Hinda Sosover
Certified ICT Life Coach
"When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower."
About Chinuch with Connection
Have you ever wondered what your style of parenting is and where it comes from? There are many different ways to parent. There are many styles and approaches and a plethora of books on this topic to read. Most of us, however, parent the way that we were parented ourselves. We do so unconsciously. Unless we awaken and consciously decide to parent differently, we tend to follow the same patterns of our own upbringing.
Parents serve as role models for children. This is especially true when it comes to managing emotions and understanding feelings. But we can’t teach what we don’t know. That’s where Conscious Parenting - Chinuch With Connection might help.
Based on Conscious Discipline®, a social emotional learning program, I help support parents in first teaching ourselves about self-regulation, and then teaching the same to our children. It helps us see how we respond to upset, stress and overwhelm, and how to regulate ourselves when we are triggered. In short, we learn how to be conscious of what we are saying to children and what behaviors we are modeling.
What is really wonderful, is that as an adult begins to manage their own upset, sadness, happiness and anger, they in turn teach the same to their children by modeling healthy management of strong feelings. Then they too can manage their own upset when triggered and understand their own feelings.
When we’re triggered or angry, we are in our survival or emotional state. We may not even be fully conscious of it, but because of our brain state, we may yell aggressively or say something that we may later regret. As a result, we are modeling to children that these negative behaviors are the appropriate response.
Conscious Discipline empowers us to be conscious of brain-body states in ourselves and children. It provides us with the practical skills we need to manage our thoughts, feeling and actions. With this ability to self-regulate, we are then able to teach children to do the same. By doing this, we help children who are physically aggressive (survival state) or verbally aggressive (emotional state) become more integrated so they can learn and use problem- solving skills (executive state). When we understand the brain-body states, we can clearly see the importance of building our homes on the core principles of safety, connection and problem-solving.
Conscious Parenting- Chinuch with Connection is also based on Good Inside®. We are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in each moment. Even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside we all remain good inside. Kids do well if they can. Every parent and every child is always good on the inside. We need to learn to separate the G-d given gift, of our children, from the behaviors we are noticing. Kids who are challenging and create conflict, do not choose to exhibit challenging behavior. Challenging behavior occurs when the demands being placed upon the child outstrip the skills he has to respond adaptively to those demands. Challenging episodes reflect a delay or missing skills, such as frustration tolerance, flexibility, problem solving or understanding their overwhelming emotions. It could also be the need for connection, understanding or attention. Kids are not going to walk up to you and say, “I’m struggling with some tough emotions right now and I’m not sure how to cope.” They are going to act out and behave in challenging ways. It means the same thing. All behaviors are a form of communication. This approach addresses parenting through the prism of Torah and its values.
I work together with parents, to understand what lies beneath their child's behavior. Together we work on solutions to create the family you’ve always wanted. Let me help you navigate the fabulous and complex world of parenting.