Parenting Preschoolers Series #1: Looking for the Magical Moments

Today I am starting the first Blog in a 6 week series called Parenting Preschoolers!

Often, when parents are first seeking play therapy and parent coaching services for their child, there is a great deal of disruption, anger, frustration, challenging behaviors, tantrums and stress in the relationship between the child and parents or caregivers. Parents are burned out, tired, overwhelmed and feel that they have tried everything in the book to make things better with no results. A great deal of negativity, constant correction and frustration is directed at the child, not just from parents, but from teachers, babysitters, daycare providers, extended family members and sometimes peers as well due to the challenging behaviors and emotions that these children present.

When this happens, it can be very difficult to remember the good things about your child, the positive experiences that you have and the precious, delightful and magical moments the transpire between a parent and child every day. It is so true that they are only little once, and the time flies quickly, but when your child is struggling emotionally, it can be really challenging to see those moments that are often fleeting in our day to day life.

Did you know that acknowledging those moments by training yourself to look for the good times and good behavior of your child can actually HELP your child improve and do more of the positive behaviors that you want to see? it's true--looking for you child's good behaviors, labeling those behaviors and praising your child all have AMAZING affects on creating the positive change that you want to see in your child!

A great analogy for looking for the good in your child is going back to your own childhood, when we got that big box of Lucky Charms cereal (for me this was at my Granny and Grandpa's house (because they let us have ALL the good stuff!). I would pour the cereal into a bowl, and excitedly look for my favorite marsh mellow charm among the cereal and other charms in the box, and separate them out, eating them up (and often only have those charms for breakfast because the tasted SO good!). Looking for good in our child can be just like that big box of Lucky Charms--searching through all the "stuff" to look for the tasty, magical morsels of goodness!

When parents state to me that their are no good days or good moments with their child, I have them do a technique I call The Daily Magic Moment, a technique I adapted from the book Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks and his technique called Homework for Life that teaches people to look for the wonderful and often transformative stories that make up their daily lives. The Daily Magic Moment involves the parent creating a list either on paper or a spread sheet of Positive Interactions and Behaviors they noticed in their child that day. They can list as many as they want, but at first I have them just list one Magic Moment per day. I give this for homework, and have the parent do this for the next session. This exercise helps break that negative thought cycle about their child's challenging behaviors, and re-trains parents to look for the Magic Moment, that positive behavior their child expresses every day. And after doing this, parents are trained to actively look for these positive behaviors, and tend to see more and more as time goes on. And after they are good at finding these behaviors, then parents are taught how to use praise for these behaviors effectively to create positive change in their child.

If you are a parent with a child with big behaviors and big emotions, I encourage you to look for the magic moments in your interactions with your child. Note them, write them down, smile and feel the love and connection with your child as those positive feelings grow and expand. Those memories are fleeting, our lives go by quickly and those memories will be preserved for ever, with not a moment of goodness with your child un-noticed by the person that matters the most to them in this world--you!

Next week, I'll be exploring how to create Boundaries with Your Preschool Child in Part 2 of the Parenting Preschool Series.

If you are interested in Play Therapy for your child, please contact Gerber Play Therapy at (803) 770-5659.