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Connection-Focused Parenting

black parents lecturing upset daughter at table

How to Understand Your Teen From A Neurodivergent And LGBTQ+ Perspective

Do you struggle with how to understand your teen or to see things from their point of view? If you do, you are not alone, this is something that many parents find challenging.

We will not always see things through our children’s eyes or agree with our teen’s point of view. Neither will they with ours. This is just human nature.

However, as a parent, it is important to try to figure out how to understand your teen and to see things from their point of view (even if you disagree with them). The reason for this is ‘connection capital’. As discussed in my previous blog, it is important to recognise, interpret and act on your teen’s bids for connection. This will support you to build a trusting relationship with your teen through the depositing of ‘connection capital’ into their ‘connection account’. The more regularly you deposit into your children’s ‘connection account’ the stronger and more resilient your relationship with them will be.  Read more…

Connection-Focused Parenting – Principle Two: Everyone Is ‘Good Inside’

Connection-focused parenting is based on the assumption that we are all fundamentally ‘good inside’. In other words, you are a good person and your teen is a good kid.

This might sound deceptively simple. Of course, our kids, and we as parents are good inside. But stay with me here. It is easy to hold onto our idea of goodness when everything is going right. When we are calm and regulated. When our teens are behaving as we believe that they should.

However, when our teen has just had a meltdown. We had an argument with our partner about how we handled a parenting situation. Or we are exhausted, overwhelmed and ‘over it’ it is very easy to see the worst in ourselves, our partner or our teen. It is very easy to believe that we are ‘bad’ inside. Read how you can change this and use the principle of ‘good inside’ as a powerful parenting tool. Read more…

The One Thing Your Teen Needs Most From You – Radical Acceptance, How To Give It

Parenting The Child You Have AKA Radical Acceptance is the most important and fundamental principle of Connection-Focused Parenting. We cannot form an authentic connection with someone when we are trying to change them to become who we think they should be.

In this blog, the first in this series on the essential principles of Connection-Focused Parenting, I explore what Radical Acceptance is, and why it is so important. I also discuss what makes this principle tricky to implement and how we can go about practising more radical acceptance of ourselves and our teens. Read more…

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