Kate Orson

What To Do When Your Child Just Wants To Watch TV

Posted on November 1, 2016June 5, 2017 by Kate Orson

Your child is asking to watch TV, over and over again. It seems like the only thing on his mind. What do you do? If you say yes, he’ll want to watch for hours. If you say no, he’ll collapse into a storming tantrum.

If your child seems on the verge of tears every time you set a limit on TV then it’s probably actually a good time to say no.

When children feel good they can think flexibly, they can accept your ‘no’s and go off and find something else to do. If their desire to watch TV is accompanied by desperation then it’s probably a sign that there’s something they need much for than TV and that’s connection with you.

When we humans get upset, we sometimes express our feelings freely. We have a good laugh, or a good cry, in the presence of someone who loves us, and this healthy, natural, physiological response results in us feeling better.

At other times our feelings get a bit clogged up and buried. And then we tend to gravitate towards things that will help us feel numb; TV, ice cream or a cup of coffee.

So, if your child is asking for TV, with an edgy, neediness, you can intuit that they are on the brink of a tantrum, and actually that saying no is a gift that will help them feel (and behave!) better. As they cry, stay close and over hugs when needed. This allows your childr to soak up your love and connection, so they can restore their natural well-being.

But what if your child seems relaxed and in a good mood when they ask for TV? How do you decide when to say yes and when to say no? This is a very personal and individual judgement for each family to make. And although I have some advice I don’t have any definitive answers.

Here’s something I’ve been trying recently when my daughter’s watching TV, and that’s to snuggle down with her for 10-15 minutes and call it our TV Special Time. What I’ve noticed is that often she tends to voluntarily stop watching TV sometime after our special time has finished. It’s like me watching with her gives her the message that I’m available and present. That I’m not disconnected and on my own screen, but close and connected.

If you regularly give special time in your house, and your child is always asking for TV you might want to say yes for the first 8 times. This lets your child know that you respect their interests, that you are a willing to take a journey with them into their world. And that added connection you give them might just help them regulate their own screentime.

For more information about the Hand in Hand Parenting approach to setting limits sing up to follow my blog in the top right hand corner of this page, or check out my book Tears Heal: How to listen to our children

Could Being Listened To Improve Your Health?

Posted on October 29, 2016October 29, 2016 by Kate Orson

My grandmother lived till she was 93. This was kind of surprising considering she smoked almost her entire life. Her diet was reasonably healthy, but she never denied herself treats, or nightcaps to help her sleep. She didn’t ingest green smoothies, or superfoods on a daily basis. So what was it that was keeping her alive?

As I grew older I began to realise; it was her positive attitude and love of live. She was always happy and full of joy. She lost her beloved husband in her early fifties, but she didn’t collapse into grief and negativity. She got drunk and stayed up till 2am with a fellow teacher from the school she worked at. Then she learnt to drive to give herself more freedom. She retired and travelled, exploring art and culture in Europe. She was passionate about politics and making the world a better place. She continued her education by taking courses in Psychology and literature. She embraced life, even as she got older and her physical world was smaller, her mind was very much alive.

Research links our negative thoughts and feelings to poor health. In fact stress is the cause of over 60% of illnesses. It’s possible that happiness could even add ten years to your life.

It can seem as if some people are born happy, and breeze through life’s twists and turns with a positive attitude. While others suffer from low mood and negative thought even when their life is relatively smooth. Genes do play a part when it comes to happiness, as do childhood experiences. It’s been found that children who experience ‘adverse childhood experiences’ are more likely to have health problems when they are older. (see research here.)

However we don’t have to be at the mercy of our genes, or our childhood experiences. There’s still a lot we can do to reduce stress levels, improve our happiness and our health.

Listening time is a powerful tool to help us to do so. If you read my blog regularly you’ll know all about this life-changing tool. If not, here’s a brief summary of how it works. Two people come together to talk and listen about how their lives are going. As each person talks, they may naturally be led to laugh, and cry as they release stress and tension. As I’ve written about in my book Tears Heal crying is a healing process, and there are stress hormones contained in tears. When we cry we are literally releasing stress from our bodies. Laughter too has health benefits including boosting our immune system and releasing feel-good endorphins.

So could being listened to improve our health? Research show that having a healthy social life benefits our health, and that social isolation can cause premature death. (see links here). The research suggests that it’s really the quality of the relationship that leads to the benefits. When we share listening time we are really experiencing a high quality of relationship with each other. We share our greatest joys and deepest sorrows with someone who is fully focused on listening to us. Listening time is designed to help us release our feelings so the giggle and tear factor is a lot higher than your average, everyday conversation.

