Real Parenting Week 3: Ignoring & staying calm, and clear instructions
Week 3: Ignoring and staying calm, and clear instructions
In the first half of the course we focussed on relationship development with:
- one-to-one time;
- child-led play and conversation;
- emotional resilience;
- specific praise.
Now we are moving on to managing behaviour.
So this week we’ll be looking at how to give instructions in a way that is specific and clear to our child. First we’ll be looking at how to ignore some negative behaviours (and how to stay calm whilst doing so); so that we can focus on those behaviours which cannot be ignored and which must improve.
7:30 Welcome and agenda
7:40 Review
Remind the parents that the subjects we covered last week were
- emotions;
- specific praise.
Ask if anyone has any interesting results after last week that they would like to share, or any questions they would like to ask. Once any sharing has finished, hold up a copy of the One-to-one time diary which you handed out last week and ask how their One-to-one time assignments went. Ask:
- Did anyone have anything to share about the One-to-one time assignment? Any problems? Any questions?
7:50 Video:
Ignoring & staying calm
8:00 PowerPoint presentation
You now give a short presentation about ignoring and staying calm.
8:05 Exercise in pairs
With your assistant do a brief demonstration (based on the Santiago/Nicola “biscuit” scenario) of ignoring.
Assign the parents into pairs and ask them to turn to the Ignoring and staying calm exercise in their Parenting Workbooks.
Ask them in their pairs to spend a couple of minutes:
- listing any behaviours they can ignore in their home context;
- listing any behaviours they can not ignore in their home context.
8:15 Exercise: Part 2
In their pairs ask the parents to role-play ignoring and staying calm. Give them two minutes each to play the child and the parent.
8:20 Group discussion
Bring the pairs back into the group as a whole and ask them:
- What kind of behaviours did they decide they can ignore? Do they have any concerns about this?
- If the children choose to escalate their behaviour, what will they do?
- Do they have any way of helping themselves to keep calm while they are ignoring?
8:30 15 minute break
8:45 Videos
Clear instructions
8:55 PowerPoint presentation
You now give a short presentation about clear instructions.
Video:
Clear instructions; short video on how not to!
9:00 Exercise in pairs
Ask the parents to get into pairs again and turn to the Clear instructions exercise in their Parenting Workbook.
There are five examples of poor or unclear instructions; ask them to work in their pairs to turn each one into a clear instruction.
9:10 Group discussion
Come back together as a group and go through the five poor instructions; ask them to call out ideas of better ways of wording the instructions. Ask if they have any questions or examples of other instructions they would like to improve.
9:15 Home assignment and goodbye
Hand out copies of the One-to-one time diary. Explain how to use it and ask them to fill it in over the week for discussion next week.