June 3, 2024 • 14 mins
In this episode, I talk about how the relationship with your child is the most important thing, even more important than the specific parenting skills and techniques we've been discussing. While learning and applying skills like reflecting feelings, setting limits, giving choices, and using encouragement are certainly valuable, we can't lose sight of why we use those approaches in the first place.
It all comes back to preserving and strengthening our relationship with our kids. Every time a child is struggling or misbehaving, there is almost always a fracture or damage to the relationship that has occurred. By focusing on the child and the relationship rather than just on the frustrating behavior, we keep that relationship at the center. The beauty of parenting is we have a built-in relationship with our child from the very beginning. Our job is to maintain and nurture that precious bond, and child-centered parenting principles give us effective tools to do just that.
The goal is not to robotically check skills off a list, but to deeply, intentionally and thoughtfully engage with our children in ways that communicate "I'm here, I hear you, I understand, I care, and I delight in you." This is what it means to take a kind approach to parenting. I hope this discussion encourages you and keeps you grounded in what matters most - your relationship with your kids.
Ask Me Questions: Call (813) 812-5525, or email: brenna@thekidcounselor.com
Podcast HQ: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/
My Newsletter Signup: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/newsletter/
My Podcast Partner, Gabb Wireless: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/gabb/
References:
Landreth, G. L. (2002). Play therapy: The art of the relationship (2nd ed.). Brunner-Routledge.
Bratton, S. C., Landreth, G. L., Kellam, T., & Blackard, S. R. (2006). Child parent relationship therapy (CPRT) treatment manual: A 10-session filial therapy model for training parents. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the
Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
Hi, I'm Doctor Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.
This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give
you insight awareness and enlightenment about your parenting
and your relationship with your kids.
In today's episode, we are going to ground ourselves a little bit here.
(00:25):
So we've gone through
the four pillars, we've gone through practical application of the four pillars.
And ideally at this point, you have the four main tools in your tool belt
so that any given situation that arises with your kids,
you know how to handle it.
So if your child is emotional, you know, to reflect a feeling,
(00:47):
if a child is behaving in an unacceptable way,
you set a limit.
If your child is power,
struggling with you and or you want to build their self esteem,
you're going to give a choice.
And if you want to help them build an internal locus of control
and focus on their efforts, you're going to use encouragement.
(01:10):
So we understand the four pillars at this point.
And many of you have been writing in and asking questions. I'm so grateful for that.
Thank you for
emailing and checking in with me and giving me scenarios and I'm really
looking forward to answering those and hopefully I can do that every Thursday.
So I'm hoping to do a curriculum at the first part of
the week and a question on the second part of the week.
(01:31):
And as long as you keep the questions coming, we'll be able to do two episodes a week.
So that's coming. But here's why I want to kind of re-center us a little bit
because a lot of the questions that I'm getting
and a lot of the interaction with parents, even at my center
that I'm constantly having
to circle back to.
I'm trying to implement these skills.
(01:53):
I'm really trying to learn the pillars.
I'm really trying to focus on encouragement.
I'm really working on reflecting my child's feeling, et cetera, et cetera.
Here's what I want to make sure that we're aware of
the skills are only the method through which
we get to the heart of what we're really trying to do.
(02:14):
And that's cultivate a healthy relationship with our kids.
The relationship trumps everything.
So are reflecting feelings and choice,
giving and limit setting and encouragement.
Important.
Yes. Should you hone those skills? Yes. Should you practice those?
Yes. Should that become a daily part of your arsenal?
(02:35):
Yes.
But if all we focus on are the skills
and all we focus on are the principles
we're losing sight of the why?
So that's what we're going to dive into a little bit more today.
The path to calm, confident, and in control parenting starts now.
(02:58):
All right. So in many, many of the earlier episodes,
we have talked through
the importance of
kindness to our children.
And I believe that the child-centered play therapy approach
is one of the most kind ways to parent,
but it's not kindness that becomes the focus,
(03:20):
it's relationship.
Have you ever wondered why your child
throws a tantrum?
Have you ever wondered why they power struggle with you?
Have you ever wondered why they refuse or disobey
when you give them a request?
Have you ever wondered why they locked themselves in their bedroom?
(03:40):
If you ever wondered why they fight with their siblings?
