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Consciously Repairing Relationships

Instructor: Rebecca Thompson, M.S., MFT

Traditional parenting techniques rely on behavior-focused strategies, like rewards and punishments. Sometimes these can result in a behavior change, but many times these short-term fixes have long-term relationship consequences. Nothing is more important than relationship, yet most parenting information is myopic and seeks simply to make a behavior go away without looking at the bigger picture.

Every relationship is going to have disconnections that result from either focusing on behaviors, that surface when our own issues as parents get in the way, or when things are further complicated by traumatic experiences for either the parent or the child. How do we repair those relationships? How do we go from not wanting to be with our child because of their behaviors to creating a loving connection?

Rebecca has first-hand experience with this process. After starting out as a connected, attachment parent, the death of her newborn son from a birth defect rocked her own world and that of her son, who was nearly 4 at the time. What followed were years of escalating disconnection in her relationship with her son, then years of repairing that relationship. This course and her upcoming book, Consciously Parenting, guide us through the journey of Consciously Repairing Relationships. Whether your disconnection is from a traumatic event (perhaps a death, divorce, or other life trauma) or the result of smaller unconscious decisions and situations over time, this is the course for you!

Both parents are invited to participate, whether live on the phone or by listening to the class recordings at a later time. With this material, it is important that both parents have the same information, so there is no additional charge for the second parent or caregiver to participate in the same class.

Week 1: The Keys to Raising Healthy Children and Parenting Covenant

What nobody ever told your parents was the key to raising healthy children and what gets in the way. We'll create our own Parenting Covenant, including what wed like to create in our homes and in our relationships with our children (and others). Understanding the needs of young children and why that matters even if you aren't raising young children (hint: you were once a young child). Behavior-focused vs relationship-focused and the importance of attachment.

Week 2: Why We Don't Always Act Better When We Know Better

We'll discuss roadblocks to healthy relationships and why we ourselves get stuck. Introduce the brain stoplight as a way to understand ourselves, our own parents, and our children in a new way. We'll look at trauma (our own and our children's) and how that affects relationships and our brain stoplight. We'll identify our own signals for green light, yellow light, and red light and determine where our relationship is on the whole right now.

Week 3: The Shift- Exiting the Merry-go Round of Negativity

Recognizing the merry-go round of negative situations and how to extract ourselves from those experiences- shifting from disconnection to connection, from behavior focus to relationship focus. Reconnecting with ourselves and with our children. Visualization, feedback loops, and learning to press pause in our negative cycles. We'll explore our own hidden communication and learn more about ourselves through the reactions of others. We'll also discover our interpretation of our child's behaviors to make room for our new relationship.

Week 4: Repair as a Way of Life

Daily repair vs. more extensive repair work. What's involved and what does it look like? How do we do our own healing work? Tools to consider for healing from our own traumas and wounds, to reconnect with ourselves and with our own inner guidance. We'll look at specific examples from each of our own stories from our childhood and/or from the present to make our own connections and opportunities for healing.

Week 5: Connecting Through Challenging Behaviors

But he just _______ and I can't deal with that behavior! Bring your own real life examples as we dive in and discover alternative ways of handling our child's challenging behaviors in ways that can create connection. This bonus week will be just for talking about your own challenges and for getting feedback from the group to move you on your way toward repairing those relationships using your biggest challenges as the catalyst.

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