Transcript for
The importance of deep listening when working with parents
Belynda Smith (00:00): What I encourage parents to do is just little experiments, and see when you listen to your child, how are they afterwards. When you get some listening, when you’ve had a good cry, how are you afterwards, how do you feel, and just experiment. You get to decide how safe you feel in that space, how much you want to use that space, where you want to take it. But I’ve certainly found in my life and the lives of the parents that I work with, that having that space to fall apart is really powerful for building resilience and capacity.
Narrator (00:31): Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.
Dan Moss (00:36): Hi everybody. Welcome to this Emerging Minds podcast. My name’s Dan Moss, and a couple of months ago I was really fortunate to be able to have a podcast conversation with Belynda Smith. Belynda is a parenting facilitator at Meerilinga in WA and a certified hand in hand parenting instructor. So, I quickly asked Belynda if she will return the favour and come into a podcast with us at Emerging Minds, and I’m really thrilled to be able to invite Belynda onto our show today. So, welcome, Belynda.
Belynda Smith (01:09): Thanks so much for having me here, Dan. It’s really great to be here with you.
Dan Moss (01:13): Yeah. So, thanks for being here. Belynda. Tell me a little bit about your role as a parenting facilitator at Meerilinga.
Belynda Smith (01:21): Sure. I am really fortunate. I absolutely love the work that I do, and Meerilinga has a number of different areas that they focus in on, and the parenting services is one of those. So, we provide the parenting funded parenting services in the southwest metro region of Perth, but Meerilinga is an organisation that’s been around for over a hundred years supporting families. So, we’ve got lots of different things going on, advocacy work, research, all sorts of interesting things happen there. So, my role specifically is to work with parents to support them through providing various programs like the hand in hand parenting programs that I can offer, also things like circle of security parenting, and I also do work with organisations, education, health, to support those professionals to support families. Ultimately, everything we do is around children and really helping children to have the best, richest, most positive childhoods they can have.
Dan Moss (02:24): That’s a great answer. So, you’ve talked to us a little bit about the programs that are offered at Meerilinga, and you started to go through a little bit about some of your philosophies about putting children at the centre of everything you do. Tell us about how that affects your work with educators, families, and children, Belynda.
Belynda Smith (02:42): So, you mean what does that mean to put children at the centre? Is that what you mean?
Dan Moss (02:47): Yeah.
Belynda Smith (02:48): Yeah, I think for us, in terms of our parenting service, we’ve really focused in on reflective relationship-based programs. So, there’s a number of different parenting programs on offer, and there’s some great stuff out there. What we’ve really chosen to go with is things like circle of security parenting, bringing up great kids is another one from the Australian Childhood Foundation that I really love, and of course hand in hand parenting. All of those really offer spaces for parents to reflect on what’s happening in their day-to-day lives with their children and to really focus in on relationship with their children because we know through 60 years of attachment research that that’s the way to support those core needs, those core developmental needs, and to help children to grow up with that strong self-esteem, with those solid relationships, with the problem-solving skills that they need to have a good life.
(03:51): So, that’s the focus that we’ve taken is really aiming to offer parents a space. I often say to parents, “We’re not going to tell you what to do. We’re not going to lecture you at these workshops. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about you coming to a space where you feel supported.” Parents over and over again say to me, “Oh, I’m not the only one. I’m not the only one who’s finding this hard. I’m not the only one who’s having these struggles.” That in itself is such a huge weight off their shoulders. I know that as a parent, I struggled a lot in the first sort of three to five years of parenthood, and that sense of isolation is really crippling. So, I love that parents feel that sense of support and then they’re able to go back to their beautiful children with more lightness and more capacity to offer connection and to offer a strong pathway for relationship building.
Dan Moss (04:48): Yeah, that’s really fascinating because it can be any practitioner or educator can fall into the trap really easily in their want, can’t they, for what’s best for their children to be telling parents how to do it or to be very instructional. So, in your everyday role, how do you intentionally move away from that kind of approach to your work with parents?
Belynda Smith (05:12): Yeah, it’s such a great question. We at Meerilinga use the family partnership model which is a really great overarching framework, and that has some core philosophies or ways of understanding how we work with parents, and it really aligns beautifully with the hand in hand model. I think the biggest thing for me is seeing parents as the expert in their own life. So, instead of coming to any given situation with all the answers under the sun, there’s that real space for, okay, well, what’s going on for you and what do you think. So, a really deep knowledge, I think, sort of deep in my bones, having listened to many, many thousands of parents now, they do have a real wisdom about what’s needed in their families, what their children need, what they need, and the difficulty isn’t that internal wisdom, it’s all the externals that are making life really tricky.