If you ever wondered why they fill in the blank,
whatever it is that you're struggling with,
it all comes back to a fracture
or a breach of relationship
at any of those moments.
The relationship is damaged
(04:02):
and that's through no one's fault necessarily.
You shouldn't blame yourself. You shouldn't blame your child.
It, this isn't a blame game.
It's not a, well, this is your problem. This is because of you.
You did this which caused whatever,
that's not the point.
But the point is if we understand that every single time our child
is behaving in a way that is creating some kind of issue,
(04:27):
we can
almost always,
I don't wanna use an absolute because I suppose there might be outliers, but
we can almost always
trace that thread back to fracture or breach in relationship.
Why?
Because
when we focus on the issue,
when we focus on the frustration
(04:49):
on the annoyance on the behavior, on the attitude, on the words on
whatever is happening,
we lose sight of the child.
And when we lose sight of the child,
we forget how important the relationship is.
So why do we constantly circle back to the child-centered principles?
(05:10):
And why are the four pillars important?
And why is reflective, responding so powerful?
Why do we constantly work
at these?
Because they preserve the relationship, they honor the relationship,
they focus on the relationship.
It's impossible
to not
(05:30):
deeply care about your child
when you're reflecting one of their emotions.
Have you ever noticed that you can't do that flippantly?
You can't go, you're really annoyed right now.
We would never, we would never do that because it's incongruent
and it doesn't
honor the relationship
when we are truly looking into our child's eyes and we're
(05:53):
truly making sense of what their emotion is in that moment.
And we say back to them,
you are so proud
or you're really angry right now.
That is 100%
honoring and preserving of the relationship
when we set limits with the three step model.
(06:13):
Because if we just threaten,
if we just say if you do that again, I will,
if we just yell,
if we say, don't you dare open your mouth again.
If, if we do any of those things, which we, we do those things, right?
But if we do any of those things,
we're not honoring and preserving the relationship,
we're damaging it.
(06:35):
But when we say
you would really like to go be with your friends,
so you're angry and yelling at me.
But I'm not for speaking to you that way,
you can choose to tell me why you wanna go
see your friends so much and we can talk about it
or you can choose to go see your friends after dinner. Which do you choose
(06:56):
that's relationship preserving
when we encourage contributions and efforts that our children
provide in a scenario,
you're not giving up, you keep trying, you're working hard, you'll figure it out.
You have a plan,
it honors the relationship
and there's kindness in that there's mutual respect in that
(07:18):
there's trust in that
there's so much
that is cultivated
when we focus on the relationship.
And I want to spend a second, I'm kind of taking a left turn here, but
I want to spend a second discussing
this notion of gentle parenting.
I
actually answered a listener question about it not too long ago.
(07:40):
A lot of
perceived
criticism.
No, that's not the right word.
A lot of what people perceive about the child-centered
model and what they tend to criticize
is,
oh, so you, we just let,
we just let kids just rule the roost. We just let kids run amok.
(08:00):
They just get to do whatever they want.
They never have limits, they never have discipline,
they never get in trouble that we just have to be, keep them happy.
That's not preserving of the relationship
that's not honoring of the relationship. That's not kind parenting.
That's not what child centered play therapy is.
Child-centered play therapy
(08:20):
is approaching your kids in a way
that says I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you.
Those are the be-with attitudes.
I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you
even when you're being a turd, even when you smart off to me, even when you disobey,
(08:44):
even when you hit your sibling, even when you had a terrible, horrible, no good day.
Even when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you just
have an attitude from the second you wake up even when fill in the blank,
I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you
and the way that I interact with you
with my reflective responses, with the four pillars
(09:07):
with keeping all of the rules of thumb in my head.
When I do those things,
it's kind
and it's because I care about the relationship
I have with you more than anything else.
One of the foundational tenets of this model is
what do I need to do or say in this moment
(09:28):
that will most preserve the relationship
with my child
that changes everything with the way that we approach any given situation.
So I'm hopeful that you are starting to realize yes, the skills matter.
Yes, we need to practice them, work on them, learn them,
(09:48):
implement them all of those things.
However,
we're not just mechanically applying these skills
as if we're checking off boxes on a to do list.
Ok. I reflected feelings today.
Ok, I set the limit with ACT All right, I gave a choice and man, I encourage, I,
I'm I get a gold star.
(10:08):
I got all four of the four today.
That's not what this is.
