Hello and welcome to the Kappa Podcast.
My name is Matt. I'm the Senior Practitioner for
Kappa First Response and I'm joined today as ever by our
Founder and CEO, Jane Griffiths. Hi, Jane.
Hey Matt, how you doing? So lovely to be here with.
You with me face to face. I know in your lovely flat
sunny. It's a rare treat, isn't it?
Fantastic. It you know what, It is a rare
treat. Yeah, I think it.
It's so lovely to be together to record this.
Yeah, I agree. I agree, it already feels a lot
more real. Yeah, yeah.
So this series is going to be slightly different to what we've
done previously, isn't it? Do you want to say a little bit
about about why we're doing this series to begin with?
Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess our
previous series that we we've thought about, we've sort of
been in conversation with or we've been zooming and and
speaking to particular people about particular issues.
This one is really designed for families who feel a bit more
isolated, whether that be via location or through
circumstances and their experience, feel like they're
unable to talk to people. And we wanted to provide
something that families could access 24/7 regardless of their
locations. I also think it's really
important to say that East Sussex local authority sort of
really commissioned us to do this because they really wanted
to support families living in those rural outlying areas who
found it really, really difficult to get support.
And we'll be offering, well, I guess if we were to sit, Matt,
and think about what would be our top five or six strategies,
we're sort of aiming to to sort of think about those strategies
for families, aren't we? That's what the series is going
to be about. Yeah.
So it's, it's a little bit more, it's going to be a little bit, I
mean, I think hopefully all, all of our podcasts have been
useful, but this is a bit more, something a bit more tangible, a
bit more solid that people can use and put into practise.
Yeah. We're not thinking about, you
know, this, these episodes aren't for about us
understanding what this issue is.
This is really let's go, what's the support that we offer to
families and let's share that, Yeah.
I think you said a minute ago that these are like probably 5
or six of our top strategies that we, we know are useful to
quite a few different families that we work with.
But it's always really important to say that nothing works all of
the time. And there isn't one thing that
is going to work for every single family.
And if even if it works for that family, it doesn't mean that
it's going to work 100% of the time.
So it's just important that we say that at the at the top, I
think to say these are all ideas that, you know, have a listen,
keep it in mind. Hopefully you think I'm going to
give that a try. But even if you think it's not
going to work for me, it doesn't feel quite right.
Hopefully you'll still think about the idea behind it.
And even if you don't action anything from it, you can think
about why, why it might be useful and why it might be
important. And hopefully there's some use
in that as well. Yeah.
And and I think, you know, a reminder that all of our work
and all of our support to families is tailored and
bespoke. You know, we speak to families
and think what's happening for them in their home and we can,
you know, it could be that we don't talk about any of these
strategies, but generally what we've found out is these
strategies come into our support at some point for families.
And there will be somebody out there listening to this and
maybe think I can't, I can't get on board with what Matt, I can't
get on board with what that that strategy that you've spoken
about. But I can really get on board
with this other strategy. And we we anticipate that and
expect that. I think what's important as well
is that, you know, everything and all everything we're going
to be sharing on the in this series, it's not necessary.
It's not going to do any harm. It's all about it's all
relationship building. And that's only a positive
thing. You may see things and we'll
talk about that and what in one of the episodes that we're going
to be presenting about, you know, what can happen if
actually things do feel different.
My child has noticed something different.
What do I do then? So, and we will we'll sort of
address that weren't we want to I think it's Episode 2 when
we're thinking about our safety Lanning.
OK, so, so that's a little bit about why we're doing it and you
know, some of the things we're going to be covering, but it's
going to it's going to look a little bit different from our
other podcasts, right? Yep, Yeah.
So, you know, up until now it's been us chatting, hasn't it, And
having conversations. Yeah.
What we've decided to do with this, which will look a little
bit different, is the beginning of every episode.
We'll have a little explanation around what we're doing.
You know, this isn't about explaining why this happens,
because we've done that. This is about sharing those
strategies, how we would share them with a family.
So we're doing it separately. So I'm going to be presenting
three of them and thinking about 3 strategies and you're going to
be presenting three of them and support 3 strategies.
But we're doing them solo. So they won't have that
opportunity of a back and forth. And I think that that's going to
be the main difference that people will see.
Yeah, and I think that's hopefully will make it a little
bit more useful because you can follow along.
It's not you're not listening to a conversation like you're
saying of us back and forth. You're listening to us giving
you a strategy as we would, you know, in a session if, you know,
as we were explaining it to you and and kind of telling you why
we're suggesting you do this, what what the background is to
it. Is there anything else we've
missed, Jane? I think we everything we have,
hopefully we can just let's do it, let's go, alright?
