Hand in Hand Apprentice Deborah Betz will lead a Parenting by Connection Study Group in Marin County in October and November. Deborah is the mother of a young child, and has been using Parenting by Connection in her family for 2 years. She's eager to assist other parents who are learning Listening Tools.

Hand in Hand Associate Dana Davis, who has led Hand in Hand groups in Santa Cruz, CA and in Nyack, NY, is giving a talk in Leucadia, near San Diego, that will be followed by a Parenting by Connection class. Dana has two children, and has been working with Hand in Hand for 8 years.

Special Time* is a simple idea that carries a lot of power! It's a highly dependable way to build and to rebuild a close connection with a child.

* Special Time is when the parent spends a well-defined amount of time one-on-one with his child, with no interruptions, promising to do whatever the child wants to do. During Special Time, the parent tries to remain pleased and fully attentive, and does not try to teach, advise or control his child unless safety is an issue.

The power of Special Time is that it puts the parent in the "back seat" of the parent/child relationship. The child does the steering. Until you do Special Time, it's hard to detect habits of control and direction that you may have adopted in your interactions with your child. Special Time helps a parent pull away from those habits, and gives the child a chance to bask in the parent's approval and demonstrate his own preferences and interests.

Children often ask for kinds of play or interaction that a parent wouldn't usually choose, or wouldn't think of. The child's choices are a direct but nonverbal communication about what he likes, his issues, or possibly the places he has become stuck in a rut of fascination or worry. But in any case, Special Time makes it safe for a child to "show himself" in ways that he might not usually dare to, because the parent has agreed to pay attention, to support the child's ideas, and has sworn not to allow anything to interrupt. The sense of closeness and caring that children derive from Special Time builds their confidence in their ability to think, to love, and to learn.

Used wisely, Special Time can be a powerful tool for creating and repairing connection between parent and teen, too. Here are a few things to remember when setting out to try Special Time with your teenager.

• Teens need their parents to reach out for a genuine connection. Think for a minute about why you want to be close to your teenager. Think about what you used to love to do with him or her, and what has been fun recently. Think about his or her longings and the things your teen is interested in. Offer to spend one-on-one time, not because you "should," or because a problem needs to be solved, but because you want your life and his life to be good, and good together.
  
  
• It's helpful to set the guidelines, so your teen's hopes aren't raised, then dashed unnecessarily. How much time can you really spend? How much money can you spend? Do you have transportation? How far can you go? Will you buy things you don't usually allow, i.e., candy, soda, body piercings, or not?
  
  
• Don't bring up sore subjects. This is a time to put your attention on the good things about your teen, not on your irritations or worries. If you must bring up difficult topics, make an appointment for that, totally separate from Special Time. Let this time be led by your teen, not your worries or upsets.
  
  
• If your offer of time together is rejected, don't give up! There are at least two things you can do to move things forward.
  
  
  1. The first and most important one is to set up a good amount of time for a Listening Partnership, so you can talk fully about yourself and your teenager. What's great in your relationship with him, and what's difficult? What was life like for you at that age? What was your relationship like when he was an infant? A toddler? It's surprisingly helpful for parents to have 45 minutes or an hour to consider the big picture of their relationship without advice or interruption. Talking about one's own experiences, and noticing the feelings that make it hard to show respect, affection, or encouragement toward your teen will help to move the relationship between you forward.
     
     
  2. The second thing a parent can do is to initiate time together without announcing it, and without drawing attention to it. This might mean taking a magazine into your teenager's room and plopping down on the bed while he's doing homework, moving close to really listen to the words of the songs on your daughter's favorite CD, or being awake and ready with a snack when your teen comes home late at night. Prepare yourself to pay attention to your teen, but in a low-key way. You're "leaning toward him," not rushing in to ask questions or try to be his best friend. Look for opportunities to offer approval. Discipline yourself not to ask probing questions. Just hang out.
     
     You're "trolling" for an opportunity to engage. Your teen might not take immediate advantage of your unspoken availability. He may look like he doesn't notice. That's fine. You're learning to let him be in the driver's seat during these unannounced Special Times. You are making a commitment in your mind and heart to offer your attention, and to trust him to take the offer eventually. Every time you hang around, content to be in your teen's presence, you're making it safer for your teen to eventually talk with you about important things. The path won't be short or certain, but carving out times when you decide not to be busy, and you set out no demands or expectations, will take you in a good direction.

Special Time, tailored by you for your own circumstances with your teenager, can make a big difference at times of trouble. Having one-on-one time during which you offer approval, interest, and no reference to difficulties can help break the isolation that glues a rough spot affecting a teen and his parents in place.

Special Time can also provide your teen a way to create times with you that he'll remember all his life, because he was able to be in charge, and to feel your support as he did what he loved, or tried something new. The more Listening Partnership time you organize for yourself, so you can release the emotions that your teenager ignites in you, the fuller your reach for connection with your teenager will be. Genuine caring makes a huge difference to teenagers. Whether they're fighting caring or absorbing it, they need to feel their parents sending it. Special Time, announced or unannounced, is a tool that helps parents send that vital caring toward their child.

