You cannot regulate a child if you aren't regulated

Parenting kids not born to us is a nice spotlight to see how imperfect we are 😅 I mean, parenting in general highlights our impatience, selfishness, low tolerance, it reveals trauma that may have been buried for years.

When parenting children not born to us (IMO parenting any kid ever), understanding TBRI is crucial.

@child_tcu created the IDEAL response.

Many of us were raised with traditional parenting. Verbally-Shame based, lots of physical discipline, many parents lacked the ability to regulate themselves.

This style will not serve your foster & adoptive parenting. It will compound trauma, likely increase misbehavior, & leave you continually frustrated.

Breaking the generational cycle of traditional parenting practices is hard. But as I tell all the clients I work with: every time we make one decision to parent with TBRI strategies, thru connection, we are changing the cycles.

Children who MOST neeeed our love, need our connection, need us to remain regulated…are children who can be hardest, pushing for disconnect, and totally dysregulated.

In order to show up & parent children thru the lens of connection + work towards healing, we have to work thru our own shit. We just do. There’s no other option.

Swipe thru to learn or refresh on the IDEAL response to misbehavior.

Comment any examples you need some tips/suggestions.

I’m not by any means perfect at this. The goal is not perfection, but progress. I am consistently reminding myself of these strategies.

When I first began shifting the lens in which I viewed parenting styles, I noticed it was a huge release in pride/ego. We have to set that down in order to parent with connection.

Our goal as parents should be to connect with our kids, because this can heal the broken synapses in their brain AND it gives them the opportunity to form healthy attachments.

-Natalie Kristeen