There is very deep, purposeful, intentional, thoughtful
reasoning
behind why these skills work.
But again, the skills are far less important
(10:28):
then what they allow us to do,
which is they allow us to make sure that the relationship is maintained.
The beauty of parenting
is that there's a built in relationship.
See, you need to understand from my side of things. I mean, I am a parent. Ok.
My son's 14,
but
I want you to understand therapeutically speaking
(10:51):
the kids with whom I work at my center and that all of my therapists work at the center.
We start from scratch.
We are a stranger to that child and the child is a stranger to us.
We don't have the luxury of having a built in existing relationship.
You do.
We have to work so hard to cultivate that relationship.
(11:14):
We have to create that from the ground up.
Guess what? You've been creating it since before they were born.
If you carried your child,
and if you're a father or a grandparent or a caregiver in any other capacity,
you have been creating that relationship since the
moment that you first interacted with that child.
So
(11:34):
you have the advantage
that the relationship preexists.
So now your job becomes to preserve it
and we use the child-centered principles to do that.
That is the most effective way in my opinion
to ensure that we are in fact preserving that relationship.
(11:56):
So I hope that that encourages you. I hope that that kind of
resets and grounds us a little bit
because I don't want us to get so caught up in the skills
that we lose sight of why the skills matter
and what the skills help us accomplish.
So I'm hopeful that that will give you some food for thought this week.
(12:17):
All right, if you would like to reach out to me,
I would love to hear from you brenna@thekidcounselor.com
You can shoot me an email to say hello. You can shoot me an email to ask a question.
You can fill me in on a scenario that's going on and ask for advice.
I want you to know, I do personally get every single email.
I know a lot of podcasters have people that kind of filter out their emails,
(12:40):
etcetera, etcetera.
I want you to know I do read every single email.
And so sometimes I'm a little slow getting back to you,
but I promise you they will come to me and I promise I will respond.
That's something that I take really seriously and
engaging with you all is why I do this.
So I would love to hear from you brenna@thekidcounselor.com. If you have a
question that you would like to ask and leave on our voicemail line, instead,
(13:03):
you can call 813-812-5525.
You can fill me in on what question you have and
then I can answer that on a future episode as well.
Also, if you go to playtherapyparenting.com,
you will get access to the archives of all of the episodes.
If you want to get caught up on some that
you have missed or maybe you're new to the podcast.
(13:23):
Welcome, by the way. So glad you're here.
And if you want to go back and listen to earlier episodes,
you can search all of them there
and you can also subscribe to my
newsletter once you're at playtherapyparenting.com.
All right.
So great to be with you. Thank you for spending time with me each week.
I look forward to this and
I'm hopeful that every single week after every single episode,
(13:44):
you feel encouraged and supported and ready to do the work that you need
to do to parent your kids in the best way that you can.
All right, I'm grateful for you all. Talk again soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening
to the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks
for more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter.
Please go to wwwplaytherapyparenting.com.
You're listening to the
Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
Hi, I'm Doctor Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.
This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give
you insight awareness and enlightenment about your parenting
and your relationship with your kids.
In today's episode, we are going to ground ourselves a little bit here.
(00:25):
So we've gone through
the four pillars, we've gone through practical application of the four pillars.
And ideally at this point, you have the four main tools in your tool belt
so that any given situation that arises with your kids,
you know how to handle it.
So if your child is emotional, you know, to reflect a feeling,
(00:47):
if a child is behaving in an unacceptable way,
you set a limit.
If your child is power,
struggling with you and or you want to build their self esteem,
you're going to give a choice.
And if you want to help them build an internal locus of control
and focus on their efforts, you're going to use encouragement.
(01:10):
So we understand the four pillars at this point.
And many of you have been writing in and asking questions. I'm so grateful for that.
Thank you for
emailing and checking in with me and giving me scenarios and I'm really
looking forward to answering those and hopefully I can do that every Thursday.
So I'm hoping to do a curriculum at the first part of
the week and a question on the second part of the week.
(01:31):
And as long as you keep the questions coming, we'll be able to do two episodes a week.
So that's coming. But here's why I want to kind of re-center us a little bit
because a lot of the questions that I'm getting
and a lot of the interaction with parents, even at my center
that I'm constantly having
to circle back to.
I'm trying to implement these skills.
