Helping Children Manage their Emotional World
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To help our children (infants to adolescents) understand and manage their emotional world and thus grow into robust and resilient adults - as the parent (or caregiver) "always be BIGGER, STRONGER, WISER and KIND, and wherever possible follow your child's need, and whenever necessary take charge" A parent's role is to provide both a a 'secure base' from which the child will go into the world to explore and learn; and a 'safe haven' in which you protect, comfort, delight-in and help organise the child's feelings (Cooper & colleagues - Circle of Security, 1998).
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NEED for CONNECTION
Children have a basic need for emotional connection: They need their parent's presence & unconditional love: to feel secure in their emotional connectedness & safe in your love. SOME QUESTIONS PARENTS MAY ASK: - how can I improve my relationship with my child? - what is my child's behaviour telling me? PARENTS: our 'SHARK MUSIC'
As parents sometimes we react to our child's emotions in unhelpful ways, because their emotional state stirs up "stuff" from our own childhood experience that is uncomfortable and this gets in the way of the necessary parental art of 'Being With' our child's emotional experience. This "stuff" that gets in the way has been called "shark music" by the chaps who developed Circle of Security (COS). The background music that influences our parental interaction- Shark Music - is nicely explained in the video below. (created by 'Hands Up in England') |