Attunement and Parenting — Strategies for Understanding Your Child’s Emotions
How do we navigate all the conflicting parenting advice that is out there, especially when our children are highly individualised persons? What may be an effective parenting approach for one child might backfire with another. Try these five strategies with your child to better understand their emotional cues.
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This article was written by social worker, Crystelle Hall, from ‘Modern Minds’ (a new mental health and wellness clinic run by Kobie Allison) for use by Kobie Allison Psychology.
It wasn’t long after I had given birth to my first child that I recall receiving an excessive amount of conflicting opinions and advice from well-intentioned friends, family members and health professionals. The advice ranged from whether I should demand feed my baby or put her on a strict routine to whether I should or shouldn’t co-sleep with my infant.
How do we navigate all the conflicting parenting advice that is out there, especially when our children are highly individualised persons? What may be an effective parenting approach for one child might backfire with another. How a child might express their sadness, anger, tiredness or boredom might look completely different from one child to the next, so an individualised response is needed. I would suggest that the key to navigating this lies in our ability to be well ‘attuned’ to our individual child.
The term ‘attunement’ refers to the capacity of a caregiver to really notice their children’s cues and develop an understanding of what may be going on for them emotionally. From this place of understanding, we can provide a response to our child that is both empathetic and effective.
The following strategies may be a helpful start in enhancing our capacity to become attuned parents.
1 - Become your child’s feelings detective.
A good question to ask yourself when you are presented with challenging behaviour from your child is, “What might be the feeling underneath this behaviour?” In many instances, negative behaviours in children don’t occur in a vacuum, so being able to detect the need that is driving the behaviour can go a long way in helping us to discover a supportive response.
Could it be that the child that is demonstrating typically ‘attention-seeking’ behaviour is doing so because they’re feeling disconnected? If a parent were to come down hard on the child feeling disconnected, this might escalate the child all the more and exacerbate the problem.
2 - Try ‘Time-In’ instead of ‘Time-Out”
The term ‘Time-in’ in this instance refers to the adult being present with the child as they’re experiencing a distressing emotion and providing containment for their feelings. ‘Time-in’ might include supporting the child to name their feelings. This also the benefit of teaching the child that no feeling is too difficult that it can’t be managed. Once the child has calmed, they are more likely to open up to you and let you in on what’s happening in their world.
There is a place for ‘time-out’ as part of our toolkit in managing behaviours, however, ‘time-in’ can be very effective in learning what is really going on for our child.
3 - Play
Life can be so hurried in our day and age that in our busyness we can lose touch with our ability to slow down, be present and have fun. Play comes naturally to most children and it is essential to their development. Children use play to work through their experiences and feelings. So much can be learnt about our child’s inner world if we observe them in play.
Engaging in child-directed play can support attunement. Child-directed play requires us as the adult to follow the child’s lead and restrain from offering suggestions.
As a mother myself, I understand that it’s not always convenient to pretend to be a dog when you have somewhere to be or other things you need to be doing. However, we can be intentional about structuring playtime into our week. As a starting point you might aim for just 15 minutes of child-directed play three times a week.
4 - Consult with a child therapist
For some parents, tuning into their child’s emotional states might present as a real challenge, and this can be for any number of reasons. Sometimes, it’s difficult because we are not in touch with our own emotional needs. Other times it’s a challenge because we have received such strong messages about how we should parent our children that we simply default to what we’ve been taught.
The good news is that it is never too late to become more attuned to your child. We believe that as parents we are the right ‘fit’ for our child even if we don’t feel it. If you would like to grow in this area of your parenting, we would love to support you. We’re here to help so please reach out today.
If you would like to book in a session for you and your child with our expert, Crystelle of ‘Modern Minds”, please get in touch with Kobie via email hello@modernminds.com