
RESPOND-Ability Parenting Class
RESPOND-ability Parenting Class
6 SATURDAYS SEPTEMBER 24 – OCTOBER 29th, 2016
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN FUTURE CLASSES please email us at info@celiacenter.org
A 6 week class for parents connected by foster care and adoption. Teaching interventions and tools for connection, understanding, and facilitating developmental attachment with your child. Based on the book by Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell, Parenting From the Inside Out.
The class is developed and supervised by Jeanette Yoffe, M.A., M.F.T.
A MUST for any parent. This class will EMPOWER you, build your CONFIDENCE, and bridge COMPASSION for yourself, AND your child.
- Learn how to manage your child’s overwhelming stress states.
- Learn how to manage your adult’s overwhelming stress states.
- Explore how our childhood experiences shape the way we parent.
This workshop will guide parents through creating the necessary foundations for loving and secure relationships with their children.
- How can we respond to behavior?
- Come close and ask, “Are you feeling …… because you are needing …..?” Continue in this way and your child’s needs for empathy will be met.
- She may need more support to release an accumulation of feelings. Make eye contact and gently touch or hold her, ask, “Do you want to have a cry?”
- Stronger feelings may require sensitive holding to provide emotional and physical safety. Ask, “Would you like me to hold you now?” It is important to hold your child only when you are feeling calm and when you generally provide sensitive attunement to your child’s needs. The younger the child, the more she needs to be held when she is upset.
- If your child is about to hurt you or another child, then first hold her to prevent the action, and then continue aware holding to allow her to safely cry and rage. Explain to her, “I need safety for you and Jemima, so I’m going to hold you and help you let your feelings out.
- If your child is having a tantrum, stay close, offer empathy, and make sure she doesn’t hurt herself or others. You might choose to hold her to provide extra containment whilst she continues raging.
- Feelings of fear can be released through laughter. Role plays about the feared situation can provide the balance of fear and safety to allow healing laughter to be expressed.
- Frustration about unmet needs for autonomy can be expressed through power reversal games, involving laughter and silliness. For example, the child runs after the parent, who mock screams, “Help, don’t chase me.”
- After letting out her feelings, your child will appear relieved, calm, and present. If you are able to be with her most hurt feelings, your child’s needs for acceptance will be met, and intimacy and trust between the two of you will profoundly deepen.