(01:53):
I'm really trying to learn the pillars.
I'm really trying to focus on encouragement.
I'm really working on reflecting my child's feeling, et cetera, et cetera.
Here's what I want to make sure that we're aware of
the skills are only the method through which
we get to the heart of what we're really trying to do.
(02:14):
And that's cultivate a healthy relationship with our kids.
The relationship trumps everything.
So are reflecting feelings and choice,
giving and limit setting and encouragement.
Important.
Yes. Should you hone those skills? Yes. Should you practice those?
Yes. Should that become a daily part of your arsenal?
(02:35):
Yes.
But if all we focus on are the skills
and all we focus on are the principles
we're losing sight of the why?
So that's what we're going to dive into a little bit more today.
The path to calm, confident, and in control parenting starts now.
(02:58):
All right. So in many, many of the earlier episodes,
we have talked through
the importance of
kindness to our children.
And I believe that the child-centered play therapy approach
is one of the most kind ways to parent,
but it's not kindness that becomes the focus,
(03:20):
it's relationship.
Have you ever wondered why your child
throws a tantrum?
Have you ever wondered why they power struggle with you?
Have you ever wondered why they refuse or disobey
when you give them a request?
Have you ever wondered why they locked themselves in their bedroom?
(03:40):
If you ever wondered why they fight with their siblings?
If you ever wondered why they fill in the blank,
whatever it is that you're struggling with,
it all comes back to a fracture
or a breach of relationship
at any of those moments.
The relationship is damaged
(04:02):
and that's through no one's fault necessarily.
You shouldn't blame yourself. You shouldn't blame your child.
It, this isn't a blame game.
It's not a, well, this is your problem. This is because of you.
You did this which caused whatever,
that's not the point.
But the point is if we understand that every single time our child
is behaving in a way that is creating some kind of issue,
(04:27):
we can
almost always,
I don't wanna use an absolute because I suppose there might be outliers, but
we can almost always
trace that thread back to fracture or breach in relationship.
Why?
Because
when we focus on the issue,
when we focus on the frustration
(04:49):
on the annoyance on the behavior, on the attitude, on the words on
whatever is happening,
we lose sight of the child.
And when we lose sight of the child,
we forget how important the relationship is.
So why do we constantly circle back to the child-centered principles?
(05:10):
And why are the four pillars important?
And why is reflective, responding so powerful?
Why do we constantly work
at these?
Because they preserve the relationship, they honor the relationship,
they focus on the relationship.
It's impossible
to not
(05:30):
deeply care about your child
when you're reflecting one of their emotions.
Have you ever noticed that you can't do that flippantly?
You can't go, you're really annoyed right now.
We would never, we would never do that because it's incongruent
and it doesn't
honor the relationship
when we are truly looking into our child's eyes and we're
(05:53):
truly making sense of what their emotion is in that moment.
And we say back to them,
you are so proud
or you're really angry right now.
That is 100%
honoring and preserving of the relationship
when we set limits with the three step model.
(06:13):
Because if we just threaten,
if we just say if you do that again, I will,
if we just yell,
if we say, don't you dare open your mouth again.
If, if we do any of those things, which we, we do those things, right?
But if we do any of those things,
we're not honoring and preserving the relationship,
we're damaging it.
(06:35):
But when we say
you would really like to go be with your friends,
so you're angry and yelling at me.
But I'm not for speaking to you that way,
you can choose to tell me why you wanna go
see your friends so much and we can talk about it
or you can choose to go see your friends after dinner. Which do you choose
(06:56):
that's relationship preserving
when we encourage contributions and efforts that our children
provide in a scenario,
you're not giving up, you keep trying, you're working hard, you'll figure it out.
You have a plan,
it honors the relationship
and there's kindness in that there's mutual respect in that
(07:18):
there's trust in that
there's so much
that is cultivated
when we focus on the relationship.
And I want to spend a second, I'm kind of taking a left turn here, but
I want to spend a second discussing
this notion of gentle parenting.
I
actually answered a listener question about it not too long ago.
(07:40):
A lot of
perceived
criticism.
No, that's not the right word.
A lot of what people perceive about the child-centered
model and what they tend to criticize
is,
oh, so you, we just let,
we just let kids just rule the roost. We just let kids run amok.
(08:00):
They just get to do whatever they want.
