may overshadow the positive emotions. While it is unrealistic to eliminate the negative feelings, most parents accept that the child needs to experience something positive from their parents.
Module 5 of the Parents Under Pressure program encourages the use of specific techniques a parent can use to promote the relationship with their child (praise, reward, child centred-play). Mindfulness strategies help the parent move into a state of mind that facilitates positive interaction with the child. The mindfulness skill of returning focus to the present moment facilitates greater focus on the child during play.
The module involves facilitating the modeling and prompting of child-centred behaviours during play sessions of the parent and child together. This technique of working with the parent-child dyad has ben found to be effective in developing the parent-child relationship (Chaffin et al, 2004; Urquiza and McNeil, 1996).
References
Chaffin, M., Silovsky, J. F., Funderburk, B., Valle, L. A., Breston, E. V., Balachova, T., et al. (2004). Physical abuse treatment outcome project: Application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) to physically abusive parents. Unpublished manuscript.
