Four Key Parenting Skills that Focus on Parents

Last week I was training a small group of therapists who work with a cute and lively five-year-old named Marty in her family’s home. After two years in an intensive home-based treatment program, Marty will start senior kindergarten this fall and we all felt enthusiastic that her new teacher Ms. Kay had joined us to sit in and observe the training. The teacher’s openness to learning new ideas, to communicating with the parents, and to taking her own time to learn about my treatment strategies for Marty was refreshing and welcome.

At the end of the two-day training, Ms. Way shared her thoughts with the group. “I am really grateful to have the chance to sit in and see the high-level of discussion and feedback to help Marty. It’s incredible to see how detailed you get and taking the time to really talk about what strategies will work best for her. And what stands out the most to me is how much you include the parents. It’s just so important that parents are included in the discussion and get support.”

I smiled hearing Ms. Way identify what to me is also the most important piece of the training that I do with therapist teams; I include parents as much as possible. Other programs like the SCERTS model, the Son-Rise Program, Floortime, and project ImPACT also have a strong emphasis on including parents in training and program planning.

to empower parents…, we need to encourage them to take care of themselves.

I believe that to empower parents to best care for their children, we need to encourage them to take care of themselves. So often, parents caring for a child with special needs pour all of their heart and soul and time and resources toward their children until there is nothing left – they are exhausted and spent. Sleep deprived and unbalanced, it’s easy to start to resent daily chores and to lose patience. Parents should be supported to take care of themselves as much as they take care of their child with special needs.

Here are four skills that I include in family training specifically for parents:

1. Be Present

The Dalai Lama talks extensively about how energy draining it is to spend a lot of time thinking back and regretting the past or thinking ahead and worrying about the future. When we focus on the past and the future we aren’t being present to what is in front of us. We are only partly present to what we are doing in the moment while part of our thoughts are busy calculating about past and future ideas. The point is that being present takes less energy and is easier than being not present. It is tiring to juggle so much in your head while trying at the same time to take care of the present.

Of course parents need to think ahead and plan. I recommend that they do this at specific “planning” meetings that they set aside time for. Sunday evening after the kids are in bed is a good time for parents to sit together for fifteen minutes to discuss plans for the upcoming week, synchronize schedules, and to look ahead to any future events that need planning. (This is taking time to “be present” with future planning instead of worrying about the future at the same time as you need to be focused on something else in the present. Make sense?)

When parents practice being present, they feel less drained of energy and are less mentally tired. Being present often results in being more positively responsive to your child, hearing more of the words they say, and appreciating more of their efforts. When parents are present, they become more aware too of their own needs. They realize they are hungry and should stop to feed themselves or their thirsty for some water. It’s hard to take care of yourself if you aren’t first present.

2. Be accepting of yourself

Some of the most effective treatment programs for people with autism stress the importance of acceptance of autistic behaviours.  Some adults with Asperger’s Disorder like Stephen Shore and Temple Grandin emphasize in their lectures and books that changing judgments about autistic behaviour into acceptance is the key to building strong therapeutic relationships with children with autism.

Acceptance is misunderstood however. For many, “acceptance” means to stop caring, to “let go of wanting more”, and to “give up.” This is not the kind of acceptance that we are talking about. Simply put, to accept a person with autism means to stop judging their differences as bad and not okay. I teach therapists to help a child learn more socially adaptive behaviours without having to judge or feel uncomfortable about the child’s repetitious ritu

als for example.

“…parents need to be more gentle and accepting of themselves.”

What is often overlooked however, is reminding parents that they can also stop judging themselves. Many parents carry around guilt that they may have somehow caused their child’s autism. Many judge themselves for ‘not doing enough’ from their view. When they lose their patience or get angry at their child with special needs, like all parents do at some point, they might then feel angry toward themselves. In short, parents need to be more gentle and accepting of themselves. Parents can learn to transform self-judgment into self-acceptance. Does your treatment program include this skill in the curriculum?

3. Take care of yourself

If you are the leader of the pack, the guide at the front of the team hacking a path through the jungle, you need to be in shape. You have to be physically rested, fed, hydrated. You have to be emotionally fit, supported, nurtured. But most parents with a child with autism are so busy and overwhelmed with autism treatment programs and regimes that they put caring for themselves at the bottom of the list. One mother told me recently that since setting up a home-based treatment program for her child she has gone from washing her hair every other day to maybe once a week. She just doesn’t have the time she says. The most important thing she said was that she doesn’t feel good about not taking care of herself enough. She realizes she is last on her To Do list but doesn’t know how to change the situation. Most parents reading this will be able to relate to this mother and may even feel defensive toward me suggesting that you find more time to do things for yourself. It is hard, I know. And it seems impossible with daily schedules that already don’t give you enough time to sleep before 1am for just a few hours until 6am wake up.

The point is to first become aware of how far down the list you have put yourself. It’s already a good step forward to just recognize that you want to care for yourself more. You’ll be giving yourself the message that you are paying attention to yourself. The next step is to begin to do small little actions that don’t take more than a minute through out the day that are just for you and that feel good to you. For example, stop to drink a small glass of water to keep yourself hydrated. Take the 20 seconds extra to put on a favourite song while you work in the kitchen or drive to pick up the kids at school. Give yourself permission to make one five-minute phone call to a supportive friend once a week. These are all doable and combined will start to shift the balance from only caring for your children and others to taking care of yourself too.

4. Trust your intuition

This might sound a bit ‘out there.’ But I haven’t yet met a parent, especially mothers, who don’t relate to ‘intuition.’ Time and time again, parents say that they ‘just knew’ something was wrong, or that they ‘sensed’ that a particular therapist wasn’t right for their child, or that their intuition told them they should read a certain book on autism. At the same time, far too often, professionals are so focused on teaching their own message that parents aren’t given a voice. Parents’ intuition is diminished because isn’t backed by graduate degrees.

Trusting your intuition doesn’t mean to also stop trusting professionals. It doesn’t mean to stop following sound expert advice and it doesn’t mean to act on everything you feel or think. Intuition is a much stronger feeling than a passing thought and fleeting emotion. Intuition is the kind of feeling that won’t go away until you listen to it. It lingers with you like an ache in your stomach or a nagging dialogue in your mind all day long. Often, the more you fight it, the stronger you feel it.

In my own work with parents through the Intensive Multi-Treatment Intervention program, I often stop throughout the lessons and take time to ask parents what they are thinking, how they are feeling, and to honestly assess if they feel this is the right direction for us to take for their child. Intuition grows stronger- it develops- the more you listen to it. Intuition isn’t what we base treatment programs decisions on, but it is given a voice in the conversation.

Each of these four strategies are skills that can be learned, practiced, and improved. Choose one this week and read about it. Then plan to practice it one step at a time. You will see it help you and you’ll get better at it. Most importantly, make a decision today to prioritize focusing on yourself, the parent, as one of the most important strategies you can do to help better your child with special needs.

Tagged as: Family Training, Parenting Skills, Parents