Tune into a fascinating discussion with Heather T. Forbes and Dr. Ronald Federici, author of Help for the Hopeless Child on the Dare To Love Parenting Expert Podcast.

Neuropsychological and Family Therapy Associates, under the Directorship of Board Certified Dr. Ronald Federici (father to seven internationally adopted children), maintains an international reputation in the assessment and treatment of the most complicated neuropsychological, developmental and brain traumatic disorders.

Dr. Federici is committed to providing the most comprehensive evaluation and state-of-the-art treatment services for children having the “full range” of Developmental and Psychiatric Disorders. Conditions such as autistic spectrum disorders; complex learning and attentional disorders; minimal brain dysfunction conditions; severe disruptive and behavioral disorders; chronic psychiatric disorders ; attachment-related disorders; post-traumatic stress disorders (following abuse and neglect from early childhood experiences); and chronic stress affecting family functioning.

Join me and listen in to our Dare To Love Parenting Expert Podcast.
In this edition, I am honored and pleased to present to you Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A.

Carol Stock Kranowitz

In this conversation, Carol Kranowitz, author of The Out-of-Sync Child and The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun, discusses Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). As a music, movement and drama teacher for 25 years, she observed many out-of-sync preschoolers. To help them become more competent in their work and play, she began to study sensory processing and sensory integration (”SI”) theory. She learned to help identify her young students’ needs and to steer them into early intervention.

Listen in as Carol explains what it means for a child to not have control over his own body and how to identify if
your child may be struggling with SPD. She gives real-life solutions to help your child exercise his neurological system to return back to a state of balance and regulation.

Join Heather T. Forbes on the Dare To Love Parenting Expert Podcast interview with Dr. Andrew Newberg

Dr. Andrew Newberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology at the Hospital of the Universiity of Pennsylvania with secondary appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Religious Studies. Dr. Newberg has actively pursued neuroimaging research projects, including the study of aging and dementia, epilepsy, and other neurological and psychiatric disorders. He is the author of numerous books, including “Why We Believe What We Believe.”

Listen in as Dr. Newberg discusses how our belief systems affect the chemistry and neurology of our bodies. Learn how a child’s beliefs are hard wired in the developing years and why children hold on so strongly to these beliefs, whether they are truthful or not. This interview will give you a deeper understanding as to why a child may adamantly believe from his experiences that he isn’t lovable and that nobody really loves him.

Children’s Feelings, Behaviors, and Relationships

(This article is based off the books “Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control Vol 1 & 2”

Visit our website at www.beyondconsequences.com)

By: Heather T. Forbes, LCSW

author of “Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control Vols 1, 2 & Dare To Love”

Children need unconditional love and unconditional acceptance from their parents; we all know this and believe this.  However, do we ever stop to consider how so many of the traditional parenting techniques accepted in our culture work contrary to this primal goal?  Traditional parenting techniques that involve consequences, controlling directives, and punishment are fear-based and fear-driven.  They have the ability to undermine the parent-child relationship and because they are tied into behavior, children easily interpret these actions to mean, “If I’m not good, I am not lovable.”  Thus, children often build a subconscious foundation that says that love and approval is based off of performance.

How to Parent With Love

Parenting from a love-based paradigm means going beyond our children’s behavior and beyond consequences to first see that negative behavior is a form of communication and that negative behavior is a response to stress. If we see the kicking and screaming child as one who is having difficulty regulating due to an overflow of feelings, we can learn to stay present with the child in order to help him modulate these feelings and thus, help him to build his emotional regulatory system. A child kicking and screaming or in a rage is a child who has been “emotionally hijacked”. Emotions are not logical or rational ; this hitting and kicking is the body’s natural fear reaction gone awry.

Allowing a child emotional space to safely dissipate this energy will then allow him to calm down. As we provide reassurance, unconditional love, and emotional presence for our children, the need to kick and scream will disappear.  Many times our children kick and scream simply because they do not feel that they are being listened to nor do they feel as if they have been heard. Staying present and reassuring a child that you really are listening to him, can be enough to help them begin to regulate. The life lesson that kicking and screaming is inappropriate does indeed need to be reinforced. But, this life lesson can only happen once the child is fully regulated (when the child is calm) and his cognitive thinking is intact. This is also the time to present alternatives to kicking and screaming. This is a way of teaching our children instead of punishing them. The definition of discipline is to teach.  The more we can stay focused on the relationship with our child and strengthening this relationship instead of controlling it through consequences, the more we will be helping our child learn to work through their stress appropriately.

Four pointers to help you stay in a loving and emotionally open place for your children:

Just Be Happy!—But I’m not!

Did anyone ever tell you, “Just think happy thoughts and it will be okay.”?  Did it really work?  Probably not.  Emotions do not simply disappear.  If feelings are not released and acknowledged, they are stored and become part of our physical make-up.  Research has convincingly shown that being able to express feelings like anger and grief can improve survival rates in cancer patients.  With our children, feelings that become stored and “stuffed” become activators for negative behaviors.

ALL Feelings are Good Feelings

As parents, it is important for us to understand the necessity of emotional expression, both in teaching it to our children and in modeling it to our children.  Blocked feelings can inhibit growth, learning, and the building of a trusting relationship between the parent and child.  The first step to take is to recognize that ALL emotions are healthy.  In our culture, feelings such as joy, peace, and courage are seen as good feelings, yet feelings such as sad, mad, and scared are seen as bad feelings.  Let’s rethink this to understand that it is not the feeling itself that creates negativity; it is the lack of expression of the feeling that creates negativity.  And in children, this negativity is often expressed through poor behaviors.

Getting to the Core of the Behavior

When children are acting out and being defiant, we need to begin to understand that their behaviors are simply a communication of an emotional state that is driving these behaviors.  If we simply address the behavior, we miss the opportunity to help children express and understand themselves from a deeper level. Start by modeling basic feeling words to your child.  Keep it simple and teach the five basic feeling words: sad, mad, bad, scared, and happy. Even the youngest of children can learn to say, “I’m mad!”  When the toddler is throwing his toys or the teenager is throwing his backpack across the room, encourage him at that moment to get to the core of the behavior through emotional expression.  Remember…it really isn’t about the toys or the backpack; and they really do know better than to do the negative behaviors.

Responding vs. Reacting

So the next time your child becomes defiant, talks back, or is simply “ugly” to you, work to be in a place not to react to the behavior, but respond to your child.  Respond to your child in an open way—open to meeting him in his heart and helping him understand the overload of feelings that are driving the behaviors.  He doesn’t need a consequence or another parental directive at that moment; he just needs you to be present with him.  As your children learn to respond back to you through the parent-child relationship, they won’t have the need to communicate through negative behaviors anymore.  You’ll both have more energy for each other, building a relationship that will last a lifetime.

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Join Heather T. Forbes, LCSW and Dr. Ronald Federici as they discuss the dynamics in transitioning these children from disaster to safety and security.