(06:07): So, that perspective as parent as the expert, parents as the expert, and also as children, seeing children as wise, seeing children as knowing what they need, and coming to families in that way has allowed for all sorts of really interesting things to happen, and also hand and hand parenting at its core is about listening. That was something I really loved in our previous chat was your focus on family stories, children’s stories, and hearing those stories and the power of hearing their stories, and that’s something that I really resonated with. Listening, I think maybe aside from laughter, is the shortest pathway between two people and it’s really deeply healing and deeply connecting.
(06:53): So, those are the core frameworks for my practise and really operating in partnership with families to say, “Well, I’ve got some ideas too,” but I’m not going to stand above and say, “Here’s what you should be doing.” It’s more like, well, this is what maybe worked for me or this is what research is telling us is a really great idea. How do you feel about that? Is that something you’d like to try? Ultimately, that listening though is where the magic happens, I think.
Dan Moss (07:23): Mm-hmm. And children of course aren’t always invited to tell their stories or to be the experts in their own lives. What is it that you’ve used or what strategies have you used at Meerilinga or in the hand parenting program to really make sure that you’re providing that space for children to step into a position of expert or contributor?
Belynda Smith (07:46): It’s something I really loved about Meerilinga from when I first started working there was… it’s one of the core values is that participation of young people hearing their voices and their perspectives and really valuing their contributions. In terms of hand in parenting, the way the approach is set up is really concrete. So, I loved that. I had done a lot of reading when I was a parent, and I was struggling, and it was all these fabulous ideas about attachment and connection. I was like, “But how do I do this in these challenging moments?”
(08:18): So, one of the core tools that we teach parents is a very simple one, but quite profound. It’s called special time, or you can actually call it whatever you want to in your family. It’s very simple. You just offer your child regular one-to-one, unstructured, child-led play. So, you say, “Okay, sweetie, I’ve got five minutes and we’re going to do this each morning now before we go off to daycare or to school. I’m going to set the timer for five minutes and that’s your time and I’m going to do whatever you want.” You then bring as much delight and joy as you can to that five minutes. It is really profound as a space for learning about their lives.
(09:02): I’ve found that in my busy life, I’ve got two beautiful boys, it’s very easy for me to be focused on what I’m doing and my agenda, and still now over a decade later of doing this regularly, maybe not every single day but regularly, my children surprise me with what they show me in that time. It’s not always talking. I’ll share a story that my son has given me permission to share. But when he was four, he finished kindy and he was wild with feelings. We got home and I said, “Should we do some special time? What should we play?” I set the timer, I said, “I’m all yours. What do you want to do?” And he said, “I want to play kindies. You be the teacher and you shout at me and I’m going to kick you.” And I was like, “Ooh, okay. I think I know what happened today.”
(09:51): He’d had a big fright that day, things had been a little bit hard, and his teacher was beautiful. It wasn’t a huge issue. It was just something that really scared him. So, he had the opportunity over that weekend to really process what had happened. So, we did special time a number of times, and each time we played kindy, and one time he was the teacher and he shouted at me and I ran away. He directed all of this. Another time I was the teacher and I shouted at him and he shouted back. So, he got to sort of really work through everything that had happened and really be in control. What happened on the Monday when he went to school was he walked straight up to that teacher and said, “Hi, Mrs. G. I am really happy to see you.” He was so empowered.
(10:34): So, it’s a beautiful space to really hear what’s going on in their lives and to really enter into their world, whether that’s LEGO, or at the moment, it’s trampoline scootering, whatever it is that they’re loving, you get to be there with them and you’re free from all your other responsibilities. You’re absolutely not allowed to do the dishes. You’re absolutely not allowed to answer the telephone. You just focus on your child for that five or 10 minutes, and it becomes a really active space for listening to how things are for them. So, it can really change the trajectory of your relationship and give them a very safe space to tell their stories and to let you know how things are for them.
Dan Moss (11:17): That’s a really powerful story, Belynda. It has me thinking about parents who are really doing it tough, who are facing often multiple and complex adversities. How do you go? What’s the process? Even five minutes in the context of these really busy, challenging lives can seem like a lot, can’t it? Does it take a little bit of time to get parents into feeling confident about this?
