TBRI® Reminders: Playful Engagement

Two Saturdays ago, I had the opportunity to train our current foster and adoptive families in their annual TBRI review. As you might expect, current families are struggling with the same things that you tenured adoptive families struggled with: efficiency in responding. We all seem to grapple with how to appropriately respond when a child talks back, breaks a rule, pretends they don’t hear you, or hits a sibling. I come from a family of yellers and will absolutely own that when my children do the things on the list above (Because they do. All. The. Time.), my initial inclination is to raise my voice. It's a habit. I pull out that residual dismissive attachment style to block out my kids’ feelings, and I raise my voice because this mom means business. Let me tell you how that works...it doesn’t.

We know from parenting kids, especially kids from backgrounds of trauma, that our best method in responding is with the least amount of force. That’s the honest truth. Children have the best capability to learn when parents respond calmly and playfully whenever possible. Remember the hand brain? When the lid is flipped, no new information is coming in. An important piece of this process is being a consistent parent. Your children need to know that you will respond in roughly the same way each time they test the limits. Why is that important? Because their lives before you were inconsistent. Depending on their caregivers’ moods, their food situation, job security, the response would have been different daily. Inconsistent parenting = lack of felt safety.

Any easy response for most small behaviors is to ask children to try something again. Simple. There are several playful scripts that help with this. If your kids are yelling, start whispering. They have to lower their voices to hear you. Are you dealing with grumpy kids who don't love to hear “No”? Tickling is my favorite intervention. Follow that up with some ice cream and your job is done. Is your 15-year-old too cool to show you respect in front of their friends? Say playfully, "My heart can't handle this rejection!", then smile and tell them you love them. Wait until everyone cools off to talk about how disrespect damages relationships. Ultimately, filling your child's emotional cup with dedicated playfulness each days makes it significantly easier set limits when you have to.

Weekend homework: Take some time to think and talk about ways that you can be more playful in responding to your children!