I remember going to a parenting retreat with a cold that I just couldn’t seem to shift. After 2 days of being listened to my symptoms had completely disappeared. I’ve also noticed that when my daughter’s feeling well, getting the giggles flowing, or listening to her upsets really improves her physical state. Whenever I’m feeling unwell, I always make sure to message my listening partner and set up some listening time. It always helps me feel better both emotionally and physically.

To find out more about listening time check out my book Tears Heal.

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The Art Of Listening, Tip 3: How To Get Where You Want To Go

Posted on October 28, 2016October 28, 2016 by Kate Orson

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This is a post about the Hand in Hand Parenting tool of listening time. If you’re new to the concept check out my introductory post here.

Something very common I’ve used in my listening time is to voice my lack of enthusiasm for playing with my daughter. Often, all those grown-up responsibilities can make me feel the complete opposite of playful and carefree. One time my listening partner gave me the direction to say in a very excited, enthusiastic voice, ”Come on R, lets play!”

Just the thought of saying these words led to all sorts of feelings coming up, and lots of uncomfortable laughter. As I kept complaining and moaning to her about making me say those words I released lots of emotion. Immediately after the listening time, I went to play with my daughter, and as if by magic, I was that playful, joyful parent!

This is what I call the ‘get where you’re going’ direction. Perhaps you want to be full of joy as you play Lego , or you want to be calm while your kids make a mess while baking. Often just saying the words as if you really were that calm, relaxed parent in a happy, light voice, can bring up any feelings to the contrary.

It’s like when we pretend we are where we want to be in the present moment our mind quickly dredges up all the feelings that don’t correspond to our imagine state. Cue a super fast away to clear up our minds of the old feelings that stand in our way.

I have also had great success using this direction with fatigue. I’ve become aware that as well as the general parental exhaustion that is so common I also use tiredness as a coping mechanism. So if I simply state where I want to go, ”I’m so full of energy!” standing up with my arms wide, and in a loud confident voice, I get a lot of feelings about wanting to curl up and hide away.

We may have patterns of being that relate to our own childhood. Ways in which we coped with the feelings we carried when we did not have a listener. Now we are adults we don’t need those old coping mechanisms anymore. We can use listening time to shed those feelings and become the very best version of ourselves.

This direction won’t just help you in your parenting. It can also help you transform your life. Do you want to go to a party, talk to everyone, and be full of confidence? Do you want to launch your own business, or give a successful job interview? Simple stating your goal as if you’ve already arrived can help you get there.

So where do you want to go in your parenting or your life? Just imagine being there in your listening time and you will discover the feelings that stand in your way. Share this post with your listening partner, and you can help each other on your journey.

Would you like regular tips to help you develop your listening skills? Sign up to follow my blog at the top right hand corner of this page. And if you missed them here’s Tip 1 and Tip 2.

The Art Of Listening Tip 2: Don’t Fix

Posted on October 27, 2016October 27, 2016 by Kate Orson

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Imagine you are in conversation with a friend. She’s been telling you about how she’s had cold symptoms for a month, and can’t seem to shift them. Perhaps you tell her she should go to the doctor, and get some antibiotics. Or you mention a really amazing natural remedy of fresh ginger, turmeric and black pepper that will shift it within hours (I have tried it and it’s pretty good ;).

That is fixing. And we all do it. We want to help our friends and share what’s worked for us. And that’s fine. There’s a time and a place for sharing advice and good information in our regular everyday conversations.

But when we do listening time as part of our Hand in Hand Parenting practise, we refrain from trying to fix our partner’s situation. We keep our good advice to ourselves.

Here’s why. We don’t just try to fix because of good intentions. We also try to fix because of our unconscious urge to try and stop people from expressing emotions. We’ve all grown up in a culture where expression of emotion is not completely acceptable. When we were children our parents often tried to stop our tears by ‘fixing’ our problems, not understanding that listening to our tears was often part of the solution.

When we leap in with a solution to somebody’s problems it’s often because we are unconsciously repeating the way we were treated in our childhood. We want to stop the expression of feeling by offering our solutions, because we are uncomfortable with their emotions.

The trouble with fixing, is that often what makes a problem hard is a person’s emotional reaction to it. Say a parent can’t figure out how to get their son to sleep at night. It’s not just a matter of telling that parent what kind of routine worked for you. There may be deep-seated reasons why this particular parent is struggling with bedtime. Perhaps they were left frequently left alone to cry it out as a baby or toddler, and this emotional hurt is clouding their vision when it comes to helping their own child.

