I imagined when I became a therapist that I would learn from my clients.  I didn’t know that there would be clients who would come into my life that would turn it upside down.

When I was an intern over ten years ago I was working for a state run agency that served clients living below the poverty line.  We provided in-home counseling services.  There was one family that I worked with that consisted of a mom and a dad and five children.  Three were biological children of the couple and two were foster children.  The foster children were cousins of the family.  They came to live with the family after suffering physical and emotional abuse. As would be expected the boys began to act out at home.  

One day I came for my visit and the mother informed me that one of the boys was very angry last night and went into the kitchen and threw a plant on the floor breaking the pot and getting dirt everywhere.  I asked her what she had done.  She explained that he ran out of the house into the yard and sat down in the grass and began sobbing.  She said she followed him and got down beside him and put one hand on his back.  She said he began to cry harder and harder and rock back and forth so she just rocked with him, hand on his back, saying nothing until he was done crying.  Then they quietly came back in the house and together picked up the plant and cleaned the floor.  She was innately aware that the stress and trauma this child had suffered was causing emotional and behavioral issues that sending him to his room would not heal.

As she told this story I silently began to crumple up the child behavioral worksheets I had in my hand prepared to give her.  All the behavior charts, gold starts, information on time-outs and consequences seemed so inconsequential to me now in the presence of this woman who was on to something so much greater as a way to reach this boy in pain.  She was not concerned about the fate of miniature bonsai trees on widow sills across Los Angeles. She was concerned about all the pain this child was carrying inside.  And she got that he was unable to process it on his own.  She got that someone needed to sit with him in it and just be with him.  Not to comfort him and take it away, not to discuss the fallen plant and how unacceptable that was to do.  That was not the moment she first seized.  

I knew in that moment that I was standing in the presence of greatness.  This was a mother full of compassion and the ability to reflect feelings back to her child while creating a safe container for them.  I don’t know where she got this ability or insight because she certainly never received any of it as a child.  

I knew in that moment sitting in her kitchen that what had previously felt odd to me about the vast piles of behavior graphs and chore charts and gold stars and constantly measuring a child by their ability to follow direction and act according to reward felt inauthentic to me because it wasn’t my cup of tea.  Meeting this 28-year-old woman raising five children with limited resources and the ability to look at the heart and at the need behind the behavior sent me on a quest to find similar ways to work with children that didn’t put the cart before the horse.  I didn’t want to “train” them or focus on behavior first.  I wanted to be like this young mother who knew that there was an underlying reason for the child’s behavior that needed to be addressed first.  She knew that if he was this upset some need was not being met, some connection was not being made and the only way to that need was through this veil of pain, not a gold star each time a plant survived another day.

A year of watching her hold the space for these children while they cried, never minimizing or distracting them from their feelings, and reflecting love and acceptance back at them while holding firm limits produced the wonderful young men I saw them become and helped inform me as a clinician. 

 Twelve years later and much to the joy of my own children who also benefited from not being abandoned when they had strong feelings and needed me most (I never uncrumpled those tattered papers on time-outs) I continue on my journey in attachment parenting.  

My husband and I knew when we had our children that we didn’t want to control our children with reward or punishment. We knew we didn’t want to be authoritarian nor did we want to be permissive.  Our goal is to raise them with integrity and an internal compass not the ability to follow orders or constantly seek validation outside themselves.  It’s much like the work we do as therapists.  We knew we wanted to raise them using what we could of Attachment Parenting with an emphasis on empathic listening, sensitive attunement to and respect for their feelings, and peaceful conflict resolution.  It’s a lot like what we do as therapists.  I knew that if a client of mine was having strong feelings and crying or experiencing anger I would never suggest a time out until they can collect themselves and use their adult voice with me, so I never wanted to do that to my children.

Dr. Aletha Solter, who is a mentor and coach of mine, at The Aware Parenting Institute www.awareparenting.com assists me on this path to parent by connection.  And I continue to be influenced by the work of Alfie Kohn, Daniel J. Siegel and Lawrence J. Cohen among many others.

But no one touched my heart quite like this quiet gentle woman rocking back and forth slowly with a crying little boy in a yard in East LA with no clinical background and not a parenting book in sight but with the compassion and insight of a Buddha.