Let's get into it. So in today's episode we're
going to be looking at the parent child game.
Yes. Do you want to tell us a little
bit more about what what that is?
Yep. So episode 5.
How did that happen? My goodness.
So parent child game. So the next two episodes, Matt,
are going to be sort of primary age group and secondary age
group. That doesn't mean that you can't
do the parent child gown with secondary age child, but it's
more focused for a primary age child.
It was popularised in England by Sue Jenna at the Maudesley and
it's a really lovely piece of work.
We know that for children who use aggression or harmful and
harmful behaviours in the home, it's more it can be about
control and that's a bit of an unhealthy control.
And what we're trying to do is give a child the idea of healthy
control and the Parent Child Game is about that.
It's about how can we hand over healthy control to our child so
they can experience that and they feel they no longer have to
get your attention in an unhealthy way.
And so that the parent child game is going to talk a little
bit about that. And there's lots of different
ways that we're going to be able to do it.
You know, we're going to explore if your child is 4 and explore
if your child is 14. But just kind of emphasising,
again, it's a nice one to do with primary age children, but
we will explore all the ages. Brilliant.
Sounds good. Should we do it?
Let's go, let's do it. Parent child game.
I'm going to talk to us and introduce the parent child game
to us today. This is really such a lovely
thing to do with your child and we're going to talk today about
different ways that we can do it and how we can introduce it.
But when your child is using aggression in the home towards
you or harmful behaviours, it's often about control.
And there's often it's an unhealthy control.
And what we're looking to do and what the Parent Child Game does
is gives your child that control, but in a healthy way.
And that's what we're trying to encourage.
That's what we want. And we want your child to seek
that out rather than unhealthy control.
And the Parent Child Game does this lovely.
And we're going to talk a little bit.
I'm going to set up a couple of little ways that we can do this
with you. So there's various things that
you can do. So I'm going to try and give you
quite a few options and you can think about how you can adapt it
to your own situation. And I'm going to share an
anecdote from a parent of where we use this because I think it
can be helpful to hear sometimes the reality of putting that into
place and what can happen. So parent child game, Listen,
this was popularised in the UK by Sue Jenner.
So those of you that want to go and find out more about how this
works, you can simply look up the parent child Game by Sue
Jenner and you'll get lots more information around this.
But in the most basic instance, what we're going to do is
setting up a bound read 10 or 15 minute play.
Now, as parents, what we often do and, and it's just part of
being a parent is we often give, we teach, we give commands to
our children. We say no to our children and we
ask them lots of questions. Now, if you were to, you know,
be observed, for example, for 10 minutes with your child, there
can often be 50 to 60 of these things with your child.
And the parent child game is taking all that away.
So the parent child game is not about asking questions.
And that can be really difficult when you're with your child.
I'm not going to ask them any questions, no questions, not
saying no to your child. Again, that can be really
difficult. There is a caveat to that.
You know, if something really dangerous is about to happen or
somebody becomes really unsafe, then obviously you need to say
no. But generally, if your child
wants to put a sticker on your nose or get a felt tip pen and
draw a :) on your face, it's not about saying no.
And sometimes that can happen because your child does want to
test. Are you really going to let me
do this? Are you really going to let me
put stickers on your face? I had one parent who said to me
recently, Jane, I'm sick to death of being a donkey.
I don't want to be a donkey anymore.
My knees are killing me. Sometimes it's just about going
with it. And that's why we have it as a
boundary to play for a period of time, so you're not a donkey for
hours on end, which can be really difficult.
Commands. We often, you know, we command
our children to do things. We don't really think about it.
Command and direction. It's time, it's time.
You've got to, you've got to put your pyjamas on.
You've got to put your computer where you've got to come off the
computer. You've got to go and clean your
teeth. You've got to go to bed, you've
got to tidy your bed. You've got to come for dinner.
It's all those commands. We're not going to do that.
Come away from that. And teaching.
Teaching is something that's inherent part of parenting.
Blue pen. If your child turns around
saying, look, ma, this is a pink hair brush.
It's not about you saying, well, that's not really a pink hair
brush, is it? That's a blue pen.
If, if your child wants that to be a pink hair brush, it's a
pink hair brush. So it's, it's not falling into
those teachers. So no questions, no demands or
commands, no nose unless something's really, really
unsafe, and no teaching. So those are the four things
we're going to, we're going to steer clear of during this play.