That parent needs much more than a practical solution. They need someone to listen to help them heal the hurt that is clouding their thinking . The science behind it is that when our own childhood feelings get triggered our limbic system gets flooded and we experience an ’emotional emergency.’ When this happens our pre-frontal cortex can’t function well which makes logical thought, and decision making hard. If someone steps in and offers advice it can be hard to take it when we can’t think straight. And since everyone’s life is different. What works for one person may not work for another.

A far more effective approach is to simply listen to that person. To allow them to follow the natural flow of their own words and feelings, so that they can release their upset, and think clearly again. After that they’ll often be able to figure out what to do and fix the situation themselves. Or they’ll go searching for some useful information that might help. We are the best experts on our own lives.

So that’s why we don’t fix in listening time. We can also employ the technique of simply listening in conversations too. Next time someone is chatting to you and mentions a problem, notice how quickly possible solutions jump into your head. How easy is it refrain from saying them? Like everyone else I do find myself with the strong urge to ‘fix’ my friend’s problems, but I also try to listen too. I had the idea the other day that it might be good to employ a 80/20 principle to our everyday conversations, listening for 80% of the time, and sharing good information 20% of the time. It’s not easy, but it has many benefits. Our friendships will deepen when we can stay present to people’s emotions.

Discover more about the art of listening in Hand in Hand parenting’s Building A Listening Partnership course.

The Art Of Listening : Tip 1 – ‘oops!’

Posted on October 21, 2016October 21, 2016 by Kate Orson

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This is the first of a new series of posts I’ll be sharing of tips on the art of listening. And this time it’s not about listening to our children, but listening to each other.

There’s one thing that makes Hand in Hand Parenting different to almost every other parenting approach out there, and it’s that we have a tool that is specifically designed to support parents, and it’s called listening time.

We use listening time because one of the reasons parenting is so hard is because of our own emotions. Listening time offers us a safe space to release our emotions so they don’t get in the way of us being the parent we want to be.

Before utilising these tips you’ll need to learn the basics of how listening time works, if you don’t know already. You can read my intro here, and if the idea appeals to you can learn more by reading Listen: By Patty Wipfler and Tosha Schore, or my book Tears Heal. Hand in Hand Parenting also has a online self study course Building A Listening Partnership so you can really dive deep into all the skills you need to listen. You can also join the Hand in Hand Parent support group on facebook to find a listening partner.

Once you’ve got a regular listening partnership going you’ll be ready for some tips to hone your skills.

Here’s my first tip. I call it ‘oops!’

Say your partner is talking about something they feel embarrassed or ashamed about. Perhaps they shouted at their child, or said something to a friend that was misconstrued as being rude or insensitive. You’ll notice as they talk that they feel stuck in those uncomfortable feelings, and as the listener you can shine a light on their inner goodness and offer them a way out. You know that they are doing their best as a friend/parent, and that they didn’t mean to hurt or offend anyone.

One way to do this, is to give them the direction to make light of their mistake. You can model for them a light, playful tone as you say ”oops! I just shouted at my child again,” and encourage them to repeat the sentence. Often even just the thought of saying those words may have them laughing away their shame and embarrassment.

Often that sense of shame and guilt that they have done something wrong comes from early childhood experiences. When we made mistakes as children parents would often punish us, and lecture us, and make us feel ashamed or guilty. There was little understanding that we made mistakes, when we were disconnected or were experiencing upset feelings. We carry this parental voice inside our minds so when we make mistakes as adults we end up beating ourselves up about them, instead of compassionately forgiving ourselves.

As a listener you can offer the compassion your partner needs to remember that they are good and release any feelings they have to the contrary. You can use the ‘oops’ direction as long as the laughter flows. You might also want to ask your partner if they’d like to talk about earlier experiences when they felt a similar kind of shame or embarrassment.

As you try out this direction, and the others I’ll be sharing in future posts, it’s important to remember not to use them automatically like a reflex, but to try to use your intuition, about what works and doesn’t work for your listening partner. You might find that for one person saying ‘oops’ will help them laugh away their troubles in fits of hysterics, but another person may be more on the edge of tears and not in the mood for laughter. Try it and if it doesn’t help your partner release their feelings, just keep listening, and allowing them to let their own natural healing process unfold.

I hope this post helps you develop your listening skills. And if you’d like to read more in this series just sign up to follow my blog at the top right hand corner of my blog. You might also like to check out my article, 10 Tips For Being A Good Listener. And if you’ve got any questions or comments about listening feel free to leave them below!

Bedtime Special Time

Posted on October 20, 2016October 20, 2016 by Kate Orson

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Have you had a hard day? Maybe you didn’t get the chance to connect with your kids as much as you’d like to. Perhaps you were busy with the school run, or work, and somehow connection took a back seat. I was having one of those days yesterday, and then I reminded myself that it’s never too late in the day to reconnect!

