Beliefs over Strategies - How to create lasting change as a parent

Story

The Fox and the Hedgehog

The fox knows many things, but the Hedgehog knows one big thing.

In a vote for the smartest animal on the planet, most people would probably put the Fox above the Hedgehog. The Fox is cunning, quick, sleek and creative. It is tenacious in finding ways to outwit its prey, and even in thinking of ways to get around the traps and barriers humans put in its way.

The Hedgehog on the other hand, though nimble on its feet, seems far less ambitious. A cross between a toothbrush and an anteater, it is mainly concerned with finding food and looking after its nest. Where the Fox is sensitive to whatever is happening within the wider environment, the Hedgehog seems preoccupied within its own small world, hardly aware of anything beyond the radius of a few metres.

So how is it, then, that the Hedgehog consistently outsmarts the Fox? The Fox lies patiently in wait at the crossroads for the unsuspecting Hedgehog. And when the Hedgehog arrives, with speed, stealth and guile, and from a cunning angle of attack, the Fox makes his move. But the Hedgehog senses the approach and, with a minimum amount of fuss, rolls himself up into a perfectly defended spiky ball, which denies the Fox any chance of success.

The Fox retreats, baffled, and slinks off into the forests to develop some newer, even more creative stratagies. But, despite his cunning, creativity, speed and slyness, the Fox hardly ever wins. Despite his many strategies, none of them can overcome the Hedgehog’s one simple, unadorned, yet sufficient strategy. This battle, is some form or other, is played out everyday. And almost every time the Hedgehog wins.

(More Magic of Metaphor by Nick Owen)

5 Things to Ponder

In both parenting and education, when things aren’t going to plan we often look to strategies to help us. Can I try doing something new? Can I learn something else that I can try? Strategies are useful and very important BUT It seems that quite often we just look for the strategy and I’d like to explore if there is anything else we could uncover. Underpinning our strategies in life come our beliefs and there are a few core beliefs which come up most often (I am not good enough, I am not worthy etc.). Noticing, gaining awareness and challenging our beliefs are going to help us make more sense of and gain more clarity in our lives and lead to the creating of new more empowering beliefs.

1. What is a Belief - Defined in the dictionary as: an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof. We pick up beliefs from our experiences. Some examples are: I am not good enough, I’m stupid, I’m worthless, I’m unlovable, I can’t change, I have to be perfect, I have to do everything myself. There are more and I invite you to get curious about the ones that resonate with you most. You aren’t born with these beliefs, but you learnt them along the way somehow and they are not true for us now, but the problem is we accept them to be true.

2. Beliefs run our lives - It is not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean. What do we make our experiences mean? For example, if your child isn’t listening to you and you find yourself triggered. Ask yourself ‘what does not being listened mean to you?’ Does it mean that you are not good enough, you are not important? Who would you be if your child didn’t listen to you and you didn’t have the belief that you weren’t important? Behind your reaction there will always be a belief. Get curious about it.

3. Beliefs show up everywhere - We give meaning to everything that happens to us, that happens to others and behind these meanings are our beliefs. We pick them up from past experiences and interpretations to what has happened to us. These interpretations can be very true and real or they can be down to misinterpretations e.g. we were too young to understand what was really going on. Once we adopt one then it can stay with us for the rest of our lives, if not challenged. Another way of working with beliefs is we could ask: What else could this mean? What would this mean if I didn’t have this belief?

4. Start off by noticing them - So what can we do about them. They have the power to both create and destroy relationships. You can start by just noticing the beliefs that are governing your own life at certain moments. Can you get really curious about times when you got angry, frustrated, withdrew etc. What happened and ask yourself what did you make that mean to you? See if you settle on a belief. If you do, don’t necessarily fight it off, just accept it for now and see if you can start to notice how often it comes up for you.

5. And then challenge them - Once you are aware of some, you might notice that they always seem to come down to a few core beliefs. Then now you might want to start to challenge these beliefs. Are they definitely true? Are they your truth? Who might you be without this belief? How might you react in a situation if you didn’t have this belief? Can you change it to a more empowering belief? Can you just drop it?

Wooing the ADHD child

Story

Coping Strategies

A woman was in the habit of taking her dog for a walk twice a day in her local park. She noticed a cocoon hanging from the branch of a brush. She wondered how long it would be before the butterfly would emerge.

One day she saw that a small opening had appeared, and she watched fascinated, for several hours as the butterfly struggled to emerge. After a while the butterfly’s progress seemed to slow down, and then movement stopped altogether. It seemed as if the butterfly had become worn out with the effort. So the woman decided to help.