They never have limits, they never have discipline,
they never get in trouble that we just have to be, keep them happy.
That's not preserving of the relationship
that's not honoring of the relationship. That's not kind parenting.
That's not what child centered play therapy is.
Child-centered play therapy
(08:20):
is approaching your kids in a way
that says I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you.
Those are the be-with attitudes.
I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you
even when you're being a turd, even when you smart off to me, even when you disobey,
(08:44):
even when you hit your sibling, even when you had a terrible, horrible, no good day.
Even when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you just
have an attitude from the second you wake up even when fill in the blank,
I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you
and the way that I interact with you
with my reflective responses, with the four pillars
(09:07):
with keeping all of the rules of thumb in my head.
When I do those things,
it's kind
and it's because I care about the relationship
I have with you more than anything else.
One of the foundational tenets of this model is
what do I need to do or say in this moment
(09:28):
that will most preserve the relationship
with my child
that changes everything with the way that we approach any given situation.
So I'm hopeful that you are starting to realize yes, the skills matter.
Yes, we need to practice them, work on them, learn them,
(09:48):
implement them all of those things.
However,
we're not just mechanically applying these skills
as if we're checking off boxes on a to do list.
Ok. I reflected feelings today.
Ok, I set the limit with ACT All right, I gave a choice and man, I encourage, I,
I'm I get a gold star.
(10:08):
I got all four of the four today.
That's not what this is.
There is very deep, purposeful, intentional, thoughtful
reasoning
behind why these skills work.
But again, the skills are far less important
(10:28):
then what they allow us to do,
which is they allow us to make sure that the relationship is maintained.
The beauty of parenting
is that there's a built in relationship.
See, you need to understand from my side of things. I mean, I am a parent. Ok.
My son's 14,
but
I want you to understand therapeutically speaking
(10:51):
the kids with whom I work at my center and that all of my therapists work at the center.
We start from scratch.
We are a stranger to that child and the child is a stranger to us.
We don't have the luxury of having a built in existing relationship.
You do.
We have to work so hard to cultivate that relationship.
(11:14):
We have to create that from the ground up.
Guess what? You've been creating it since before they were born.
If you carried your child,
and if you're a father or a grandparent or a caregiver in any other capacity,
you have been creating that relationship since the
moment that you first interacted with that child.
So
(11:34):
you have the advantage
that the relationship preexists.
So now your job becomes to preserve it
and we use the child-centered principles to do that.
That is the most effective way in my opinion
to ensure that we are in fact preserving that relationship.
(11:56):
So I hope that that encourages you. I hope that that kind of
resets and grounds us a little bit
because I don't want us to get so caught up in the skills
that we lose sight of why the skills matter
and what the skills help us accomplish.
So I'm hopeful that that will give you some food for thought this week.
(12:17):
All right, if you would like to reach out to me,
I would love to hear from you brenna@thekidcounselor.com
You can shoot me an email to say hello. You can shoot me an email to ask a question.
You can fill me in on a scenario that's going on and ask for advice.
I want you to know, I do personally get every single email.
I know a lot of podcasters have people that kind of filter out their emails,
(12:40):
etcetera, etcetera.
I want you to know I do read every single email.
And so sometimes I'm a little slow getting back to you,
but I promise you they will come to me and I promise I will respond.
That's something that I take really seriously and
engaging with you all is why I do this.
So I would love to hear from you brenna@thekidcounselor.com. If you have a
question that you would like to ask and leave on our voicemail line, instead,
(13:03):
you can call 813-812-5525.
You can fill me in on what question you have and
then I can answer that on a future episode as well.
Also, if you go to playtherapyparenting.com,
you will get access to the archives of all of the episodes.
If you want to get caught up on some that
you have missed or maybe you're new to the podcast.
(13:23):
Welcome, by the way. So glad you're here.
And if you want to go back and listen to earlier episodes,
you can search all of them there
and you can also subscribe to my
newsletter once you're at playtherapyparenting.com.
All right.
So great to be with you. Thank you for spending time with me each week.
I look forward to this and
I'm hopeful that every single week after every single episode,
(13:44):
you feel encouraged and supported and ready to do the work that you need
to do to parent your kids in the best way that you can.
All right, I'm grateful for you all. Talk again soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening
to the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks
for more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter.
Please go to wwwplaytherapyparenting.com.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com