There's more about building a close connection with teenagers (and pre-teens) in our booklet, Supporting Adolescents.

This issue's Parent Success Story is a powerful story from a mother who used Special Time for the first time with her 14-year-old son. She did several things just right.

1. She wanted to spend time one-on-one with him, and he could tell.
   
   
2. She made a firm decision to follow his lead. The interactions that resulted were fresh, because she lifted the standards and policies she usually enforced, in order to let her son direct the time between them. She kept catching herself, and steering away from her usual responses.
   
   
3. She relaxed and enjoyed herself and him.

Not every Special Time yields important insights that make a marked change in the parent/teen relationship. But it's a practice with great potential for improving relationships, and one that can be used to build love and respect in both good times and hard times

Easter Sunday I had a chance to do Special Time with my 14-year-old. First we went to church, and he did his play in church and I was there. After church, we just did what he wanted. We went out to the marina, and walked the pier. This was what he wanted to do.

I very seldom get a chance to do this kind of thing because my husband is the one who normally does these things with him. So we walked the pier. My son realized that we had fishing poles in the car, and he said he wanted to get his fishing pole. So we had to drive back to town to get some bait. These are things I would normally get frustrated with! I'm the type of person that, if you are going somewhere, you have to have everything you need — I’m not going to take you back and forth! But I didn't find myself frustrated that day, I was very calm. I was actually enjoying it.

We got back to the pier. I wanted to fish, once I was out there with him. But then came the worm thing! I never handle worms, never put them on the hook. But he was saying, "Now, Mom, you're going to learn how to put that worm on the hook. You have to do it yourself. That's the only way you're going to learn how to do it. I'm not doing it for you!" And I said, "You aren't?"

So I asked this gentleman, "Could you put this worm on the hook for me?" And my son came up and said, "Sir, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do that for my Mom, she needs to learn to do it herself." Can you imagine! And I found myself looking at this man, thinking, "Come on, I’m the parent, here!" But he told me, "No, I won't." I was getting ready to go ask another guy there to help me with the worm, when my son and both of these guys started talking in Spanish. My son speaks fluent Spanish. Now both of the men were saying, "No, Mamacita!" and I felt kind of outnumbered! It was amazing to see how my son took charge.

I can't speak Spanish, but he can, and he and these guys were having a really good time. I asked him, "What are you saying?" and he said, "Well, you don't really need to know, Mom." And I thought, "Well, maybe it's a male-to-male conversation, and I don't need to know. Just because I'm the Mom, I don't need to know everything."

I finally got the worm on the hook, and we sat there, and we fished, and he caught two fish. He was OK with that. I really enjoyed taking that time with him. We got a chance to talk. He got a chance to tell me how he's really feeling about me and about him growing up and the role I'm playing in his growing up. He made me see that I am too hard on him. He does need some loosening up from me in order to explore life for himself. He's going to make some mistakes, and I need to allow him to make those mistakes.

That whole day, his dimple was as deep as it gets, he was smiling so big. He felt free — I could tell by the look on his face, he felt at peace. "I'm doing whatever I want to do, and she's gonna do whatever I say." But it wasn't in a bad way. It was like, "I finally have got her to myself, I finally have her attention!" I could tell it felt really good to him, telling Mom what to do, and telling other people what he thought, also.

I'm the type of person who basically takes over with her kids. Not that I intend to boss them around, but I don't always treat them like they're human beings. They need some kind of control over their own lives. I was able to see this after that day.

So I started this week, as opposed to making him stay in the house, letting him ride his bike to the San Leandro Marina with his friends. I was on pins and needles the whole time. We had a plan. I told him, "Son, you can go. But you need to check in. Check in every hour, just say 'I'm OK.' Even if I'm not home, I want you to leave a message on the answering machine, to tell me how you are. I check those messages."

He followed that direction. Every hour, he checked in--he was gone for four hours. "Mom, I'm OK — I’m at Round Table Pizza, and then we're going to go back over to the Marina." He let me know where he was every hour on the hour. I appreciated that. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I have been worried, thinking, "This kid is going to get out there and go crazy, like boys do!" But he didn't.

He even stopped by the 99 Cent Store on the way home, and he knows I love little figurines. He bought me a little figurine, a music box. He was doing his thing, but he was thinking about me, too. It made me feel really good that I could trust him. I know I can trust him now, as opposed to not giving him that chance to see if I can trust him. He knows how to follow directions. That was a relief for me--a big step. We got through it OK.

So we're going to spend a day a week, just me and him. And we're going to do whatever he wants to do, within reason. He does need me, and I saw this. He has been on me, hugging me and kissing me and all this week. He was the kid who would say, "No kisses!" but all this week, he's been hugging and clinging to me, and saying, "Mom, I love you, you know." It's not often that he says this, and he's been smiling so big. We've been close, you know, but we're going to be really close.

— a mother in Oakland, CA.