She took a pair of nail scissors from her bag and snipped through the last part of the cocoon. The butterfly slid out easily, but she immediately saw that something was wrong. The butterfly was misshapen. The body was too large and the wings too small. The Woman thought this would soon correct itself, but it didn’t. All the butterfly could do was crawl around with its swollen body and shrivelled wings. It never flew, and soon died.

What this woman didn’t understand was the bigger picture. She assumed kindness, compassion and speed would improve the butterfly’s development. She didn’t understand that the restriction of the cocoon and the effort required for the butterfly to emerge through the tiny aperture are nature’s way of forcing fluid from the butterfly’s body to its wings. Only when the butterfly has gone through this process in its own time will it be ready for flight.

(Nick Owen - More Magic of Metaphor)

5 Things to Ponder

5 things to Ponder this week is taken from Dr. Gabor Maté book ‘Scattered Minds’. They are 5 things that might help to restore, build and strengthen the attachment relationship between adult and child. They are valuable for all adult-child relationships and help to promote the long term healthy development of children with ADD or ADHD. I have trained with Dr Gabor Maté this last year and am a certified Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner. If you are interested to find out more about my work then contact me or connect with me on social media.

1. The parent takes active responsibility for the relationship

   Technique: Invite the child

   Goal: Fostering the child’s self-acceptance

   The parent actively and consistently finds time and space to be with the child. Can you have 15/30 minutes a day that you can be with your child attentively. During this time show them that they are wanted and enjoyed. Play games, be silly and hang out. When possible the parent does the inviting and child leads the activity.

2. The parent does not judge the child

   Technique: Avoid pointing out faults, mistakes, shortcomings.

   Goal: To increase security, reduce shame

   As parents, it is sometimes hard to hear a critical tone in our voice. It’s important the child senses that they are accepted always. Many ADHD children deal with a lot of shame and these are often the most sensitive children. Make sure acceptance is coming across in your interactions. This might require some insight and curiosity into yourself as a parent, but it will be worth while.

3. The parent does not overpraise the child

   Technique: Give praise in measure terms; reflect back the child’s feelings

   Goal: Reinforcing the child’s confidence that achievements are not needed to earn he parent’s acceptance and respect.

   This one seems odd at first, but too much praise is almost as harmful as too much criticism. The message beneath both is the same: the value is in what you do not who you are. Praise the effort and not the result. “you’ve worked really hard, well done. You worked through that even though it was hard.” etc.

4. One does not parent form anger

   Technique: When the parent feels anger, he refrains from critiquing, giving orders, expressing opinions.

   Goal: To avoid faulting the child for even a momentary break in the relationship with he parent

   To avoid feeling angry as a parent is an impossible task and unrealistic. If you mix anger with the impulsiveness and behaviour of a child with ADHD then you have quite a cocktail. Disqaulify yourself from parenting until you have cooled down and are calm again. If you have someone who can take over then ask them to do whilst you do, but don’t parent from this position. If not, put your energy and focus into calming yourself down first before you do any more parenting and take ownership of your own anger.

5. The parent takes responsibility for restoring the relationship

   Technique: Do not wait for the child to reestablish contact after a fight

   Goal: Allowing the child to feel that the attachment relationship is greater than whatever argument or disagreement may come between him and the parent.

   No one is perfect and we all lose it sometimes. If there is a temporary break in the relationship for whatever reason, do not make the child work at reestablishing the relationship e.g. forcing a child to apologise before granting ‘forgiveness’. In this example both the remorse and the forgiveness will not be genuine. You don’t need to promise that it won’t happen again because it probably will, just prioritise restoring the relationship and a sense of security and self-acceptance will grow.

If you’ve found these interesting you an read more on ADHD in ‘Scattered Minds’ by Dr. Gabor Maté. If you want to explore how using Compassionate Inquiry you can help you in your role as a parent then contact me on mail@joeatkinson.co.uk

The Response-ability of Parenting

Story

Hot Buttons

Mole was driving along a motorway with his friend, Badger. Mole was enjoying the drive and feeling good about the world until another car, driven by Rat, cut aggressively and dangerously in front of him.

Mole was furious. He put his foot on the accelerator and chased after Rat, flashing, hooting and gesticulating. Mole was shouting and cursing, and purple with rage. Rat simply laughed to himself, made a rude gesture with his fingers, and accelerated away.

