Therapeutic Parenting with P.A.C.E

Playfulness involves keeping a light-hearted approach to your parenting. It’s about showing through your words, actions and attitude that you love being around the child in your care, and that you value the time you spend together. A playful home environment encourages exploration and allows children to be themselves, supporting them to learn, grow and heal. 

Let’s take a look at three examples of how foster parents can incorporate playfulness in their day-to-day lives with their children.

• Engaging in imaginative play with your child encourages their creativity and makes day to day life more fun. You can also gamify dull day-to-day tasks, for example by setting a timer and seeing if you can get an entire room tidied up in just 5 minutes. 

• Find an age-appropriate hobby which you can enjoy together, like arts and crafts or gaming. Having a shared hobby provides lots of fun and great bonding opportunities.

• Find joy in the little things and don’t be afraid to be silly— something as simple as taking time to kick through the autumn leaves can add pops of fun and colour to even a dreary day.

Learn more about playfulness in parenting by checking out our blog!

Acceptance is about showing your child unconditional support and care through both the high and low moments. It takes strength, persistence and determination to help a child on their healing journey, and to help them to understand that they are safe and loved after being exposed to traumatic circumstances. Here are three examples of how to incorporate acceptance into your parenting:

• Show your child that they’re special, loved and valued just the way they are; this can be through affirmative words, showing unconditional support and the million tiny gestures which you’ll make throughout your day together.  

• Correct behaviour in a loving way. A child should never feel that their foster parents love is conditional. Acceptance is not about allowing unfavourable behaviour to go unchallenged— instead, it’s about acknowledging that these behaviours are often survival mechanisms, and that children who have experienced trauma need a nurturing approach to correction. 

• Let your child know that their feelings are okay. Every person deals with challenging emotions. Let your child know that it’s okay to feel the way they feel and that their emotions are valid, but it’s not okay to hurt themselves or others, or break things. Instead, teach them healthy outlets for these big feelings, like screaming into a pillow or getting active. 

Curiosity in P.A.C.E involves taking an interest in the internal life of your foster child and encouraging them to open up to you about their inner world. It’s about looking beyond the surface and adapting your parenting approach in a way which will best suit your child’s needs. We can incorporate curiosity by:

• Ask curious questions rather than shutting your child down when they say something which might be unkind to themselves or others. For example, if the child calls themselves or someone else stupid, ask ‘why do you think that?’ rather than ‘you shouldn’t say things like that!’ This can help you get to the heart of the issue together, build trust and help your child to better understand their emotions. 

• Seeking to understand why a child may have reacted negatively to a situation in relation to their trauma. For example, a child who has been neglected may have a big reaction when it’s time for you to drop them off as school, do to separation anxiety or fears that you will leave them forever. Rather than punishing the behaviour which results from their trauma response, find ways to accommodate their needs, such as by using the invisible string technique. 

Empathy, the ability to understand other’s emotions and understand the world from their perspective, is an essential skill for everyone in a caring role. It’s also a skill which we can deepen and refine over time. Empathy is at the core of everything that foster parents do. It shows up in many ways, including:                 

• Help your child to name their emotions, and allow them to sit with them if they need to. It can be tempting to want to fix everything in the moment, but sometimes we all need time to work through our feelings. A great example of this can be seen in this scene from the Disney movie Inside Out. Why not watch the scene together and discuss it?

• Engage in continuous training and development opportunities so that you can better understand the effects of trauma on the children you care for. Here at Fostering People we offer a plethora of continuous development opportunities, including both in-person and virtual training sessions.

• Engage in self-care.  In order to be the best version of yourself for the children you care for, you’ll need to take great care of your own needs, too. Taking time out to focus on your physical and emotional health needs will benefit everyone in your family and is a protective factor against compassion fatigue.