1) The document discusses effective parenting strategies such as communication skills, co-parenting for separated families, and signs that a child may need professional help. 2) It provides guidelines for positive parent-child communication including listening, using simple language, and discussing important topics. 3) For separated families, it emphasizes the importance of children having relationships with both parents and avoiding parental conflict. Parents should speak positively about each other and keep children out of disputes. 4) Signs that a child may need professional help include a marked decline in school performance, severe anxiety, depression, threats of self-harm, and substance abuse in adolescents. Younger children may show excessive temper tantrums or aggression.

1. PARENTING
WITH
PURPOSE
Seminar Two – July 2014
Dr Gemma Russell
Clinical Psychologist

2. Overview
• Focus on a key aspect of positive
parenting
• Guidelines for healthy co-parenting in
separated families
• When is it time to get professional help?

3. Communication – Why is
it important?
Communication refers to the way verbal and non-
verbal information is exchanged between family
members.
Effective communication is found to be protective in
allowing the expression of needs, wants and
concerns, and promoting positive coping. Whereas,
unclear communication has been associated with
excessive family conflict, ineffective problem solving,
lack of intimacy, and weak
emotional bonding.

4. Parent-Child
Communication
One of the most common problems with
communication is when parents speak to their
children like little adults
Adult Child
Thinking Logical
Rational
Abstract
Pre-logical
Irrational
Concrete
Language Advanced
Indirect
Implicit
Simple
Direct
Explicit
Sense of time Long-term Short-term

5. Effective Communication
with Children (6)
1. Show interest by listening, paying attention and
contributing
- get physically on the same level
- make eye contact
- repeat back what you have heard
2. Use simple language, don’t assume they will follow
your reasoning or understand the meaning
3. Be gentle, letting the conversation go where it will
- sometimes this may not be cohesive, it is more
important to reinforce talking than the construction

6. Effective Communication
with Children (cont.)
4. Don’t feel like you always have to fix the problem
or know the answer. Sometimes it is helpful to just
listen and understand
5. Don’t be afraid to talk about important topics. You
can play an important role in providing correction
information, and helping your child develop their
own ideas and values around important topics
(i.e., sex, drugs, peer pressure, death, trust,
commitment etc.)
6. Know when to stop. Attention span and interest
level differs from adults. Easily can turn into a
lecture thus associating communication with a
negative experience.

7. Purpose of
Communication (5)
1. Talking to exchange information (i.e., what time
does footy training finish tonight?)
2. Talking to learn
- spend the time
- both listen and respond
- let the talk go where it will
- be warm and light
3. Talking to share feelings
- listen to your child
- acknowledge and help your child identify what
they are feeling

8. Purpose of
Communication (cont.)
4. Talking for specific action
- explain, but at the right time not during the conflict
- choose your battles (don’t over use requests, request
only when it is important)
5. Use effective requests
- direct requests only (i.e., how about you wash your
hands vs. put your jacket on please)
- positively stated (thus telling the child what “to do”
rather than what “not to do”)
- specific (i.e., be good vs. talk in a quiet voice)
- one request at a time
- simple (the child is able developmentally to perform
the task)
- follow through after a direct request
(allows children to learn to predict the
consequences)

9. Communication
Reflective Exercise
With the person next to you:
- Introduce yourself, discuss the ages and gender of
your child/ren
- Reflect on how you communicate with your
children?
- Ways you intend to improve your parent-child
communication? (becoming more effective through
type and purpose)

10. Separated Families
Co-parenting means that as parents you maintain a
shared focus on your child’s wellbeing
• Gatekeeping occurs when one parent helps or
blocks the other parent in their parenting role
- essentially “opening” or “closing” the other’s
access to their children
• Children need both their mother and father, with
the quality of the parent-child
relationship being more
important than the quantity of
time spent together

11. Separated Families –
Co-parenting
Making Separation Easier on Children
• Encourage children’s time with the other parent, as well as extended
family
• Speak to your child about their other parent in ways that support that
parent
• Let your children talk about and show enthusiasm for the other parent’s
home, and activities they share
• Encourage your children not to blame the parent who left the home or
started the separation
• Acknowledge your child’s wish for a reunited family without offering false
hope or insisting that it will never happen
• Don’t try to mediate conflicts or involve yourself in disagreements
between your child and the other parent
• Try to not pump your child for information about the other parent
• Remove your children from adult
business by not involving them in
communicating/passing on messages
• Forward all emails concerning your
children’s activities, including changes,
cancellations, to the other parent

12. Separated Families –
Co-parenting
What Children Need
• To know that they continue to be loved by both parents, even
when times get difficult. Tell them again and again.
• To be kept out of the middle of parents’ conflict (e.g., not being
asked to take sides or to hear one parent discuss the other
parent’s behaviour in an angry tone)
• Parents who remain warm and affectionate, but consistent and
firm in their discipline
• To continue to have a relationship with both parents whenever
possible
• Help expressing feelings rather than behaving in angry or hurtful
ways
• To understand the changes that are happening in their family,
but without hearing all the adult
details about what led to the
separation, what is difficult for parents,
what parents are fighting about etc.
• To be given support for staying involved I
on their previous activities, friendships and interests

13. Co-parenting Reflective
Exercise
1. What can you do to support your child’s
relationship with the other parent?
2. What would you hope the other parent would do
to support your relationship with the child?
3. Are there areas of conflict between you and the
other parent that are based in your spousal
relationship as opposed to your parenting
relationship? If so, what will you do to change
those interactions?
4. How will you share information
about the child with the other
parent?

14. Ways to Promote Positive
Coping
1. Provide useful information for your child’s age
2. Avoid blame
3. Pay attention to child needs
4. Help children understand their feelings
5. Keep children out of the middle

15. When is it Time to Consider
Professional Help?
Guidelines by the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry
Younger Children (<12 years)
• Marked fall in school performance
• Poor grades at school despite trying very hard
• Severe worry or anxiety (i.e., refusal to go to sleep,
school, to eat, or interferes with daily activities)
• Frequent physical complaints
• Hyperactivity, fidgeting,
constant movement beyond
normal playing without difficulty
paying attention

16. When is it Time to Consider
Professional Help? (cont.)
Younger Children (<12 years)
• Persistent nightmares
• Persistent disobedience or aggression (longer than 6
months) or provocative opposition to authority
figures
• Frequent, unexplainable temper tantrums
• Threatens to harm or kill oneself

17. When is it Time to Consider
Professional Help? (cont.)
Adolescents (>12 years)
• Marked decline in school performance
• Inability to cope with problems/daily activities
• Marked changes in sleeping and/or eating habits
• Extreme difficulties in concentrating
• Sexual acting out
• Depression shown by sustained, prolonged negative mood
• Severe mood swings
• Strong worries or anxieties
• Repeated use of alcohol or drugs
• Intense fear of becoming obese with
no relationship to actual body weight,
dieting, vomiting or laxative use to
lose weight
• Persistent nightmares

18. When is it Time to Consider
Professional Help? (cont.)
Adolescents (>12 years)
• Threats of self-harm or harm to others
• Self injury or self destructive behaviour
• Frequent outbursts of anger, aggression
• Repeated threats to run away
• Aggressive or non-aggressive consistent violation of
the rights of others, opposition to authority, truancy,
theft or vandalism
• Strange thoughts, beliefs, feelings
or unusual behaviours

19. Contact Details
Dr Gemma Russell
Clinical Psychologist
Director of Clever Minds Psychology
Telephone – 03 9397 6016
Direct Cellphone – 0435854205
Email – gemma@clevermindspsychology.com.au