Five Minutes of Perfect Playing

More about the counseling. 

In order to practice my PRIDE skills - sounds like team spirit, Middle School type stuff, I have to practice 5 minutes a day with C. 5 minutes of practicing absolutely perfect playing. And it's actually kind of fun. I am not allowed to ask her why she did something or say anything with a questioning tone. I am not allowed to tell her no. And I am not allowed to tell her what to do. Sounds like anyone's perfect time, right?!?! It really is. 

I like how I can earn 'points' for praising, reflecting and doing the describing. I am really big into earning points. It just works for me. The first day of counseling it was just me going in to learn about how it all and the counselor and I role-played. Which was amazing. Because it really hit it home to me at how good it feels for someone to be paying so much attention to what you are doing to respond about how, "You have the blue figured girl in your hand." And, "I really like how you arranged the dolls in the doll house." And, my favorite. At the end of the role-playing she asks me, "Did you hear me do any reflecting?" And I say, "Sure." Because of course all of this is brand new to me and I really have no idea what she is asking me and I know that yes is always a better response than a no. She looks at me all like, Nope, wrong answer. And I back-track real quick and I say, "No?" She nodded in approval and says, "You never said anything. The whole time. I had nothing to reflect because you never said anything." I knew I was quiet, but for real! Even when I am pretend playing, I still don't say much! She clued me in that if C was ever quiet like that, like in my dreams!, that you can always reflect sounds and that counts just as well. I will never have to worry about that with this one. But it was good to know. Pretty sure I didn't make any sounds, either. I would be a hard one to work with to get all the points for reflecting.

I took home a homework sheet and started my 5 minutes of perfect playing with C right away. It was too easy. She flourishes, absolutely thrives, on one-on-one attention. Which I knew. After three days of comfortable playing and me looking at my sheet of skills every second that I wasn't commenting on her, I had it down enough to introduce a little controversy. I let Talmage play with us. You do what you gotta do. I had to practice some more skills, like the shaping behavior by ignoring or re-directing. She knocked Talmage's tower over within 10 seconds of us playing. I turned my body away and started playing with legos. When she was done, I returned and let her know how much I liked it that she was letting Talmage make his own tower.

Another epic thing happened. That was the hardest we encountered, so I thought, 'What the heck. I'll have Alaska play with us, too." And that was interesting. While I was describing what Alaska was doing, C realizes that I am not paying 100% attention to her and she says, "Jessica, say, "I have a blue peg." That girl! She's quick. It made me laugh-out-loud in surprise. But not surprise. That attention thing. It's her biggest.

Parent Child Interactive Therapy

Counseling. It's finally happening. I feel so dumb that I didn't sign up for this stuff beforehand. But when C had her mental health exam she was your normal, rattled from being relocated, 4 year-old. I had no idea what kind of trauma I was going to be dealing with and thought her difficult behavior would simmer down after some attention (read: LOADS of attention). Not so much. Also - hello - I had no idea what kind of counseling there was out there for children and instead of asking, I just assumed there was play therapy and 'talk about your feelings' type of therapy. Wrong-o. Could have used someone watching out for me a little more on that one. Huge learning curve over here.

You know the whole story, you've been here since the beginning. We've been through a lot. And what I haven't told you is that as of late, she has started peeing herself. For attention. Girl's got problems. Steven wigs out big about pee. Pee in the bathtub, pee missing the toilet, pee anywhere is a huge-o deal. With all this pumping C full of water to counter her medication forming kidney stones, you can bet she's got to go to the bathroom a lot. Which can be a hassle when you're doing fun stuff. So she peed at Steven's parents' house. In the car. When she was waiting to be buckled in to go home. Threw him up in arms because it's disgusting and it's embarrassing. Well, with such an awesome reaction - she did it again. We did a week of peeing in our pants. I was so fed up with it the second day that I had good intentions of getting her some cute underwear and doing some potty training 101 with her, complete with sticker chart, when Steven intervened and saw how much it was twisting my world and decided for me, "We're putting her in pull-ups." And so we did. For two weeks she wore pulls up and for a week she pretty consistently peed in them. I stopped making any kind of attention about it and it stopped. We're talking, "oh, you peed yourself at 8:30 p.m. instead of getting up to go to the bathroom? Go ahead and change. No, you don't get a shower." That's how extreme it got before she stopped. We've been a week dry in underwear and she's only missed the toilet once. She was so close to almost there, and just missed. I wigged out when I saw it, Steven reminded me to bring myself down, and I calmly told her to get a rag to clean it up. Nothing more. She said sorry without being prompted. That was a big deal. The sorry. Hugs and lots of thank yous all the way around. She ate it up and I hoped that wasn't going to encourage more missing.