Belynda Smith (11:43): 110%, and it sounds a bit odd at first. Set a timer, what do you mean? So, absolutely. I think another tool that’s offered by hand in hand parenting is one that really builds capacity for parents, and that’s having a space for us to feel listened to and for us to tell our stories in. Now, that can look really formal. It’s called listening partnerships, and it’s an agreement between two parents to meet regularly and set the timer. Again, timers feature quite a bit. Set the timer. If you and I were to meet, Dan, we would set the timer for me and agree on a time, okay, we’ve got 10 minutes for each, and I would just get to say whatever’s going on for me and you would just listen without any advice or fixing, we so often want to help, without any interruptions and certainly without any judgment, and a key part of that is confidentiality. When the timer goes off, I would say, “Thank you so much,” and then you would have a turn for 10 minutes. So it’s equal. It’s peer support.
(12:43): That really builds capacity for parents, and when I deliver workshops with Meerilinga, parents have a little opportunity for that, and they regularly, if not I’d say 99% of the time, report even after three or five minutes of being deeply listened to and someone really not judging them, really seeing them as a good parent doing their very best in every moment even when things are hard and look very rocky, it really builds then a space for them to go back to their child and offer this kind of focused connection. It’s almost impossible to offer that focused connection, of course, when life is really tough and you are really struggling.
(13:26): I do always start with self-care for parents and supportive structures, and of course this is where Emerging Minds is so powerful in Meerilinga as well, that structural change that we really need to see happen. Ultimately, parents need a lot more help with those huge structural inequities and oppressions that they face, but day to day, finding little micro-moments of connection and building that muscle for being able to be with our child. I’ve worked with some really amazing parents who’ve had multiple challenges. I’m thinking of one beautiful parent who had seven children, and she offered special time to one child on each day, and found that that really helped their sibling relationships and helped her to feel more connected with them. That was a parent who was really doing it tough and facing some really challenging situations.
(14:24): So, I think starting literally with three seconds is okay to just look at your child and see them in that moment and try to offer them your presence is a good place to start, and to reach out for help where you need it is a really powerful part of the process too, that we deserve support as we do this vital work.
Dan Moss (14:43): And I’m wondering, Belynda, as you start to support parents to tell their stories, their own life stories as well as their parenting stories, whether this provides them a sense of confidence to start thinking about strategies to overcome challenges for their children or their relationships.
Belynda Smith (15:01): Yeah, so that ongoing support, so parents who, for example, engage in the six-week flagship course that we offer with hand in hand parenting. They come along to workshops each week for a couple of hours. In that six weeks, I often see amazing problem solving happening as they use that process because again, parents know what they need and what their child needs. They just need a space to use their own good intelligence to really find their way through the thicket and the thorn bushes of life. So, I really do see that as parents have a space and a warm audience, a warm listener, that they’re able to figure out all sorts of amazing problem solving and all sorts of resilient, incredible thinking to figure stuff out and meet the needs of their children and their own needs too.
Dan Moss (15:55): Yeah. And I’ve noticed from the reading I’ve done about your program too that you have a really strong trauma responsive aspect. Tell us about why that is important at Meerilinga.
Belynda Smith (16:07): I think specifically with hand in hand parenting, one of the things I love about it is that even the word trauma is a bit heavy and scary, and it’s so sort of de-pathologizes families. It really has an understanding that it’s not your fault if you’re facing challenges and difficulties, and by kind of operationalizing these trauma responsive ways of being and giving these five key tools that parents can use, it really allows families to move through their challenges in a positive way. The thing that is at its core as well is a deep understanding that we’re built to heal. So, that’s something I really love about hand in hand parenting is this understanding that as humans, hard things can really happen to us, but there’s a lot of capacity for healing.
(17:00): So, in a really simple way, how that might look is a child is running at the play park, having a lovely time, and they fall over and hurt themselves, really bang up their knee really badly, and they look immediately for their person. If that person is able to move close, offer warmth, offer eye contact, offer caring, and be with that child while they let out some feelings about how that occurred, that co-regulation, that beautiful, warm, limbic system that the parent is offering, an emotional anchor that the parent is offering for that child, allows that child to heal from that hard moment. So, it’s as simple as that.
(17:41): Obviously, as challenges increase in complexity, it can be a bit more difficult for us as parents to offer that healing, but the possibility is always there, I think. I think that’s a really powerful thing for families that are facing multiple challenges is this deep, deep sense of you are smart, you are good, you are the expert in your family, and you’re a really important person in helping your child to heal from the challenges they’re facing, and you deserve support as you do that. You don’t have to do it alone.
Dan Moss (18:14): It’s a really interesting philosophy, Belynda, because often there’s quite a lot of rhetoric about children being irretrievably damaged by trauma and that it can become almost like a disqualification of a positive future, but it sounds like your practise really actively opposes that and looks to work with parents and children to find opportunities rather than limitations.
