FYI = Smoothing Turbulence with the Difficult Child......

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Smoothing Turbulence with the Difficult Child Through the Nurtured Heart

Approach

By Tami Gulland

Recently I was traveling by airplane from Tucson to Minneapolis. As we

approached Minneapolis, the pilot announced that we were going to be

experiencing

turbulence due to stormy weather.

While we were all forewarned about the bumpiness, I was struck by the

contrast of peoples' reactions as we were being tossed about. I heard screams,

gasps and laughing. There were more than a hundred people having the same

experience, but all with a different perspective.

The same things holds true about parenting. Parents do not knowing the size

and duration of the bumps they may face as a parent. Some of the turbulence

parents may experience includes: children not listening, siblings fighting,

arguing and back talk, lack of cooperation and outbursts. With the turbulence

on an airplane, there is little you can do about it, except avoid flying. As a

parent, there is something you can do.

There is a highly effective technique called the Nurtured Heart Approach

that positively shifts parents' and teachers' perspectives while smoothing out

the turbulent experience of an intense child. Instead of struggling with the

intense child, parents and teachers can transform the behaviors of the

difficult child into powerful patterns of success in a short amount of time.

Children have the equivalent of a built-in energy detector. They quickly

notice when they receive more reaction, animation, energy and emotion from

parents and teachers. It can be easy for a child who is more needy, sensitive

or

intense to reach a simple conclusion that life is more interesting when they

are doing things wrong. This perception can happen despite the parents' or

teachers' best intentions. When this pattern is repeated over and over, the

child can unconsciously become entrenched in negative behavior in order to get

attention.

Even though the child can be getting a tremendous amount of negative

attention throughout the day, they can be starving to be noticed. The child's

feelings of worth falter because the child’s self-esteem is tied to the

experiences

for which he is noticed most.

This negative attention gets encoded in the child's heart as failure.

With this habitual pattern of negativity, family life becomes chaotic. The

child receives poor reports from school. Parents reach the end of their ropes.

They don't know what to do. Often the parents are pressured to have their

child medicated. But there is another option.

The Nurtured Heart Approach is a holistic approach designed to create and

emphasize the success in the child's life, moment by moment, while building

lasting inner wealth, self-control and empowerment for a lifetime.

Through implementation of the Nurtured Heart Approach, the child is given

feedback that energizes positive choices and behaviors. Some of the feedback

includes:

* Noticing and describing in detail what the child is doing when

nothing is going wrong.

* Teaching the child important values like good manners, respect, and

good attitude by giving acknowledgement and appreciation specifically when

the child express nuances of that quality.

* Actively letting the child know when the rules are not being broken.

Enthusiastically articulating when the child is not hitting, not arguing,

not yelling or teasing. This is a compelling way to teach the rules when the

child is more open to listening.

* Clearly making requests to the child more specific and direct.

Creating successes by using the phrase " I need you to...please. " to obtain

their

cooperation for completion of a task.

Utilizing these techniques provides real and positive experiences for the

difficult child. This in turn reinforces the child to be drawn into patterns of

success. The techniques are used with consistent consequences to create

clarity and security for the child. They also serve as validation that is able

to

slide under the radar into the underachieving child’s heart. Through NHA,

the child begins to trust their decision-making and celebrate their intensity

as a gift.

In our culture, the focus tends to be on what is wrong and how quickly we

can fix it. A Nurtured Heart Approach practitioner teaches parents to look for

and focus on what is amazing, unique and special in the child and thus it

grows. The contribution of the Nurtured Heart Approach is that the true

essence of the child comes forth, in ways that are extraordinary and

astounding.

The Nurtured Heart Approach has been successfully used by thousands,

including families, schools, head start and juvenile programs for children from

the

age of 3-21 across the country.

To learn more about how to bring this powerful approach into a child's life,

contact _tami_

(http://www.tamigulland.com/tami (AT) tamigulland (DOT) com) , certified nurtured heart

practitioner, parent educator and family

coach.