Hand in Hand Parenting- Transforming Fear through Play and More

I’ve had a lot of fun in the last few weeks catching up with Hand in Hand Parenting. I could write for pages and pages about all of the wonderful tools, articles, and information the cite provides, but I will try to be succinct!  Of specific interest to me this week was a section in which Dr. Larry Cohen discusses using play to help children work through anxiety. I am a huge believer in the learning and transformative power of play and I use play in my practice as a parenting coach and pediatric sleep specialist all the time. Dr. Cohen had some wonderful games to add to my repertoire of games that help transmute fear and anxiety through play and laughter.

One of the games was called, “Security Duck.” A mother, who was dealing with her daughter’s daily anxieties, had approached Dr. Cohen looking for help. Her daughter, Brooke, became very anxious easily and especially when her daily routine was broken. When this happened, Brooke would repeatedly ask her mother the same questions over and over again, seemingly unsatisfied with the answers. Her mother was very frustrated and didn’t know what to do. Dr. Cohen suggested this game to help empower Brooke and use imaginative play to work through her fears. In the game, a silly, floppy stuffed duck was the “Security Duck.” The duck was in charge of keeping everyone safe and would boast about how he wasn’t afraid of anything. Then, the duck would become terrified of silly, innocuous things and run and hide! Brooke then brought it a bunch of puppies to save the day. Brooke and her mother played this game in many different contexts for several weeks with loads of laughter and fun. The result was Brooke’s anxiety significantly diminished. Why? Because Brooke was connecting with her mother and her brain was receiving messages of safety and connection. Brooke was allowed to be the powerful one and to dictate the ducks fears (thus working through some of her own fear with lightness and levity) and the puppies’ solutions. Power, it seems, is an antidote to anxiety and fear. The HIH website points out with frequency that children spend so much of their day being told what to do and being so powerless. Connecting with children and using their language of play to turn fear into silliness is a beautiful way to help children embrace their own fear! You can read this article at: http://www.handinhandparenting.org/article/dr-lawrence-cohen-playing-anxiety/

Hand in Hand Parenting is in many ways very counter cultural. I have introduced their tools to so many parents and almost all of them (myself included) have had a moment when it just seemed crazy to be listening to a child become so upset and unreasonable without creating some sort of consequence to discourage the behavior in the future. Our culture has a lot of faith in it’s system of rewards and punishments. In my experience, though, when children are really off track and acting belligerently, there is always fear at the root of it. Hand in Hand uses a lot of neuroscience to explain that when children act out, their brains are basically on overload. Stress has caused the brain to release cortisol and enough cortisol shuts down a child’s ability to think rationally. Listening through a tantrum and setting safe limits allows children to offload that stress and restore clear thinking. It trusts that children are inherently good and want to do the right thing. I love this about it. This is the very point that can be controversial, however. Children’s big emotions can be scary and triggering to parents and sometimes parents just want to make those feelings stop. The lovely thing about trusting our kids and listening through upset, however, is that on the other side, when things have calmed down, the connection and trust between parents and children has grown.

I think that the overwhelming trend that becomes clear when reviewing the HIH website, especially when coupled with the overwhelming popularity that the parenting philosophy is gaining has really shown me that parents are really dissatisfied with the ways that they, themselves, were parented. As our culture’s concept of children has changed so much, we are starting to see that parents are seeing how incredible capable, smart, and good their children are. One-size fits all styles of parenting and the use of punishments as a way of controlling behavior is beginning to fall out of vogue in some communities. Many parents are craving ways to set strong limits with their kids, but in a respectful way that grows connection and trust rather than creating more bad feelings and mistrust. It still remains quite controversial, but I do hope that more parents will begin to see the joys that lie in parenting in this way.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren