**I'm going to go ahead and offer my disclaimer: I'm NOT Dr. Karyn Purvis, and what I'm going to share is what I got out of her session. They may not be verbatim quotations, or a full-account of everything she said. Merely, the following is a recounting from me through the chicken-scratch notes that I took during active listening and fervent writing.
All of this can be found in The Connected Child. You should read this book.
Hard Places -- this is a term that Dr. Karyn Purvis uses frequently. I may be incorrect in assuming she coined it. But she uses it to describe our children and defines it as: a difficult pregnancy or birth, a medical emergency after birth, abuse, neglect, or trauma to children during these early formative years.
She talked about how we begin by meeting the physical needs -- the way that Jesus raises a man's daughter from the Bible and immediately says that she needs to be given food. But we don't stop at just the physical. We have to be careful not to view a child as on a spiritual being, or an emotional being, or a physical being -- but view the WHOLE child, addressing all his/her needs.
There are 3 sets of principles that we need to focus on in order to help heal our children: Empowering, Connecting and Correcting.
1. Correcting -- should only be done about 10% of the time we have with our children. If correcting is the primary aspect of our relationship, then the relationship is unstable. If you do have to correct, talk SLOW. Our kids, when they feel shame, fear, frustration -- they can go into flight, fight or freeze mode. We need to talk slow and then encourage the kids to use words in order to give them voice, and help give them control and power.
2. Empowering -- meeting physical needs. This should be done 20% of the time.
67% of all your communication with any individual is tone of voice. You can change brain chemistry through: eye contact, smiling, tone of voice, touch.
Kids need water every two hours. Glutamate can get low in the body and cause aggression. Hydration is key.
Insulin receptive sensors can be damaged in the brain -- giving kids food every two hours helps regulate the body. Some physical activity should be done every two hours as well.
3. Connecting -- should be done 70% of the time. This is about their spirit, and their emotional connection to us.She showed clips from, A Sensory World, which is a DVD that TCU produced. I love all the things she does in the video to model connecting. She has the kids hold hands with her when they talk together. And she tells them to give her 'good eyes.' Our kids need help connecting, and helping to encourage good eye contact is one way to do that.
If you watch the video, you really see her in action using the connecting and empowering to help the kids work through so many significant issues. It's pretty remarkable.
I have more to post . . .
