Balans en Opvoeden

Je kind is meer dan gedrag laat zien
Lisanne Stouthart

My method

How do we look together at your child's posture and behavior?

A child shows through posture and behavior how they feel inside. Your child's posture and behavior are determined by the way they respond to the outside world from their inner world. In that inner world, there is usually much more going on than you are aware of as a parent, and for your child this process is also largely unconscious.

For your child it can be a major challenge to gain some degree of control over their own actions. It is not strange that your child often struggles to understand the parenting lessons you try to give. Especially when your child's inner world is not in balance, the challenge of reaching desirable behavior becomes much greater.

By mapping the inner processes together, we can gain insight into the source from which these impulsive reactions arise. The outcomes give clarity about what your child needs from us in order to feel better and more balanced. With these insights, we can offer the right and most effective support for your child's optimal development process.

When your child has become more balanced on a feeling level through the right support, you will notice that your parenting guidance suddenly becomes much more effective. Your guidance remains necessary because your child still has many things to learn from you. At the same time, do not forget that you can also learn a lot from your child.

Together we also explore, based on our findings, how you can best give the necessary guidance in the situations where your child's unwanted behavior appears. The aim is that your child can actually learn from your thoughtful action as a parent. If you keep responding impulsively to your child's behavior, it can keep the behavior going or even intensify it.

Optimal cooperation between you and your child is the basis for success. It is necessary to experience more relaxation between you.

How do we look together at your child's posture and behavior?

 

The inner processes of your child that we will map together are:

  • Reflex control.
  • Sensory processing.
  • The development of the subconscious.
  • Emotional development.
  • Your child's developmental phase.
  • The existing qualities of you and your child.
 

How do we work with the inner processes?

Based on the inner processes we have mapped, we work as playfully as possible with body-oriented exercises and brain gym games.

These exercises and games stimulate your child's brain and nervous system to learn new skills. By offering the exercises playfully, the learning process can become a pleasant experience for you both.

For the best result, a certain play discipline is needed. This means that at home you spend enough time with your child practicing the exercises and games. Your child's brain and nervous system need this repetition to develop the automatic reactive skill that gives your child more control over their own actions.

How do we work with the inner processes?

 

Reflex control

The brainstem is an area of the brain that controls all kinds of automatic processes, such as breathing, circulation, fluid balance, metabolism and digestion.

Reflexes are neurological processes that trigger automatic movements, mainly from the brainstem. They play an important supportive role in your child's growth during pregnancy and during birth. Shortly after birth, they help a child automatically develop the desired movement patterns. In motor, social-emotional and learning development, reflexes have both protective and survival functions.

When reflexes have fulfilled their task in a certain developmental phase, they become integrated into the automatic part of the nervous system. They are then no longer needed as automatic reaction patterns for protection or survival. This means the movements can now be carried out consciously and with control.

But if disruptions occur in the integration process, reflexes continue to trigger unnecessary reactions to incoming stimuli. They can then continue to play an unwanted role in motor skills, social-emotional skills and learning. This can disrupt your child's balanced development.

When reflexes continue to direct unnecessary movement patterns from the brain, it becomes harder for your child to develop new and more desirable behavior, even if your child has the positive intention to do so. Rage, fear, restless behavior, sleep problems, clothing that feels uncomfortable and learning difficulties can be logical consequences of reflexes that are no longer functional.

Because reflexes are interactions between the senses and motor-sensory actions, they also strongly influence your child's sensory processing. By returning to the story around pregnancy and birth, and by observing your child's non-verbal body language, we can identify possible disrupted reflexes.

Fortunately, with specific body-oriented exercises and games, it is possible to help disrupted reflexes integrate after all. Your child can be supported to gain more grip on their own actions and consciously move toward healthy development.

Reflex control

 

Sensory processing

Toddlers take in many new impressions every day. What is obvious to you as an adult can be a completely new experience for your child to process.

How does your child respond to the information the senses pass on to the brain, and how is this processed? How does it affect your child's feelings, and what impulsive reaction follows? And how does the selection of incoming stimuli determine whether action is needed and in what way?

The interaction between sensory perception and the way the brain processes this information is called sensory processing. Sensory processing takes place within the nervous system, including the brain, and this process happens automatically in the form of reflexes.

The functioning of the brain and nervous system is responsible for both physical and mental reactions. It creates tension or relaxation on both levels. The way sensory processing works therefore determines your child's emotional state, from which posture and behavior arise.

A challenge in sensory processing often leads to unwanted behavior. This behavior is unwanted not only for you as an adult, but can also be an unwanted experience for your child.

By first mapping your child's sensory processing together, we can then playfully support the interaction between the senses and the rest of the nervous system, helping to create optimal interaction.

Insight into your child's sensory processing can help you as a parent truly understand how your child currently responds to events. From this understanding, you can take fitting action that sets the desired changes in motion.

Sensory processing

 

The development of the subconscious

During the first years of life, your child is discovering themselves and the world. Information from the outside world is still stored in memory without much filtering. This memory forms your child's subconscious and becomes the source for further inner development.

Your child is still very dependent on and receptive to care from the environment, where you as a parent are initially the most important source of information. As a parent, you therefore have a major responsibility in laying your child's personal foundation.

The way you communicate with your child in the first years of life strongly influences the inner emotional world that is forming and initially becomes your child's subconscious.

The way you respond to your child now, and the way you speak to your child, will partly shape the inner voice your child develops, and will eventually be expressed in posture and behavior.

The development of the subconscious

 

Emotional development

Which emotions are present in your child and in yourself, and in which situations they keep appearing, gives important information about what is truly bothering you both.

A child is not yet able to recognize emotions that arise, let alone regulate them. Your child needs guidance from an adult. Do not forget, however, that as an adult or parent you may also find it difficult to deal effectively with emotions present in yourself. Some self-reflection is therefore also necessary.

I gladly support you in understanding the how and why of emotions in your child and in finding ways to guide these emotions.

Your child is fully in the learning process of regulating emotions that arise. When you can offer the right tools during this learning process, you help your child build balanced and stable emotionality.

Emotional development

 

Your child's developmental phase

Your child's growth and development move quickly during childhood, both physically and mentally. Every developmental leap is a new experience in your child's world. Growth and development can also come with feelings of uncertainty and frustration.

Your child goes through different developmental phases on the way to gaining more knowledge about themselves and the world they experience. The behavior you keep running into as a parent can often be traced back to the developmental phase of the current moment.

It is important to understand and support your child in relation to the developmental phase they are currently in. You want to help your child complete this phase in the right and natural way. The more effectively this phase is completed, the stronger your child can enter the next developmental phase.

Your child's developmental phase

 

The existing qualities of you and your child

Because parenthood carries many challenges and responsibilities, you may now be mainly focused on all kinds of possible learning processes for your child and yourself. The danger is that you may pass by the real needs of your child and yourself.

By not only focusing on the shortcomings you experience as a parent, but also on the positive qualities already present in both of you, the atmosphere in your relationship can become more positive.

Your child identifies with you. You are, in a way, a large part of your child's identity. Living the desired behavior in the right way therefore has a very strong influence on your child.

Of course your child still has a lot to learn from you. By also becoming aware of the positive qualities already present in your characters, you immediately create a positive reflection. Your child senses that your attention is strongly focused on the positive sides of who they currently think and feel they are.

When you can focus your attention on the positive qualities already present in your child and yourself, positive energy flows between you and your bond becomes stronger. Your child will then be more open to learning points, feel more appreciated and no longer close off as quickly to necessary learning processes.

The existing qualities of you and your child