And I want you to set up in a very overt way.
Now, if you've got a primary age child, setting it up in a really
overt way is really helpful by using a rug, a towel, a duvet,
sitting on the bed where being at a table, wherever that may
be, ideally being on the floor is where you want to be, but if
that's uncomfortable, hard for you to do sitting at a table or
sitting on a bed, setting up some toys in that area.
You can put some crayons, some cars, some hair brushes,
whatever it is you think your child may like.
You can even encourage your child to put what they would
like in there. You can set this up in a really
lovely way. Simply say, listen, I want to
try this thing tonight. Listen, I'm going to put a towel
down. I'm going to put some toys on
there and you are going to decide what we do with that for
10 minutes. I'm going to come out of mum
mode or I'm going to come out of dad mode or I'm going to come
out of grandma mode. And you get to decide what we do
for 10 minutes. And I can't say no and I can't
ask you questions, can't give you, can't tell you what to do.
I'm going to try and give that a go.
You up for it. You know, you can do that in a
really nice way and invite that to happen and ask your child to
collaborate with you. It's hard.
You know, I, I generally say to parents about not having devices
around, but I have to say that a parent said to me recently that
she thought about the parent child game after I'd spoken to
her. And she really wanted to do this
with a child, but she couldn't figure out a place to do it
because her child wasn't going to sit with her on a rug and her
child wasn't going to bring some toys over to play with.
So she really struggled to figure out how to do it.
She went on holiday with her child and her child took a
Switch, Nintendo Switch, and she bought him a compendium of
games. And she said during the holiday,
every evening, he spent 20 minutes walking her through the
rules of a particular game. And then they played it
together. And she had that moment of like,
I'm doing the parent child game. I'm doing what I was asked to
do. I'm not saying, Are you sure
this is how we play this? I wasn't trying to try to get my
child to. I wasn't trying to take over
what was happening. My child completely had control
what's happening. And we both loved it.
We both sort each other out every night to do this.
My child delighted in showing me what he was doing and how he was
playing these games and then show me how to play them so I
could play them with him. And we would spend half an hour
every night doing that and it was just lovely.
And now we're back home, I'm reminding myself to continue to
do that with him because it's so I so enjoyed doing it.
It's been so lovely and just connecting with my child in that
way has been really helpful. So I used to say no devices, but
I'm taking it back. So sometimes devices may be the
way forward and the way to do this.
Now it could be that you feel really uncomfortable having
these play sessions or doing this in this way.
So you could fit into your routine bedtime, you know, as a
bedtime routine, getting into bed or lying on bed with your
child. Oh, we've got 10 minutes before
bed and you can choose what we do.
We need to lie in the bed. It's not about getting up and
running around, but you can choose what we do for this 10
minutes. We can talk to each other.
We can play a little game together.
There's lots of lovely little games that you can introduce to
your child at this time. I don't know whether you've ever
drawn on somebody's back and tried to figure out what the
shape is or what the letter is. Little things like that that you
can do together. You can then talk about
actually, it's not about you talking, it's about encouraging
your child to talk. So it's it's maybe prompting
your child with something really simple of what would you like us
to do? And maybe it's that one
question, what would this is, this is your time, what would
you like to do? And simply leaving it like that.
Now, if you've got an older child, a teenage child, it could
be that you introduce cooking or art or something in the garden.
Hey, listen, you know, we need to build, we need to dig a hole
because I need to plant a tree. Do you want to dig that hole?
You give that control to your child.
There are different ways that you can bring this in to your
your regular routine. We it's something that would be
really nice to try to do at least three or four times a
week. Sometimes it may feel really
impossible, but it's trying to put that 1015 minutes aside
where you are reconnecting with your child and building that
trust in such a lovely way. I'm just going to share a little
anecdote with you because sometimes it's not about trying
lots of different strategies. Sometimes it can be as simple as
trying one strategy. And this worked so well for this
one particular family that we worked with and supported.
I just really wanted to share it with you.
It was a mum and dad who came to us about, you know, their child
and their child was labelled at six years old as being violent,
complex and out of control. He was unable to be in
mainstream school. He was unable to have
supervision with his mum that was not supervised and he was
violent on a daily basis with his dad.
