As Sarah will readily admit, her day-job can be very intense. She works with children who have had traumatic early experiences, so enjoys returning to the welcoming world of Bartley Bear for a much-needed cuddle.
It’s this clinical experience, however, which has informed the psychology behind the series of stories.
Here comes the science bit…
The stories illustrate the importance of a secure attachment relationship between parent and child, and offer an approach to help strengthen this. The model she draws upon is used regularly in clinical practice to help parents and carers support children who have suffered early adversity. Its value, Sarah realised, goes beyond this specific demographic: it’s based on what all children thrive upon from their parents and caregivers so has relevance to the whole population.
The approach is called PACE. Which stands for:
• Playfulness
• Acceptance
• Curiosity
• Empathy
“Consistently having these qualities in your parenting is thought to facilitate the development of a secure attachment relationship, making you feel more connected with your child and making parenting more enjoyable and less stressful,” she explains. “It helps your child to feel understood and allows you to work through difficult situations together.”
This parenting approach was developed by Clinical Psychologist, Dr Dan Hughes, and Sarah has embedded its ethos into the lift-the-flap stories.
A slower PACE
Sarah’s ‘Parenting Handbook’ dissects these qualities in more detail, but perhaps already you can see an area which perhaps you hadn’t previously considered a part of your ‘parenting’ , that could be stronger. We all have our strengths and aspects we find more difficult and reflecting on these four areas may help you notice these.
Often when we think about our own experience of being parented there are striking parallels to how we in turn parent - even if we hadn’t intended there to be so.
For me, the PACE acronym is delightfully ironic, because I do go at quite a pace throughout the week.
Many mornings feel like a military drill: feeding, clothing, teeth-brushing, cajoling, cleaning and corralling into the car.
As a result of my pace, I forget PACE.
My ‘playfulness’, I noted, was particularly absent. Could this be the reason I feel like I’m herding a gaggle of grumpy cats out of the door each day? Might I even be a cause of the tantrums over teeth-cleaning and belligerence over breakfast?
No-one feels particularly playful on three hours’ sleep, but could a fresh perspective on the morning routine make me less of an autocratic captain facing down mutiny and more of a wily skipper steering his scurvy crew to the buried treasure of toddler tranquility?
Actually, yes.
Stopping - even briefly - not actually to ‘play’, but be ‘playful’, seems to help.
Notes from the front…
Thursday: 7.45am.
Usual tigger-like, sofa-jumping antics. Mission is in jeopardy. Ten minutes to ‘awfully late’.
Wake up time: 5am.
Sleep: deprived.
Coffee consumption: worrying. Mine, not his…I hope.
Must get dressed, dress him, dress the baby. Crikey, where is the baby?!
Plan of action:
Muster commands - ‘stay still’, ‘wait a second’, ‘just stop it’. Utter in shrill tones.
End up crying - me and him. And most likely the baby. Wherever he is.
Instead, I took a breath and thought, ‘PACE’.
Putting on a silly voice, I addressed my bouncing three year-old son, ‘Excuse me, Mr Jumper. May I put your jumper on you? A jumper on the jumper…come here Jumper, let me jumper you.’
OK, it’s not going to win an ‘Eddie’, but it made him giggle. A few more bounces - and a little less lecturing than normal - and the boy was at one with his jumper and I could move onto the next battle. Sorry, game. Hell, the baby!
The power of the PACE model is that its impact goes beyond these mini victories. Adopting these qualities of parenting will actually enhance your relationship with your kid(s) - and also support their emotional and behavioural development.
More about the team's attempts to put the other facets of PACE - acceptance, curiosity and empathy - into practice in future blogs.
Don’t be perfect - be accountable
I mean, we’re all human: moody mums, fallible fathers, grumpy grans and tetchy teachers.
It’s just the reality that we will get things ‘wrong’ and, at times, (sometimes it feels hourly!), we could do things better.
What is key for children is that the adults in their life model reparation: they actively seek to repair a rupture in the relationship. Simply, they say sorry when they do something which causes hurt.
Making mistakes and modelling how to fix them, is more positive than maintaining a pretence of perfection, than glossing over hurtful behaviours, however brief you feel they were.
Be perfectly wrong, and say so.
Tell us your tale
As we lead up to the Crowdfunder start date - March 12th! - we’ll be exploring more ways real mums and dads use the PACE model and examples of how we have patched up our own parenting problem-areas through talk and apology.
Next week: how to repair relationships with the rug-rats when things don’t quite go to plan.
We’d love to hear from you if you have a story about this - ‘Parenting Through Stories’ makes us all parent better.
Happy adulting, all…Becks x
Editor + Blogger
Parenting Through Stories
@rebeccaritsonwrites
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