Parenting by Connection
Parenting can be a joyful and deeply rewarding endeavor, but it's not a job done best alone! Parents need and deserve useful information, appreciation and support. When parents have access to a support network, they learn more readily from the challenges of parenting and enjoy their children more fully.
Our Parenting by Connection approach gives parents practical tools that help them strengthen their families, using their love, listening, and the strong bonds they have with their children. We find that parents then use the skills and support they have built to foster positive change in their communities.
Parenting by Connection is based on the following assumptions:
- When children feel connected, they learn readily, love easily, and become caring leaders among their peers. A healthy parent-child connection enables a child to fully access his intelligence and ability.
- When parents feel connected with their children and with other parents, they have greater success at solving problems at the heart of family and community life. Parenting becomes more fun, and more rewarding.
- When children’s behavior goes “off track,” they are asking for closeness, connection and understanding. Parents can use the tools of Special Time, Playlistening, Setting Limits or Staylistening to rebuild the connection with their children. The child offloads stress, reconnects, and can then make thoughtful decisions and learn from his experience.
- When emotional stress sends parents' behavior "off track," they need the support of a listener who appreciates how much they care and how hard they try. Parents need the safety to offload feelings that interfere with their ability to guide their children with love and sensible limits, kindly held.
Parenting by Connection principles include:
- Respect
Our listening tools promote full respect for the minds of children and the work of parenting.
- Connection
Parents and children flourish when they feel close and connected. We teach simple, effective ways to build and rebuild the parent-child connection.
- Listening
Listening connects us, facilitates healing and fosters the ability to think, learn, and care.
- Leadership
We help parents develop the skills to reach their goals. With support, and when they are ready, parents take steps to build healthy families and strong communities.
Parenting by Connection uses the following Listening Tools with children:
- Special Time
An adult sets aside a distinct period of time — from 5 minutes to an hour — during which he focuses warm, undivided attention on the child, doing whatever play the child chooses, within the limits of safety and reason. This simple tool helps foster strong parent/child connections.
- Playlistening
The adult takes the less powerful role in play. The adult notices what allows the child to laugh (without being tickled), promotes the child's laughter and encourages the child's exploration of the more powerful role. Laughter and fun build children's confidence and help the parent to feel close, too.
- Setting Limits
The adult takes responsibility to stop behavior that is hurtful or thoughtless, without directing blame or hurtful actions toward the child. Or, the adult holds out a reasonable expectation, without backing down and without hurtful actions toward the child. When the child's feelings about the limit or the expectation erupt, the adult listens and stays close, because listening and closeness through the emotional storm will restore the child's ability to think clearly again.
- Staylistening
The adult stays close to a child who is shedding emotions through crying, tantrums or trembling and raging. The adult listens and allows the child to express the feelings of hurt that have skewed his judgment. When the child is finished, he can feel the caring the adult has offered, and he can relax, learn, and play well again.
Parenting by Connection offers the following Listening Tools for adults:
- Listening Partnerships
Two parents take turns respectfully listening to the thinking, efforts, and feelings of the other. No advice is given and no analysis is made by the listener. Listening Partnerships give parents the chance to learn from their experience and honor their own thoughts, feelings and goals. Listening Partnerships relieve stress, build self-understanding, and promote parent leadership at home and in the community.
- Parent Resource Groups
A group of parents gathers, exchanges updates on their lives, and then offers respectful listening time to each member in turn. No advice is given and no analysis is made by any listener. A leader mentors parents as they learn Parenting by Connection. Parents develop a strong sense of respect for themselves and other parents and for the vital work they do.
Parenting by Connection is described in fuller detail in the Hand in Hand booklets, audiotapes, and videotapes.
Hand in Hand is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization. Donations are tax deductible.