Mole was quite upset for the next hour. His day was totally spoilt. He felt frustrated and inadequate, as if his whole sense of masculinity had been called into questions. He had been challenged and come off second-best.

Badger had noticed his friend’s behaviour but had chosen to say nothing for the time being. He waited until the time was right.

Finally Mole turned and said to him, “That sort of driver makes me so angry.”

Badger replied, “Forgive me, but I’m really curious. How exactly do you allow yourself to get angry because of what another driver does?”

Mole was speechless. He had expected support. “What do you mean?'“

Badger said, “What that other person did was simply information about him. How you responded is information about you. How exactly did you make yourself angry as a response to the other drivers behaviour?”

And so it was that mole began to realise that he could choose his response to different situations. He could get angry if he wishes, or stay calm and dismiss someone else’s behaviour as information about them. It didn’t have to affect him.

After that Mole began to enjoy his driving a lot more. Badger felt a lot safer in Mole’s car, and Mole’s wife noticed her husband was much less stressed and aggressive.

One day Mole told Badger that he’d found a great quote in a book he was reading.

“No one presses your hot buttons. You just leave your control panel open”

“That’s what I used to do, “Mole said, stressing the used to.

(The Magic of Metaphor by Nick Owen)

5 Things to Ponder

Mothers and fathers have legal rights and responsibilities as a parent - known as ‘parental responsibility’. A marvellous (irritating for some) thing about the English language is how it can be so flexible. So let’s look at this word from a different angle. If we all develop our response-ability to whatever life is throwing at us, in this case children, then we would have more peace in our lives and better relationships. I use compassionate Inquiry to help parents flex their own reponse-ability muscles; to find out more about what I do, have a look through the website and get in touch if you’re keen to find out more.

1. Response - ability - There are many things beyond our control in life. Our children are a good example of this. Of course we have boundaries that keep them safe, but within those boundaries there are going to be a lot of ‘out of control’ moments. How do you respond to them? Many people react to these moments through their own unconscious beliefs build up from the past. Ask yourself how often are you really response-able in your parenting? Are you responding to the moment or reacting from the past?

2. Your Hot Buttons - If you’re recognising that you are more reactive then responsive then get curious about the patterns that are showing up in your life. What does that say about you? What are the beliefs that you’re holding on to? What are your own Hot Buttons? Do this with no judgement, just curiosity.

3. Separate the information about the other with the information about you - Once you start to separate clearly the information about others with the information about ourselves we might start to get a better understanding of our own ingrained beliefs and we can now start to challenge them. How often to you notice it? Is it true? Was Mole’s masculinity genuinely being called into question by Rat? Does that happen often to him? Who would he be without that belief? Who would you be without yours?

4. ‘They made me’ - Once you’re curious and aware of your own response-ability more often, you can also start to notice the language. ‘That sort of driver makes me so angry’. Pay attention to the words that you use whilst thinking or expressing something. Is it really possible to make anyone feel anything? What’s the language reinforcing here for you? Get curious about your own language.

5. Blame - Blame is a choice that doesn’t give you any benefits. It’s normally the first thing we turn too after something painful has happened. You can either blame the event, someone else or yourself. However accurate the blame story might be, keep a look out for it. Some people think that blaming yourself is responsible, but just get curious about how that ties in with your own core beliefs like ‘I’m not good enough’. Start by noticing whenever you’re blaming one of these three things and see what happens.

Working with ADHD/ADD

Story

Go With the Flow

A man accidentally fell into a fast-flowing river. A little downstream of the point where he entered the water were treacherous and turbulent rapids leading to a huge and powerful waterfall that dropped steeply down over rocky outcrops into a deep and dangerous pool.

Those who watched the drama thought he had no hope. So they were amazed to see him pop up from murky waters of the deep pool and swim leisurely to the bank without an apparent care in the world.

Asked about his experience, and how he overcame all the dangers of the river, he said: ‘I simply became one with the water. I behaved as if I was the water and the water was me. I did not try to overcome it, or fight it, or bend it to my will. I shaped myself to water, and the water shaped itself to me. I embraced its force and its force embraced me. And so I survived’

(The Salmon of Knowledge by Nick Owen)

5 things to Ponder

There are a number of traits to ADD/ADHD including: poor attention skills, easily distracted, forgetfulness, poor impulse control, hyperactivity of the body (the H in ADHD), disorganisation and selectively poor memory. Diagnosis have risen dramatically across the globe in our generation.

