circle of security

I attended the “sensitive parenting” workshop during my placement which talks about the circle of security (circleofsecurity.org), its origins, application and effectiveness. The circle of security is basically about how the child needs to be allowed to explore and accompanied to enjoy and support their exploration and also welcomed when the child needs comfort and reassurance. It is about being sensitive to the child’s needs at different parts of this circle.

On hindsight, I found much of what was discussed to be common sense. Yet a lot of parents and health professionals find it difficult to make sense of all these when we are involved in the situation ourselves. This is further highlighted by the method used to help parents with children who has attachment issues. The method involves videotaping the parent’s interaction with the child and how they react reuniting after separation. The parent would then watch the tape and reflect on how they treated their child. Most parents do not usually require prompting about how they should have reacted. Therefore, it is helping them gain awareness of their behaviour and their ability to reflect that contributes to the process of improving relationships.

It was also mentioned in the workshop that kids model their behaviour after their parents. This immediately reminded me about a child who has huge behavioural problems in school and it was found that the parent had similar behavioural problems too. It just reinforced the need for healthy parents to have healthy children. The parents have to sort themselves out before they are able to work on relationships with the children. I suppose this relates to physiotherapy as well because the child can very readily pick up if the adult is unhappy and that feeling will translate to the child and result in an unsuccessful therapy session.

Another point that i picked up in this workshop was the importance of recognizing that as long as the child’s emotional needs are not met, it will be difficult to attain the goals of therapy because the child’s energy and focus will be on fulfilling that need and not on learning motor skills. This can be applied to my future practice in that we have to acknowledge that therapy will sometimes have to take a backseat and not get frustrated when we are not able to do what we planned to do.