I hope that this monthly installment of our newsletter finds you well! We are super excited at Quest since we have already been planning many great things for this upcoming summer! We are putting into place several new things that I think will help to improve the camp experience.
New Additions for Camp this Summer Include:
--A transportation shuttle service to and from camp
--New field trips for bowling and the movies
--Additional Parent Meetings
--A new registration that will be much more user friendly than our last system and allow for signups by smartphone and tablet
--Additional staff to assist with the administrative details of camp
It is hard to believe that our winter groups will be concluding in the next 2 weeks. Both of our two therapy groups (our general group with some video game making and our rock climbing therapy group) will be starting the spring sequence on Wednesday, March 19th!
Summer Dates: July 7 to August 14
Please Click Here to View the Summer Calendar
OUR NEW REGISTRATION SYSTEM WILL BE FULLY ACTIVE BY FRIDAY, MARCH 7TH! REGISTRATIONS BY APRIL 15TH WILL RECEIVE $200 OFF SUMMER CAMP COSTS!
This issue of our newsletter features an article regarding how to discipline children without them experiencing shame. At Quest, we are proud to provide an innovative treatment program through our therapeutic summer camp and school year therapy groups that have been proven to reduce problem behaviors not only at camp, but in school, at home, and in everyday life. We hope that our newsletter will be a source of support and applicable information to improve the lives of the amazing children and families in our community.
Sincerely,
Jodie Knott, Ph.D.
Director and Licensed Psychologist
Quest Therapeutic Camps of Southern California
Taking the Shame out of Parenting for Both Children and Parents
This month I decided to pull a couple excerpts out of a book by Dr. Brene Brown called, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead related to parenting and shame. I read this book recently and have referred it to many people since and have covered many of the concepts with the children I work with since the book is incredibly well written and clearly details many of Dr. Brown's findings as a leading researcher on shame. She provides tangible suggestions about how to live more wholeheartedly. Below are a few quotes from the book specific to parenting and shame that I think are helpful. Dr. Brown defines guilt as "I did something bad" versus shame which is defined as "I am bad". She discusses how perfectionism, having prerequisites of when we will be worthy, and the need to change how we look at and discuss guilt and shame to transform our feelings as adults, as well as for children, so that we can all have better shame resilience.
When it comes to parenting, the practice of framing mothers and fathers as good or bad is both rampant and corrosive--it turns parenting into a shame minefield. The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn't exist, and I've found that what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults. (Brown, page 15)
Are we sending overt or covert messages about what makes them more and less lovable? Or are we focusing more on behaviors that need to change and making it clear that their essential worthiness is not on the table? (Brown, pages 221-222)
In addition to keeping a mindful eye on prerequisites and perfectionism, we can help our children keep and cultivate their sense of worthiness in another way, one that relates back to what we learned about the differences between shame and guilt. Research indicates that parenting is a primary predictor of how prone our children will be to shame or guilt. In other words, we have a lot of influence over how our kids think about themselves and their struggles. Knowing as we do that shame is positively correlated with addiction, depression, aggression, violence, eating disorders, and suicide, and that guilt is inversely correlated with these outcomes, we naturally would want to raise children who use more guilt self-talk than shame.
This means we need to separate our children from their behaviors. As it turns out, there's a significant difference between you are bad and you did something bad. And, no it's not just semantics. Shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can do and be better. When we shame and label our children, we take away their opportunity to grow and try on new behaviors. If a child tells a lie, she can change that behavior. If she is a liar--where's the potential for change in that?
Cultivating more guilt self-talk and less shame self-talk requires rethinking how we discipline and talk to our children. But it also means explaining these concepts to our kids. Children are very receptive to talking about shame if we're willing to do it. By the time they're four and five, we can explain to them the difference between guilt and shame, and how much we love them even when they make bad choices. (Brown, pages 224-225)
Brown, B, (2012) Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead.