1. Make space for being distracted/tuning out - This is an automatic process and it’s not something that can necessarily be controlled. Whether you know someone with ADD/ADHD or are that someone, make space and allow it to happen. Don’t take it personally or make a big deal of it when you do notice it happening. Treat tuning out with respect and make sure you give it space.

2. Sensitivity - it’s likely that you recognise some of the ADHD traits in yourself or someone else that you are dealing with someone who is extra sensitive to their environment. One of the functions of tuning out is if you’re dealing with something difficult or painful. If you’re extra sensitive then this acts as a wonderful coping mechanism. The more sensitive you are, the more easily you might get hurt and the more defences you might need to put up.

3. Attachment Needs - When working with children with ADD/ADHD keep attachment needs in the foreground of whatever you are doing. Maintaining relationship and safety is so important to children and adults with ADD/ADHD and if you do lose the relationship or the safety at any time (no-one is perfect) then it is your reasonability to get it back. Provide calm, attuned interactions as much as you can.

4. Counterwill - Counterwill is the instinctive reaction of a person to resist being controlled. This is very much alive in people with ADHD/ADD. Don’t misinterpret it as a deliberate challenge to authority or a testing of your limit otherwise it might ensure a power struggle.

5. Developmental problem not disease - If you look at it as a developmental issue then the question isn’t how do you treat the symptoms? But how do you promote healthy development? So instead of focusing on what you can do to your child to alleviate the symptoms, you can look at what you can do for yourself to aid their development. How can you provide those calm, attuned interactions, not take their behaviour personally etc. This will involve some inquiry into your own personal reactions and life. If you're an important person in their life then they will look to you for love and support so the more you can do to balance and support yourself during, the greater the gift you will be able to give to them.

If you’re curious to find out more about ADD/ADHD then I can recommend ‘Scatterd - How Attention Deficit Disorder originates and What You Can Do About It’ by Dr. Gabor Maté. One of the most comprehensive books about ADD/ADHD out there.

The Art of Play

Story

Present

Jack was excited. This was the first time he had bought his grandad a birthday gift. He’d wrapped it well and wanted to hand it over when they were alone. Grandad could see Jack’s excitement and decided to build up the atmosphere by shaking the present, smelling it and assessing its weight as if it were a valuable old antique. He unwrapped the gift slowly. The paper fell away revealing a wooden frog that fitted neatly into the palm of his hand. It seemed to be hand painted and had ridges across its back. He examined it and it became clear to Jack that his grandad didn’t know what to do with it.

‘Should I show you?’ helped Jack. Grandad passed the frog over and Jack took out a stick that slotted left to right inside the body and rubbed it across the ridges of the back revealing the perfect sound of a frog croak.

‘isn’t it good?’ enthused Jack. ‘I know you like frogs and I saw it on our school trip.’

Grandad seemed a little distracted to Jack. Grandad was disappointed in himself because he hadn’t figured out how to use the toy. It took the imagination and persistence of a child to solve the problem. The conservative adult approach had been fruitless. Grandad had been given a much better present than Jack realised.

Story taken from ‘Magic of Modern Metaphor’ by David Hodgson

5 Things to Ponder

Play is a vital part of our development and something that we grow out of too quickly. Luckily there are still teachers everywhere. Here are my 5 things to ponder about ‘The Art of Play’:

1. Why Play? - Play is the language of the child. It’s where they can safely explore their world. It’s where they can master problems and issues. Plato said ‘you can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation’. Play is where you can get to know and connect with your child.

2. Follow their Lead - You may have forgotten what it is like to play. Many of us have and that’s ok. Let your children teach you. Just follow their lead. Take orders, be open, ask questions and spend at least 10 minutes each day following your Childs lead in play activities.

3. Who needs toys - It’s better to have too little then too much. Children are able to find objects and invent games very easily and this is a valuable part of the process.

4. Getting to know your child - Ever had a conversation with your child and wonder why they just don’t say much. ‘How are you?’……..‘Fine’. These types of conversations. When you inquire into your Childs feelings, then try it over a game or a playful activity. A board game, a puzzle or a game of catch. Try having these types of conversations whilst you’re engaged in some form of play and see if you notice a difference in the response you get.

5. Too much practice, not enough play - Learning something like piano or football. I watched a series called ‘Upright’ recently with Tim Minchin and the phrase ‘never ever practice the piano. Always play it’ stuck with me. Don’t get caught up practicing things that you love doing. Make sure you play them more. There is a big difference.