How To Think About Behavior

Posted by Ce Eshelman on

March 11, 2014

Up your compassion by changing YOUR mind. The only way to parent attachment challenged children effectively is to see them clearly as little children with brains and bodies that have been severely impacted by difficult beginnings, maltreatment/abuse and attachment breaches.

After that, YOU have to edit your own thinking about what you are seeing when you parent them every day.

This is what I mean:

Behavior: Child pushes your hugs away.

Thinking: Child is controlling, unloving, rejecting.

Re-Think: Child is afraid of being vulnerable and self protects

habitually by pushing people away.

Behavior: Child spills something every day.

Thinking: Child is clumsy, stupid, never pays attention, or must

be doing this on purpose to annoy me.

Re-Think: Child ‘s proprioceptive and vestibular senses are

challenged and need rehabilitation.

Behavior: Child steals things repeatedly.

Thinking: Child is a thief, untrustworthy, embarrassing, morally

corrupt, and bound for prison.

Re-Think Child has deprivation imprints, combined with

impulsivity.

Behavior: Child lies nonsensically.

Thinking: Child is a hopeless liar, bad seed, criminal,

antisocial, devious.

Re-Think: Child is in survival mode most of the time: scared to

be caught, wrong, harmed, in-trouble, or bad (the

way it feels on the inside.)

Our compassion rises when we tell ourselves the truth about our children who have been harmed by adults early in their lives or by the circumstances of difficult biological beginnings–challenging pregnancy, neonatal surgery, birth trauma, prematurity, parental absence, illness or postpartum depression.