Expired Mindful Parenting

Professionals working in close contact with parents and children have a unique role in helping parents manage their feelings and deciding what action to take when caring for their child. When the child behavior or the caregiver’s response is extreme or seemingly incomprehensible we often lose our freedom of response and resort to a rigid reaction and at the same time we lose our connection with self and other. Mindful parenting is a specific state of mind and set of activities that enables caregivers to respond, instead, from a thoughtful and intentional mind state, rather than a mind state of distress and reactivity.

In this five hour workshop, participants will explore how their own reactions as professionals are informed by their cultural and family beliefs, their early experiences, and their desires and fears for parents and children. Facilitators will guide participants in a variety of experiential exercises using mindfulness practices that shift the mind state from an aroused fight or flight state to a more grounded and spacious state in which the capacity to choose our responses and maintain our connections are regained. Specific tools that address challenging interactions between parents and children will be shared, as well as techniques on how to engage caregivers in the process of being more mindful in their responses to their children’s needs and behaviors.

Learning Objectives:

•  Be able to identify dynamics and beliefs that inform their responses as caregivers or family workers
• Understand the concept of mind state and the capacity we have to shift from a rigid, “highjacked” mind state to a more flexible and effective one
• Identify tools that may assist them in living a more grounded and free life as workers and caregivers

Presenter:

Sabina Fila, LCSW, is part of the Center for the Developing Child and Family and a clinical member of the Developing Family Project. In her 20+ years as a social worker and psychotherapist she has worked with a wide variety of individuals and families with some emphasis on substance abuse and recovery, trauma and healing, family reunification, and cross-cultural couples and families. Over the last twelve years, as part of the Center for the Developing Child and Family Sabina has worked at supporting parents of infants and toddlers in different settings as well as supporting community based agency staff that works with families with young children.