With the Helping Children Flourish conference on September 28th approaching quickly, our speaker interview series is winding down. Our hope is to introduce you to conference presenters, as well as to provide some information and insight on their presentation topics, whether or not you attend. We’ll conclude the series next Monday, and look forward to seeing many of you the following Saturday.
It was a pleasure for me to speak with Tamara Strijack about play and anxiety, two topics–along with with defiance–that she will be speaking about at the conference. Tamara is a Registered Clinical Counsellor working on Vancouver Island and a homeschooling mom to two delightful girls.
Usually, exposure to Dr. Neufeld’s paradigm begins with learning the theory, followed by applying it within one’s family. But as Gordon’s daughter, I imagine you came to it differently. How did you move from experience of being parented in this way to awareness of the paradigm?
I actually attended my first course (the Intensive I) after I finished my counseling degree in 2006 and was quite delighted that it made so much sense to me and fit so well with all I had been learning in graduate school. Not only did it fit in terms of my counseling training, but it also made sense in how I wanted to be raising my children. It seemed natural to move on to further study, eventually becoming a faculty member with the Neufeld Institute.
What brought you to make this your life’s work?
I was working with youth, with teenage girls, when I was still very much a youth myself, and I wanted to understand how to help them better. It was this desire that prompted me to begin training as a counselor, and as I mentioned before, it only took one course to know intuitively that this developmental approach fit for me both as a counsellor and a parent. Since that time I have been involved in the Neufeld Institute in a number of ways – through training others, developing courses and consulting. I still work with children, adolescents and adults as a counselor, but I have shifted more to working with parents and helping them see and understand what their children need.
I’m excited that we get three chances to hear you speak at the conference; I wanted especially to ask you about your talk on play. How can parents tell if their kids are getting the type of play that they really need?
You want to see if there is something coming from inside the child. If you take away the stimulation — anything coming from outside in — do you see evidence of something there? Do they show signs of spontaneous, expressive play? Is there something coming from the inside out? I will be talking more about this and what we mean by true play and why it is necessary for development.
What do you think most gets in the way of that sort of play?
We have this idea in our society that children need to grow up faster, that we need to put information in, that they need to learn certain things, and the earlier they have that knowledge the better. I think that these pressures and expectations can get in the way of making room for the type of play that prepares the child for learning and forwards their development. I think we are in too much of a hurry sometimes.
Another of your talks is on helping an anxious child. If a child is expressing worry, a parent’s typical response might be to tell them not to worry, addressing the concern directly. What might you say to that parent?
Although it is tempting to address the worry directly, it’s important to understand that there is likely more going on that the child isn’t even aware of. Somehow the alarm system has been activated, and the resulting feelings of alarm can lead to all kinds of worries, anxieties and sleep problems. There may be something in their life that’s too much for them, often in the form of a separation that has been more than they can handle. Sometimes the alarm bells go off early in life; sometimes it doesn’t feel safe enough to turn the alarm bells off and our child can get stuck.
Because of this, it helps to get at what is at the root of the problem, versus trying to alleviate fears as they pop up. The fears will move; you address one fear and it will become a different fear tomorrow. And rationalizing about it doesn’t work, because the fears are not always rational. Yet somehow we need to help the child with their state of unrest. I’ll talk more about how we can take the lead, making it safe for the child to rest and for the alarm bells to turn off. Understanding what the child truly needs allows us to address the worries in a lasting way.
From experience or observation, what do you think is an especially challenging aspect of parenting?
An especially challenging aspect of parenting is trying to do what you think is in the best interest of your child while having mixed messages from others – society, media, family, other parents, even your own expectations can get in the way. In order to see what a child truly needs and create space for them to develop to their full potential, often one needs to act as a buffer from society for a time.
Is there anything you would like to add?
I’m excited at the opportunity to share some of the insights I have gleaned from my experiences working with this approach and my own parenting journey. As parents we have one of the most important jobs – to provide the conditions necessary for our child to develop and blossom. A privilege, and a challenge! But our children need us more than ever …
