Parenting Your Child’s Push-Pull Behavior Using Somatic Co-regulation Practices
Are you a parent or caregiver looking for a fresh, perhaps somatic therapeutic, approach to help support behavior concerns, oppositional patterns, or worrisome coping mechanisms?
Are you curious about what parent/child co-regulation really means?
M-Bodied Parenting focuses on womb-to-walking-and-beyond parenting stages. However, the challenging, oppositional patterns and worrisome coping mechanisms tend to cause most distress to parents, which also often benefits from therapeutic support and/or relational repair. M-Bodied Parenting offers experiential somatic practices that involve exploration of polyvagal theory, trauma response and attachment. We look at how the intersection of the three can shed light on common experiences and reactions of both caregivers and children. Using specific trauma-informed co-regulation practices that are relational and developmental, we explore how those oppositional response patterns can be better supported and embodied—versus pathologized—for both caregivers and children.
“Exploring and practicing early relational Chi for Two techniques in a trauma-informed way promotes healthy nervous system functioning, which provides a foundation for helping clients attune to their deep hungers. Through conscious movement and shapes based on developmental and relational patterns, M-Bodied teaches how to move, heal and deeply nourish from the inside-out. 🌀”
From a nervous system, trauma, and attachment lens, the push-and-pull of what can get diagnosed as “Borderline” or “oppositional” tendencies might be better framed as coping mechanisms. Because some of these tendencies start as early relational dances that are necessary for development, they can also reappear later as impulsive but unsustainable coping or behavioral cries for help. Some of these phases, behaviors or cries-for-connection might include:
Clingy, fussy baby or toddler
Attachment concerns
Sleep issues
Toddler or teen tantrums
Focus problems
Pandemic-related stress
Oppositional or defiant behavior
Disordered eating and self harm
Chronic family tension
Addiction or substance use
Parent depression, rage, anxiety
Moving Toward Curiosity & Celebration versus Shaming & Shutdown
What's often missing in the treatment world and our culture at large is a celebration and handling of the push-and-pull that helps us become our unique selves. Little by little over many generations, parents have lost the awareness of the value of these relational "dances." The nerve firing that would flex the muscles to move the bones to begin the relational "dance" has gone into what polyvagal theory identifies as dorsal vagal Shut-down.
The push-and-pull moves are important for expressing preferences. When those moves have gone into Shut-down, it becomes difficult to know ourselves. It becomes difficult because we cannot sense what we do not like, and therefore what we like. When moves go into Shut-down, any expression of the moves becomes laced with shame.
When parents and helpers know how to better handle what often feels like bursts of challenging opposition, children and clients can more easily embody. Children are able to express preference. Caregivers can better guide children to bite into productive channels of expression and energy expenditure. The better children know themselves and what satisfies them, the more they can authentically cooperate with others.
With the push-and-pull moves, infants and children experience self-discovery in various stages. These important movements become compromised when they do not receive relational support. M-Bodied Parenting offers psychoeducation and exploratory co-regulation exercises to show:
How infant developmental patterns serve as building blocks to one’s nervous system functioning
How parents/caregivers can make space for children to better move through developmental moves and expressions of preference and separation while the caregivers also embody and offer a responsive and attuned Circle of Support
How these patterns can be healthily integrated, digested and channeled instead of pathologized
Strengthening the Parental/Caregiving Relationship
In both M-Bodied Parenting somatic psychotherapy group as well as individual sessions, parents and caregivers learn how to use the parent/child relationship to support their children in retrieving and re-integrating what we call “Push” and “Reach/Grab/Pull,” to name a few. Push and Reach/Grab/Pull are Chi for Two® partner practices that help us embody polyvagal theory. The Chi for Two partner practices shift nervous system functioning from chronic trauma response to more supportive Social Engagement functioning (Porges, creator of Polyvagal Theory).
With strengthened Social Engagement system functioning, one has an increased ability to honor:
physiological rhythms (hunger, fullness, rest, work, play)
varied emotional states
relationship with self and others in a satisfying way
Interested in more?
Evolving trauma education and neuroscience research continues to shine light on the importance of healthy relationships for healing and well-being. With scientists' enthusiasm for supportive relational dances, we propose that parents/caregivers gain just as much from Somatic Movement Education and psychotherapy as much as their kids. Join the M-Bodied Parenting group on Tuesdays 12-1:15p in Kirkwood (Atlanta). Or schedule an M-Bodied Psychotherapy or Embodiment Coaching Session consultation call by clicking the Contact button below.