Book of the Month January 2022 - Superparenting

Superparenting: Boost your therapeutic parenting through 10 transformative steps by Dr Amber Elliott. 
 
The Super parenting approach involves learning and using Empathic Behaviour Management (EBM) to parent with empathy and connection while still trying to guide children towards more acceptable ways of communicating their needs. To understand EBM you’ll have to read the book but basically think Dan Hughes, Dan Siegel and even take yourself back 20 years to Caroline Archer and Christine Gordon, who set us all on the right track for therapeutically parenting survivors of childhood neglect and abuse.
 
Parents familiar with attuned empathic parenting know only too well that relationship is the key to regulating and repairing childhood hurts and that traditional behavioural management strategies are ineffective at best and more often than not, re-traumatising. In reality, seasoned adopters may be so familiar with the concept and the daily practice of therapeutic parenting that we forget it’s not the norm for most other parents or indeed many adults who engage with children. Regular reports from my granddaughter about, “what happened in school today” indicate that, sadly, shame-inducing, punitive reward and consequence approaches are still alive and well! Reflecting on that, I wondered what Amber Elliot could bring to an already well laden table of therapeutic parenting books…
 
Super parenting is so called for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious one is that children with trauma histories need parents who have super-sized capacity in terms of understanding, empathy, psychological mindedness, resilience, tolerance, advocacy, etc. For me it also taps into the notion that as adopters and carers we are often expected to be superhuman, to “turn children’s lives around”, to do it quickly,  and without any psychological cost to ourselves. Thankfully, Amber Elliott recognises that our own stuff – our childhood experiences, attachment styles and cultural conditioning – can get in the way of the best intentions when emotions run high and the parenting rewards are few. She uses a tortoise and hare analogy based on fast and slow life history theory to explain how we act and react as parents because we parents have histories too you know and they are definitely going to get triggered by our kids. She identifies the need for awareness, self-acceptance, curiosity and compassion when dealing with our own shame and mistakes. This balance of meeting our own needs as well as our children’s is an important and often understated part of the parenting role. It was good to see the author give it the attention it deserved. Good also to see shame get addressed – it’s a big player in our family dynamics and is often avoided in parenting conversations, which probably says something about how society as a whole uses shame.
 
Dr Elliott considers the main obstacles to children being motivated by rewards and consequences: regulation of stress responses, poor impulse control, lack of trust, the power and control dynamic, and shame, being key. For readers familiar with DDP and the Dan Hughes PACE/PLACE approach, this will not be new territory but Dr Elliott presents the content in a helpful and logical way. Using the 10-step approach she explores family situational examples to illustrate how the relentless everyday stuff can wear you down and how things can get worse when we overreact or rely on praise, reward charts or relational deprivation for example. Best of all, there’s helpful suggestions that could turn around even really challenging situations.

Regulation of self and child, minimising shame while maintaining connection and boundaries are essential to the success of Superparenting. Parents (and teachers) often wonder how we can maintain boundaries and be flexible enough to meet the needs of the child. Flexibility does not mean giving in, it’s more about bending without breaking and that’s why we need to keep our own self- regulation and intersubjectivity skills in top condition. Without flexibility we find ourselves engaging in control battles that frankly we rarely win. It’s also helpful to remember that parenting is a marathon. The author does not offer any magic bullet approaches or fixes of any kind. I say that with relief, not as a criticism.
 
Superparenting proposes 10 helpful steps to transformation, while acknowledging that transformation can take time and can look different for everyone. It allows for the fact that we will all screw up (again and again) and that’s okay, relationships are built through rupture and repair - as long as the parents model repair – another reason to befriend our shame!  And, of course, there is a place for rewards in all family relationships. We all need our efforts rewarded and the author gives examples of inspiring and hopeful relational rewards that can work to motivate children and young people without the usual overtones of power and control.
 
At over 200 pages there is lot of reading here for busy parents and Amber Elliott is aware of this. She bookends the content with reminders to use it as a guide rather than a cover-to-cover must-read.  I like the suggestion that parents keep using techniques of their own that work as long as they align with the five-point nuts and bolts checklist. (Obviously, some techniques might look like they work when children are young because they secure obedience, but fear and shame can do that too). The super-short checklist neatly reminds us of what therapeutic approaches look like. All in all, I think this is a valuable text for new parents, or more experienced parents who have discovered their current strategies might need reviewing. It would also have real value for groups exploring and sharing parenting approaches.
 
Sheila Lavery
Adoptive parent, art psychotherapist and trauma educator

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