The parents were living separately and dad had full time
care of their son. There wasn't any violence in the
relationship. The the relationship was very
supportive and collaborative with each other and they were
just at a loss of what to do. Everything they had tried or
been told to try up until this point just hadn't made any
difference. So we introduced the parent
child game to them and suggested, I wonder what would
happen if you tried this for 10 minutes with your child and
giving it a go, which they did and dad did this and he did it
every night for 10 minutes. He did it actually more than
once. He ended up doing this part of
his bedtime routine. He ended up doing this in the
morning on the way to school. The child decided which way they
would go to school. And I asked dad, I said, I want
to see, I want you to do this for a month, give this a month,
just this one thing and see how we get on.
And in a month, I caught up with mum and dad.
And dad was just like, he was shocked at how such a little
change in what they were doing would have such a huge impact on
their son. And he said, Jane, the violence
has pretty much stopped from the from the moment I started doing
this. I'm not getting hit on a daily
basis. It's just I love doing this with
him. I love spending this time with
him. It's just changed how we
communicate and change how we relate to each other.
I was like great, they keep doing it and why don't we touch
base again in a month from now and see how things going in a
month. Came back later in a month and
he was like not only have I seen a change Dane, but the school
sending emails to me now saying something's changed with my son,
things are different. He is not using aggression at
school. He seems much calmer.
Don't know what's changed, but things feel really different for
him and he was just delighted and he said we just have such a
great time together. We're so enjoying doing this and
I was like, great, let's not change it.
The other thing I'm going to add to this though, is can we get
mom to do this too on those times when she visit, when
she's, you know, when her son visited, Sir, because I think
it's important that mom can experience this with her child
too. And let's touch base in six
weeks. Let's see what's happening where
you are in six weeks time. So I caught up with parents six
weeks later and both of them were just, they looked
different. They looked relaxed, they looked
less tired and they had both said that things had just
changed hugely since they had started doing just this one
intervention that we had spoken about.
The social worker was no longer considering the child being on a
child protection plan, but was maintaining the child as a child
in need. Mum said that there was no
violence towards her, they they would do this parent child game
together and they would have such a lovely time.
And father said the same thing. There was still no violence and
the school was still sending reports home that their child's
behaviour had changed to the point where they were now
considering the child going back into mainstream school.
Now I'm sharing this with you because I think it's really
important for to emphasise that sometimes we don't have to throw
the kitchen sink at changing our relationship with our child.
It's not always changing what we're seeing, but it's giving a
child another opportunity to express what's going on for
them. And for this young person, They
were able to have a healthy control over what was happening
for them in a place where they couldn't control what had
happened in an in a place where they were consistently told that
the behaviour that they were using was bad at school.
They had no control being in a school, in a classroom at six
years old, being in a classroom with other children who were
using equally aggressive and challenging behaviour.
They had no control about not living with their mum in a in an
area where they felt no control. This child was given a healthy
control and absolutely thrived on it.
And this gave us the foundation to start expanding this
relationship with his child. O This him and his child and mum
could relate in a completely different way.
O there's lots of different ways you can use this.
It's adapting it to meet your needs, whether it's 10 minutes,
15 minutes once a day, once a week or two or three times a day
because you're both getting so much from it.
It's about adapting it to what makes you comfortable.
It's really important to be boundaried.
It's really important to remind yourself, this is what I'm doing
for 10 or 15 minutes and then I'm going back to being the
parent that may teach you that may say no, that may be asking
you what you want for dinner and throwing questions.
You can't do this all day every day.
It's about letting it up in very boundary ways and letting your
child know, listen, we're going to do that play today.
Call it what you want. You know, this is your
opportunity. What should we call this play?
What should we call this? Should we call this parent child
game or should we call this special play?
Whatever you want to set that up is shall we do that today?
I was really excited. One last thing I want to leave
you with, when you do this with your child, they can get very
excited about having control. So when the time is up, what can
happen is they can feel really dysregulated because they
they're really upset. I don't want this to stop.
This isn't OK. I want this to continue.
It's really important that you you validate that and validate
what your child is experiencing. We've talked about validation
before and how important validation is, but simple
phrases or sentences along the lines of, I know we've had so
much fun, haven't we? It's so difficult to stop.
It's validating that it's really hard for them to stop.
I'm so excited to get to do with this, you with you tomorrow.
I'm so excited we can do this later.
I'm so excited that maybe we can change it up tomorrow.
What should we do tomorrow so you can you validate and
thinking about what's going to happen next.
So it's really important to be mindful of that because that can
happen for some children and young people because it's
something they're really craving and when you're taking that away
from them, it can feel really hard.
So validation is really important.
So listen, that's the parent child game.
I hope you find it helpful. Remember, think about the bits
that work for you and I hope you find it.
It's a helpful thing to try it home.