Belynda Smith (18:38): Absolutely. There are a number of instructors. There’s about 185 certified hand in hand parenting instructors around the world, and a number of them are working with really underserved populations. So, my role at Meerilinga is a universal service. So, we’re not targeting specific populations that are really experiencing multiple complex challenges, but there are people working in prison systems, with homeless families, migrant families, refugees, who really see again and again that offering a space for parents to be listened to regularly and consistently then allows those parents to enact huge positive changes in their family’s lives and to offer that healing space for their children as well. Ultimately, it is all back to listening. So, the parents get listened to and then they’re able to go back and listen to their children’s feelings so that they can then recover from those challenging things that have happened.
Dan Moss (19:39): Sometimes in practise, an array of practitioners can describe challenges where maybe parents aren’t understanding fully the effects of their own sense of adversity on their children, and this obviously can be a difficult place for practitioners or educators to be in. I’m just wondering about your approach to these challenges.
Belynda Smith (20:01): Yeah, that’s a great question because one thing I’ve really learned through this process, because I’ve done it myself so much with the listening partnership process, is having a space for us to fall apart really allows us to then go back and be resilient with our families. So, I think as that professional, as that educator supporting the parent, it’s easy for us to get knocked off our balance and knocked out of our solid sense of confidence when we hear a parent really, really expressing some big feelings, and we can get very worried. But if we can bring that unhurried, worried, beautiful anchoring, that co-regulating again, they get to feel how hard it is for a moment.
(20:45): I’ve heard a really lovely analogy from a psychologist that I interviewed on the podcast, Emma DeCicco. She explained it as being in quicksand. So, feelings are like quicksand. If you struggle away from them and try to move away from them as fast as you can, you’re just going to get sucked under. But if you spread yourself out and make yourself come into contact with them fully, then you can rise to the top and really float. Now, of course, we need to make sure that everyone is safe and that this is an appropriate space to share things. But as practitioners, there can be times when parents can really need to express how hard things are, and when they’ve done that, it’s like they’re released from it.
(21:32): We talk about emotional poos in hand and hand parenting. It’s like we need to let go of some of the stuff that we’re carrying and we can then go back to our energised, renewed, resilient, and able to offer that caring. Once we understand that process, we don’t get quite so worried about it. It’s the same with our children. We offer a tool called Stay Listening, which is a co-regulating tool where we stay with a child who has some feelings and we listen, and that can look really messy. I know from firsthand experience that can look very messy when they are flailing and screaming and crying and telling you you’re the worst parent in the world, or whatever it might be. But what I’ve seen again and again is that having that space to fall apart then allows children to go out and be their best selves.
(22:20): It is quite a different framework to some of those on offer out in the world. This idea of emotional release is really, I think the science is catching up. There’s a lot around polyvagal theory now, and we’re starting to understand more and more how our nervous systems, brains and bodies work. What I encourage parents to do is just little experiments and see when you listen to your child, how are they afterwards. When you get some listening, when you’ve had a good cry, how are you afterwards, how do you feel, and just experiment. You get to decide how safe you feel in that space, how much you want to use that space, where you want to take it. Nobody’s saying you must do anything. It’s very much up to that individual to take the lead there. But I’ve certainly found in my life and the lives of the parents that I work with that having that space to fall apart is really powerful for building resilience and capacity.
Dan Moss (23:13): And for a parent within your program, as they build upon their parenting story, is it common for them to start to notice new things or capacities or skills about themselves they hadn’t noticed before or new capacities of their children that they hadn’t noticed before?
Belynda Smith (23:35): Absolutely. I think that reframing is really powerful and something that’s offered in all of the different parenting programs that I run with Meerilinga is a space for that strengths-based focus. Particularly in hand in hand parenting, one thing that we do is we start every session with a bright spot, something that’s going well, and I can’t tell you how many parents sort of say to me, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about this all week.” Sometimes they say, “I can’t think of a single thing. I can’t think of a single thing that’s going well.” If I just sit there and say, “Yeah, I know it’s really tough to find something sometime, but could you think of one little thing?” it could just be a good cup of coffee, it could just be the trees and the breeze.