I set the timer for 10 minutes, and my daughter and I ended up surfing on pillows and imagining that the duvet was a house boat we were sailing on. That last minute dose of connection helped me to feel better about the way our day had gone, and more optimistic about the next day.

Our days aren’t always filled with connection, so if you’ve had one of those days try some special time at the end of it. Set a timer for 10-15 minutes and let your child decide what they want to do. Special time at the end of the day often has a different feel to doing it at other times, and it’s always nice to shake up the routine a bit and do things differently.

Children experience letting go into sleep as a separation, even if they are snuggled right beside us, so special time at the end of the day can be a wonderful way to increase our child’s sense of connection to help them sleep well.

A New Direction For My Blog

Posted on October 19, 2016October 19, 2016 by Kate Orson

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Dear Blog Readers,

Now my book Tears Heal is out in the world, I’m thinking about my next projects. My mission is to share the knowledge about the healing power of tears with as many parents as I possibly can. Every day I see parents struggling with their parenting because they lack information about this simple, life-changing fact. And it seems that the world would be a much more peaceful place if children are raised compassionately without rewards, consequences and punishment.

The message is getting out there, and now there are a few other messages I’d like to share.

One of the other projects I have in mind is to share the knowledge about the healing power of tears with adults, not just parents, so they have tools to heal and recover from their childhood. The tool of listening partnerships is powerful and I hope one day it will be available for everyone, and intertwined in our lives. So many adults are struggling because they aren’t sure what to do with their feelings. Perhaps they don’t feel ‘broken’ enough for therapy, but they are still dealing with difficulties and insecurities relating to childhood experiences.

These past few weeks I’ve been travelling in the UK. When we set off on our journey my daughter picked up a stencil for drawing letters. I’d seen it in a charity shop a few years back, and I’d bought it after becoming interested in unschooling and homeschooling. Now she’s five she’s started writing shopping lists with her dad, and drawing the letters that she can do, and then, stencilling the ones she can’t. I just had a big lunch with extended family to celebrate my book coming out and my daughter wrote out all the place cards herself. It has been a real joy to watch her try to figure out reading and writing for herself, and watching her self-motivation has reaffirmed to me just how broken our school system is.

A few years back I read a book called Learning All The Time by John Holt in which he explains how children naturally learn to read much more quickly when they teach themselves rather than be taught by teachers. His observations really shocked me, but they make sense when we look at the history of schooling. Part of the aim of schools were actually to ‘dumb people down’ so they would be compliant workers for factories. They were not designed with the intention of nurturing children’s innate intelligence and creativity.

The people involved in the education system are working so hard and are so passionate. I know many wonderful and caring teachers (in fact I’m married to one 😉 !) but the system itself is broken.

I’ve begun interviewing parents of adult ‘unschoolers’ and watching my daughter development, and it’s really clear to me now, that school is completely unnecessary for children’s education, even if it does provide parents with free childcare, and a much-needed break!

And yet another passion of mine, is something I’m just learning about; natural health. After watching the documentary The Truth About Cancer, I’m really questioning everything I thought I knew about the healthcare system.

Everything I write seems to come from the same place. A passion for spreading knowledge that is somehow hidden in society. So now I’ve shared ‘Parenting’s Best Kept Secret’ I hope as time goes on I’ll share a few more secrets with you too.

I feel like I’ve written a lot about Hand in Hand Parenting, and I will probably continue to write more. But lets face it, there’s only so many posts about crying and giggles I can share with you all! And I never quite know which blog post will pop into my mind wanting to be written. I can feel my horizons expanding and this blog may evolve to include posts about my next writing projects.

If you’ve enjoyed reading my blog, and have any thoughts, I’d love to read your comments! And I hope you’ll continue on the journey with me, and enjoy my new posts.

Permission To Be An Imperfect Parent

Posted on October 19, 2016October 25, 2016 by Kate Orson

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I was beating myself up about my parenting. My daughter and I weren’t laughing anymore. We weren’t doing special time. I was feeling terrible about myself and how much I was ‘failing.’

Then I stopped myself. Hold it I thought. Okay, I did learn some really good parenting tools from Hand in Hand Parenting. But was there a rule somewhere that said I had to use them every day, all the time? And if I literally couldn’t use them was it a failing in myself?

Of course not. I know the brain science behind our parenting, that we can be the parents we want to be, only when our own childhood story isn’t getting in the way. and when we are feeling calm and stress-free.

