In a line: Genius simplicity in a quick-to-read book that will have your family reaping the benefits from the minute you pick it up.

I bought “Connective Parenting – A guide to connecting with your child using the NVR Approach” as a few of the adoption twitterati had mentioned NVR as an approach to defiant or oppositional behaviour – something we experience with Nibbles and – spoiler alert – I am glad I did.

What’s In The Book

This book discusses the following in short, super-quick-to-read chapters:

• What is Non-Violent Resistance (NVR)?
• Parental Presence (a clarion call to be fully in the now with our kids)
• Looking After Yourself (without having to go to the spa)
• De-Escalation (the less you say the better)
• A simple Communication Method (I need to do more of this)
• Rewards and Consequences (step away from the sticker chart)
• Reconciliation Gestures (show them you love them however they behave)
• The Basket Technique (love, love, love this way to make life easier)
• Acts of Parental Disobedience (the name alone intrigued me)
• Dealing with Persistent Violence (Announcement, The Sit In, The Campaign of Concern)

Whilst the latter chapters focus on parents who are experiencing violence and aggression (something we don’t), the fundamental principles in this book can help parents to develop a closer relationship with their children and keep themselves sane in the process.

The core technique, that acts as a foundation for all the rest, was a real eye-opening one for me: Parental Presence (PP).

How often are you in the room, without being in the room? You know those times when you are driving your car on autopilot, thinking of something else and then can’t remember if you ran a red light? Parenting can be like that too. Sarah talks about the importance of being fully present, rather than being distracted, half out of the room, when we are with our children.

Uh oh, I thought on reading that. I know that I’m often scanning twitter, or writing a shopping list, doing the washing up, paying scant attention in that really? that sounds interesting sort of not-really-thereness that my mum used to peddle as I came home from school and told her about my day. Which is why Parental Presence was my light-bulb moment. And it immediately changed my focus onto my children. We now have games night on a Saturday to build that family time where we are having fun together, with no distractions.

Like Sarah Naish in her A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting, Sarah Fisher also stresses the importance of staying calm, using this great phrase to underscore the principle: 

Strike when the iron is cold!

There is something about it’s contrary simplicity that makes it easy to keep in mind (and it’s now my go-to mantra when things start to heat up).

What I Liked About ‘Connective Parenting’

• It’s quick to read (it took me about a couple of hours)
• Many of the tips are a few pages long, can be read in minutes, so you never feel overwhelmed with new information in your already stretched brain
• At the end of the book, she tells you where to start if it’s all too much. A road map with START HERE on it, then HERE, next THIS. This is particularly useful for parents who are already at the end of their tether and don’t know where to turn for help.
• Parental Presence – (I think you know why by now)
• I love Sarah’s suggestions for looking after yourself, from simply paying more attention to the water in the shower, to plonking the kids in front of the TV for an hour, and writing yourself a pick-me-up letter
• The focus on finding out WHY things happen and what triggers our buttons – managing escalations gets easier over time as you recognise the triggers in both you and your children – it’s about managing situations to avoid triggers as well as dealing with them when they happen
• The book contains more than enough techniques to keep you occupied in applying and practising them for a few months or more, so a great starting point wherever you are on your parenting journey

Right at the end of the book, Sarah states her START HERE advice:

If you’re feeling overwhelmed… start with Looking After Yourself and do nothing else.

As she states in her introduction, the author set out to write “an easy to read guide book full of tips and ideas.” She nailed it. Compared to some of the other tomes that take days to read, this is an evening’s read, so you can start making changes right away.

Could It Be Even Better?

If I had been at the end of my tether, I might have preferred her roadmap to be right at the start – so Sarah could signpost me a single chapter to read (then put the book down) and implement right now. In and out in minutes and already taking positive action.

The case studies were a bit thin on the ground for my liking. The book would have had more impact if it told the story of a single family, demonstrating the specific changes before and after these techniques were used. This would have provided powerful proof and backed up statements like: I can personally attest to its effectiveness. At time I thought “don’t tell me it works, show me.”

In Summary

Connective Parenting by Sarah Fisher, is short, succinct and contains some powerful (yet deceptively simple) strategies that I implemented straight away. Since the tools complement other approaches (such as PACE), we’ve added them to our toolbox and have started to see an impact (on us as much as them), so much so that I’ve booked a place on Sarah’s four week online course.

The techniques that are becoming part of the way we parent are:

• Parental Presence (put the phone down, Emma, twitter can wait)
• Reconciliation Gestures (giving them treats especially when I don’t feel like it)
• The Basket Technique (so she holds her fork cack-handedly, so what?)

So for our family, for me as a mum, I have found some really simple, easy-to-apply, thought-provoking gems in this book that I am using in our day-to-day lives as a family. I have no doubt that as these techniques become just the way I parent, that I will return to the book and start working on the other areas too.

It’s cheap, quick to read and might just make all the difference in your family’s life, so I recommend you add this to your reading list. Then let me know how you get on.