Durrant – building block 1

Well, there’s what we call building blocks of the program. The first is helping parents become conscious of their long-term goals for their parenting. So much of parenting just day-to-day is dealing with one stressful moment after another. At least that’s the way it often feels to parents. Of course, it’s also full of many wonderful moments as well, but sometimes it’s the stressful ones that stand out to us. And we think that, you know, sometimes it’s all just so frustrating because we need our children’s cooperation. But if we’re always stuck in those moments of stress when the child won’t put her boots on or he won’t eat his dinner or she won’t go to bed, then we can get caught up in the stress of the moment, and we can often respond in a way that we regret later because as we know, when we’re under stress, our thinking brains kind of turn off, and our emotional brains take over. So what we want to do is refocus parents on, really, what they’re trying to accomplish over the long term, which helps them to maintain their thinking brains and help them remain rational in a stressful situation. So we want parents to think about what kind of characteristics they want their children to have when they’re grown. What kind of people do they want them to be? And when we ask that questions all over the world, parents say the same things. They say things like I want him to be independent. I want him to be confident and non-violent, empathic and kind, and to get along well with others and to be fair and honest and have integrity. And those are the kinds of things that parents aim for all over the world when they stop to think about it. But in those moments when they’re two, and they’re touching something dangerous, we tend to forget those goals. And so what we want to do is help parents refocus in moments of stress and think about what they can do in that moment that will help them reach their long-term goals. And when they stop to think that, they usually think, well, hitting isn’t going to teach them to be nonviolent, and yelling and threatening isn’t going to help them become confident, and just taking things away from him or sending him to his room isn’t going to help him develop skills in conflict resolution, for example, or getting along with others. So what could I do in that moment that would keep him safe, teach him what he needs to know and help me take a step towards those long-term goals.