By: Alyson Dudley
Parenting can be rewarding AND also challenging, especially if your child has to cope with emotional regulation difficulties and other challenges. At Broadview Psychology, our Comprehensive DBT Program involves caregivers as we find we have better treatment outcomes overall when skills and interventions are used in the home environment as well. DBT skills can also be helpful for those not involved in our treatment programs. Here are some tips that all caregivers might find useful for themselves and their children of all ages.
Regulation Skills:
- It can be helpful for parents to notice if they are dysregulated and to use skills to help themselves to calm down. This can help to model to their child that skills can be helpful and that they care enough about the situation to make an effort. Some skills to use for regulation could include distraction, grounding, TIPP or self-soothing
- Parents can help their child to regulate by suggesting skills/offering to help with skills (such as bringing over an ice pack to put on their face to calm down) if they are open to this OR alternatively waiting for them to calm down on their own (only intervening if they are harming themselves or others). This may take longer than parents expect. If it seems that it would be helpful, and does not seem to be escalating the situation, or if the child has requested that parents stay, then parents can remain in the same area. This can be a validating and calming presence.
Validation:
- Once everyone has calmed down, then parents can validate. Validation does not mean that you agree with your child’s behaviours, emotions or thoughts, rather that you are trying to convey to them that you are on their side and that you are trying to understand the situation from their perspective. Validation can help with de-escalating situations and can help set the groundwork for suggesting skill use and change strategies. When someone feels validated, they are more likely to accept suggestions for change. Caregivers can also be mindful of if they are moving into problem solving too quickly and if it would be more helpful to validate and then perhaps problem solve later on.
- Self-validation is also important for caregivers. Caregivers can remind themselves that parenting can be difficult and that their own emotions make sense. Self-validation, along with parental self-care can help parenting distress to go down and help parents to proceed in a mindful and skillful way.
Limits and Reinforcement:
- Setting limits and expectations and following through /staying firm in the face of possible negative reactions (behaviour bursts) from our children is a sometimes difficult and helpful step for parenting. We can strongly validate our children, letting them know that we know that the task is difficult AND it needs to happen (with our support and help). A common example is when a child refuses to attend school.
- In order to help scaffold the behaviours we want to see from our children, reinforcement of those behaviours is a powerful tool in helping the behaviours to happen again. We can reinforce with specific and directed praise and warmth and attention. Being mindful of what behaviours we are reinforcing can be helpful as perhaps we are inadvertently reinforcing a behaviour that we don’t want our child to continue with and therefore may need to find ways to make it not reinforcing. (A common example is staying home with our children when they refuse to go to school and watching TV with them, which may reinforce staying home and avoiding school).
Pleasant Time Together/Building up Relationship:
- Spending pleasant time with our children and working to build up our relationships with them are fundamental in helping our children adjust to more skillful behaviours. If our child feels loved and they feel a connection with their parent, they are more likely to engage and follow through with expectations and parental requests. Children notice their parent’s behaviours and so once again, modelling of skillful behaviours is important. It can also be helpful to model how to repair if behaviour is not skillful (eg. parents can model how to effectively apologize). Pleasant time together can also help elevate mood for both child and parent.
If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed with parenting or if you would like to add to your list of skills to use in your parenting, consider using some of the parenting tips above.
From DBT® Skills Manual for Adolescents, by Jill H. Rathus and Alec L. Miller. Copyright 2015 by The Guilford Press.
Adapted from DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition. Copyright 2015 by Marsha M. Linehan. Adapted by permission.