When Love Takes You In

Playful Engagement (Level 1)

Redirect children without breaking stride E.g., “Would you like to try it again with respect?” or “Are you askin’ or tellin’?” in a playful voice and tone. In this way, you are teaching the child to use their ‘words’ with a safe adult who can meet their needs – returning the ‘voice’ they lost through their history of harm.

Healthy relationships require trust and safety. If an environment of safety is created in early life, it creates an environment from which it is safe to explore and return. When caring for children from hard places, building that trust and safety will give your child the opportunity to work through sensory insecurities and try new things. Whether the problem is withdrawing from or over seeking sensory input, a secure place and trusting relationship will encourage a child to explore and return more freely, in order to meet their sensory needs. In research, healthy attachments are proven to correlate with improved sensory processing.

The Empowering Principal focuses on meeting the child’s basic needs for food and hydration, as well as meeting their sensory needs, to help the child regulate and to create an ideal environment for connecting and learning. The Empowering Principal also asserts that daily routines, rituals, and preparation for transitions are important to a child’s overall ability to regulate, as well as to build trust and connection with their caregiver.

Children impacted by trauma and those with attachment disorders can heal. Parents, who are supported and taught therapeutic parenting, are the best healing agents of their traumatized children.