Disenfranchised grief in adoption
Disenfranchised grief in adoption (and other similar family set ups) is a topic close to my heart - grief that society (and often family)...
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elainenichollsnvr
Oct 182 min read
Emotion Coaching
Emotion coaching has come up a few times this week in work with parents. When the first emotion we see and feel from our children is...
elainenichollsnvr
Oct 31 min read
Life story conversations with kinship children
Yesterday I had the honour and the privilege of spending the day with a group of kinship carers - thinking together about the difficult...
elainenichollsnvr
Sep 232 min read
Pulling together through the difficult times
I've got NVR groups underway, new individual families as well as existing families, I’m just restarting university for the second/last...
elainenichollsnvr
Sep 212 min read
NVR parenting - warm and firm
Deciding where to set our expectations for our children can be tricky when there's trauma, disabilities, and other things going on like...
elainenichollsnvr
Sep 151 min read
Learning to feel safe
Learning to feel safe after a lifetime of being on guard is going to take time. In adoption, fostering, or kinship care - “a lifetime of...
elainenichollsnvr
Sep 111 min read
Where there's family violence there's shame
Where there’s family violence, there’s shame. Children can be violent and aggressive for all sorts of reasons. For some children big...
elainenichollsnvr
Sep 31 min read
You are delightful
When children are experienced as delightful, when that’s communicated through words & actions, children experience themselves as...
elainenichollsnvr
Sep 22 min read
Boundaries
We’ve got a reactive cavapoo who barks a lot when anybody walks past the house, especially if they’ve got a dog. Initially there was no...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 301 min read
Breathe
When things are going well it's easier to be intentional in our parenting. It's much more of a challenge when we're out of our window of...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 291 min read
Rudeness
My conscious thinking brain knows this. My unconscious emotional brain sometimes doesn't. When we're feeling wound up by our kids it's...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 272 min read
Alice's Umbrella
Human beings learn by experience - things going well and things going not so well. It’s tempting to feel as though we need to say...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 252 min read
Self-fulfilling prophecy in NVR
I love this quote by Karyn Purvis - an expert in developmental trauma, attachment difficulties, and therapeutic approaches. She was one...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 232 min read
NVR chat - follow up group for parents
Today I did something I've been meaning to do for a while. I set up a Facebook group for parents who've completed an NVR parent group...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 212 min read
Things I manage not to say
Children’s brains are wired differently to adult brains. The bits of the brain that help us manage our emotions and impulses, reflect on...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 132 min read
Can I use consequences in NVR parenting?
Parents often ask if it's okay to use consequences in NVR parenting. Consequences are part of life. We can't avoid them. Consequences are...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 121 min read
Look beyond behaviour
What a beautiful illustration by Hazel Mead. Reminding us to always to consider what's going on underneath the surface, to look beyond...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 72 min read
Children who need love the most...
Parenting is hard. Really hard. Therapeutic parenting is beyond hard. In all the therapeutic parenting advice (specific to...
elainenichollsnvr
Aug 51 min read
Everyone's doing their best
This statement can really help to shift our nervous system state when we’re struggling with children’s behaviour. I think there are few,...
elainenichollsnvr
Jul 301 min read
Fix the environment
There's no blame or shame in NVR - there’s no blaming or shaming of parents and there’s no blaming or shaming of children. When our...
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