All that tangent for my 5 minutes of perfect parenting. Back to the counseling.

So, I am doing these Pride Skills.

P - Praise. Self-explanatory. "Nice job stacking those blocks!"
R - Reflect. I say what she says, back to her. In the same way or re-directed. Doesn't matter.
I - Imitate. Doesn't count towards mastery. It's kind of like extra credit type stuff. I play along beside her. She stacks blocks, I stack blocks.
D - Describe. I say what she is doing.
E - Enjoy. Another extra credit type thing - but basically, slap a smile on your face.

Mastery is using 10 praises, 10 reflections and 10 descriptions in 5 minutes. Using 3 or less commands, questions or sarcasm.

It takes people 8 weeks to get this stuff down. The first week I came really close. But my questions were exponentially high. And I realized that Kenzie uses a lot of questions when she plays and I was repeating those. Which I thought was reflecting. But it didn't count as reflecting. It counted as questioning, which is counted against you. That made me frustrated.

I had high hopes for passing the second week, but alas, I wasn't getting all of my descriptions because I was saying things like, "Thomas the train is on the track," rather than, "You put Thomas the train on the track." You have to always give credit back to the child. Build up their confidence. It was disappointing to say the least. And I cried. Not just over that, but, still. The frustration of the whole thing. They call these pride skills phase 1 and then phase 2 is more about sculpting behavior. What I actually need help with. I am dying, and I told the counselor that. I feel so OUT of control. I feel controlled by this child! The counselor thought I was crazy thinking I could pass in the second week of doing this and had a hard time understanding how upset I was about failing such a high expectation. I think she underestimated me on how much I desperately need to get on to this phase 2. She realized her mistake and gave me some counsel for the things that are really buggering me as of late. Some phase 2 type of things that I felt dumb for not knowing/thinking of before, but whatever.

When a three year-old says, "Why" a million times it often means, "Tell me more about that. I am really interested." When a four year-old says, "Why" when you ask her to do something - it means something totally different. Actually, I don't know what it means. But what you do is not engage. You ignore the "Why?". You count 5 seconds in your head and repeat your request. Wait another 5 seconds. After those 10 seconds you say, "I need you to ______ or you will have a time out." And that is when you get results, positive or negative.

Another trick she gave me was the modeling of positive, calm behavior. When C freaks out about her tower of blocks falling over, I can say, "When I am upset I take three big breaths and it helps me calm down." I used this one 4 times today, not all the time about blocks, and by the end of the night at story time, Talmage took C's spot. I didn't even realize how upset she was until I hear these big, deep, raggedy breaths beside me. And there she was, fuming, and breathing. I was so proud of her!  I acknowledged and gave her a big hug. Talmage would not have had opportunity to take her spot if she had been in her spot where she needed to be so I left that up for a learning experience.

Also, for getting a child out of a fit, is to distract them by commenting on things around the room. I tried that one once and it didn't seem to help, but whatevs, I tried. The important thing about all of this is that you comment on the positive behavior when it appears. Always following through and saying things like, "I like how calm you made yourself" are big deals in making this work.

And the last one, ignoring. You demand she pay attention by pulling a, "We can't leave the house until________" or, "You can't get a snack until________." I don't know if I like this one because it makes everyone have a hold up. But I will try anything at this point. Even today, C had on sandals with buckles that are a huge pain to get off and on. For dance I make them wear flip flops so they can change super quick. I asked her three times to take them off and if I were a good parent I would have told her we weren't going anywhere until they were off. But I am just a parent in a hurry all the time and I told her to grab her flip flops and she would need to change her shoes in the car. Which she did. And I could probably have taken a breath when we got there and given her the ultimatum to get them off before we go inside if it had come to that. So I could have redeemed myself. Just had to talk that one out for a sec. I am a good parent, after all!