A Reflection on Acceptance, Attunement, and Affirmation
With the intense focus on behavior change in my last few blog posts, I’d like to step back and write a bit about the bigger picture in parenting. While a finely tuned discipline protocol can be life saver, we ultimately need to keep our primary focus on the fundamentals in parenting. Without a solid relationship foundation, even the most elegant applications of behavior change principals will lead to nowhere. Our children will thrive when we prioritize acceptance, attunement, and affirming communication.
In the following discussion, I draw from the work of several leaders in the field of Psychology – Daniel Siegel, Ross Greene, and Stephen Rollnick. Although each comes from a different perspective, concepts that they’ve developed enrich our understanding of how to deepen our relationships with our children. By letting go of behavior change as an agenda, we might paradoxically enhance children’s self-regulation and their own motivation to mature.
Acceptance: Children vary widely in their ability to be adaptive and manage their emotions. Many children struggle with anxiety sensitivity, emotional reactivity, low frustration tolerance, impulse-control, and inflexibility. Without getting into a debate about nature versus nature, much of the variation in children’s management of emotions is influenced by temperament. In Ross Greene’s words, as parents we need to “be responsive to the hand we’ve been dealt.” He argues that parents of well-behaved children are nothing more than “lucky.” We need to keep expectations of our children realistic and specific to their unique qualities. We run into trouble when we hold the well-behaved child next door (or an easy going sibling…or what one remembers about oneself as a child) as a benchmark.
We may better serve our children when we accept who they are and introspect on how we as parents can flourish in ways that may not have happened if we had been dealt an “easy” child. Perhaps we need to develop our own self-regulation skills, be more flexible, or reduce our negative judgements of others.
Attunement: Daniel Siegel has written extensively on the neurobiology of attunement in relationships. Attunement happens when “the child’s internal world is seen with clarity by the parent, and the parent comes to resonate with the child’s state.” Verbalizations by parents that are attuned reflect accurate reflections about the internal state of their child. Such exchanges help children to develop better awareness of their internal state, which in turn helps children to build emotion regulation skills.
In an attuned interaction with an upset child, instead of thinking “oh no, here we go again…what’s wrong with my kid,” we might shift our focus to this child’s internal world. We can come alongside and provide a verbal narrative of how the child is seeing the situation (even if we don’t agree with it!).
Affirming: Affirming statements have been contrasted to praise as a more genuine and connected method of communicating. Stephen Rollnick has made a compelling case for the use of affirmations over praise when teaching and motivating others. While praise involves a judgment statement about another’s behavior, affirmations involve noticing and commenting on positive qualities that already reside within the person. When you affirm another person, you convey that you see and believe in that person. Affirmations are honest and genuine, while praise can sometimes come across as canned and repetitive.
Imagine going to a therapist and that person commenting, “you did a good job talking to me about some tough topics today” versus, “I’m really struck by how open and honest you’ve been in talking with me today.” Which comment would feel more validating to you? In the case of a parent or teacher and child, instead of “good work double checking your solutions on that math sheet” (praise), another option is “I can see that you care a lot about the quality of work that you turn in” (affirmation).
The concepts involved in acceptance, attunement, and affirming are perhaps less tangible than some of the more widely recognized parenting techniques, but are invaluable to developing a quality relationship foundation.
Further Reading:
The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in The Cultivation of Well-Being, by Daniel Siegel
Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child, by Ross Greene
Motivational Interviewing in Schools: Conversations to Improve Behavior and Learning, by Stephen Rollnick and Sebastian Kaplan