(24:22): It’s a muscle that with practise, they get better and better at seeing the good things such that, again, after a six-week class, they tend to come in and say, “Well, I had this great moment with my kids this morning, and I really noticed my child doing this well, and I really felt like I brought some playful energy to this space or whatever it might be.” That focus on what they’re doing well, a strengths-based focus, it’s something we need to practise. It’s something we need to make a practise. So, I do find that parents increasingly are able to see what a good job they’re doing. I think having their peers surround them and also witness that and see the good in them sends a very deep message of even when things are rocky, and look, the wheels are really falling off, having a bunch of people look at you with care and kindness and no judgement , and just really send that strong message of you are doing your best, we see how hard you’re trying, that’s very powerful. Parents really internalise something of that as they move back into their family life.
Dan Moss (25:34): And Belynda, do you have the opportunity to witness longer term change in the lives of parent? Are you generally seeing parents in only six-week blocks, or is there circumstances where you’ve seen them over a period of time?
Belynda Smith (25:49): It’s an interesting question. We find that we have a lot of return customers, and there are some families. I’ve been with Meerilinga for three and a half years, and there are some families I’ve been seeing regularly throughout that time. The thing I notice is that just like me, it’s not like I have it all together by any stretch of the imagination, but they’ve figured out how to get the support they need so that when things are tricky, they’ve got a pathway through. That’s what I notice is that it’s not like suddenly after you’ve done a six-week parenting course, you’ve got an Instagram perfect life. Things can still be challenging, particularly in our culture where parenting is really not given the respect or the resourcing that it deserves. But once you have a sense of it’s okay to ask for help, it’s a great thing to seek support, and you also have a sense of how to use someone else’s attention to offload some of your worries and fears so that you can go back more resource, all of those things.
(26:48): So, yeah, I’ve definitely seen families over three years come back again and again and report a lot more joy, a lot more lightness, a lot more fun, a lot more connection, and fewer problems. They might use these tools to work through, say, separation anxiety or sibling squabbles, all sorts of challenges like that. As I said, sometimes there are challenges that there is no solution for, big life difficulties, like families who are facing racism, families who are facing poverty, all sorts of big challenges, but having a space where they can feel accepted just as they are and supported really allows them then to go back out into the world and do their very best and know they’re doing their best.
Dan Moss (27:37): And might it be the case that even though the poverty might not change, the meaning making that they make from their resilience around poverty might change?
Belynda Smith (27:45): 100%. I think this process really builds leadership too. I’ve seen families, and there’s certainly a lot of stories in the book Listen by Patty Wipfler and Tosha Schore which describes the hand in hand parenting approach. There’s a chapter at the end about long-term impacts, and we really see parents building in their leadership, in their families, and in their communities so that they’re more able to advocate for the changes that their families need and to advocate for themselves with professionals. So, I’m thinking of people I’ve worked with who have children with a disability, for example. I mean, that is just a constant process of advocacy, working with teachers and other professionals to get their children’s needs met. This process really helps them to do that with a sense of confidence, with a sense of competence, with a sense of optimism, I guess, and hope as well. So, yeah, it really builds leadership.
Dan Moss (28:43): Thanks, Belynda. Belynda, when you interviewed me for your podcast, you asked a really lovely question, and I’m going to return the favour now, what it is that you want for Australia’s children.
Belynda Smith (28:56): Okay. I want them to feel valued, heard, seen, cared for, important, that they’ve got meaningful relationships, meaningful connections in their community, and that they’ve got agency in the world, that they can have a say, they can be heard, and they can impact the way things are, and ultimately, I guess, that they feel loved. I think from that, their natural goodness is able to really flower. Again, in the book Listen, and myself, I’ve been involved in this approach for about a decade, and I know families, it’s been around for over three decades, so there’s a lot of people out in the world who’ve been raised using these tools and who have been listened to, who have been supported, and they are doing amazing things in the world. So, their world changes.
(29:54): I think that’s what I wish too is that this generation of children grows up to make a world that they, to have the capacity and the resilience and the confidence to build a world that they feel really happy with, that they want to see for their own children, because it’s about those links all the way down the line, isn’t it?
Dan Moss (30:12): Absolutely. Belynda Smith, thank you so much for your time today. You’ve given us a really great insight into the programs at Meerilinga, but also the hand to hand parenting program and also your really remarkable approach to working with children and their parents, and the importance of storytelling, and listening, deep listening within work with both children and parents, and the effects that they can have. I think there are some really great messages for all of us as practitioners within that. So, thank you very much for your time.
Belynda Smith (30:43): Thanks for having me, Dan. It’s been a pleasure.
Dan Moss (30:45): And thank you everyone. This has been an Emerging Minds podcast. We’ll see you next time.
Narrator (30:51): Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practice. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian government Department of Health under the national support for child and youth mental health program.