My sister got diagnosed with Leukemia last month. Since then each day my mind is dealing with overwhelming grief, confusion, and fear, on top of all the everyday parenting stuff. The moment I stopped laughing with my daughter was the moment I found out about my sister. It had nothing to do with me being an inadequate parent, but to do with what I was going through.

I’ve written before about how life crises can get in the way of our parenting, and how we can go about mending those broken connections, and it’s time to take my own advice.

You might not be on the brink of divorce or with a close family member seriously ill, but the past can often effect us just as intensely as the present.

It starts with a little self-compassion. Whether the broken connection with your child occurred because of something happening in the present, or because you are dealing with hurt feelings from your own past, it’s not your fault.

You might already know that consciously, as I did, but sometimes it’s a good idea to check what those whispering voices in your head are telling you. Because as Peggy O’Mara says, ”the way we talk to children, becomes their inner voice.” Because we were punished and shamed as children we tend to punish and shame ourselves when we are not parenting the way we want to be.

Give yourself permission to be an imperfect parent for a while. And forgive yourself for all those times that you made mistakes. Take the focus away from how you are parenting, and put it completely on yourself. Give yourself permission to let the kids eat ice cream for dinner or watch TV. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Tell those voices in your head, that you are taking some time for yourself because it will be for everyone’s benefit in the long run. Then get some listening time. (for more info about listening time check out my article here) And each time you feel bad, inadequate, or like you’ve failed, make sure you schedule more listening time until you recover the energy you need to be the parent you want to be.

It takes time. In the meantime congratulate yourself on your small achievements. So you might not spend an hour doing special time with your child, but how about 5 minutes? And you might not giggle and play all day, but maybe you get through a day without shouting. As your energy and attention span return you can then start focusing on connecting with your children again, and you’ll find some tips for this in the links below.

We shouldn’t need to have permission to be an imperfect parent, but if you feel like you need it, take this blog post as your permission slip, for whatever reason you find it hard, whether it’s a current life crisis, or childhood hurts that are still healing. You have permission to be beautifully imperfect, you are doing your best.

Further Reading

Healing Broken Connections Blog Post

Special Time When Your Heart Is Breaking From Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor Roma Norriss.

The Healing Broken Connections chapter of my book,Tears Heal

How The Way You Parent Can Change The World

Posted on October 18, 2016October 18, 2016 by Kate Orson

Parents! The future of humanity is in your hands. No pressure though!

When we look around us at the state of the world it can seem pretty depressing. The endless stream of negative news can make us give up hope on the future.

Much of what is wrong with the state of the world comes from negative emotions. Fear, hate, and greed, have created a world where the resources of the many are sucked dry to benefit the few. If you examine the emotional lives of the people in power it isn’t hard to see that a lot of them aren’t leading from a place of deep compassion for their fellow human beings. The big changes that are needed to create a more peaceful world just aren’t happening.

But perhaps one day they will. It was reading this blog post by Wendy Andrews that reminded me that the single post important step to creating a more peaceful world is to parent with love and compassion.

With Hand in Hand Parenting I learnt that children are naturally good, loving and co-operative and when their behaviour gets challenging, it’s because they are experiencing challenging emotions. So when we look at politicians whose behaviour is questionable, (mentioning no names!!) it’s highly likely that they are acting out hurt feelings from their childhood. This is not to make excuses for the behaviour of certain leaders, but to simply show that if we want to change the world we have to radically change the way we parent. Simply repeating the way the previous generation parented won’t work. In the UK 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem each year. That’s a lot of hurt people who aren’t able to live their lives to the full.

I believe that the single most powerful thing we can do to heal the next generation is to listen to tears. This is the one thing glaringly missing from most of our childhoods. That our parents ignored, or avoided, distracted, or shamed or punished us, from crying. That we have done the same many times, because it seems like an instinct to repeat the parenting we experienced.

We need to listen to our children’s tears, and their laughter too! We need to undo our cultural conditioning to stop or avoid these tears. We also need to be honest with ourselves about our own feelings, and how they interfere with us being the parents we want to be. When we do this we can build a stronger, more compassionate generation, who aren’t weighed down with emotional baggage.

And as I was out walking I remembered the Native American story of the Rainbow Warriors that says that “when the earth is ravaged and the animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colors, classes, creeds and who by their actions and deeds shall make the earth green again. They will be known as the Warriors of the Rainbow.”

I like to think that when we parent peacefully we are building this tribe of warriors who see beyond colour and class, and join together.

As Mother Teresa said, ”What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” And remember when you do so to listen to tears.

For more information read my blog post, The Healing Power Of Tears, and Patty Wipfler’s article, Inoculating your Child Against Racism. You can learn more about listening to tears in my book Tears Heal: How to listen to our children

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