By
Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.
Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.
The TARA Approach presents an understanding of human development and sensory integration from the child's perspective. Learning to attune to children may be the most significant skill set you can acquire from our integrative paradigm. Actually this quality of attunement is more an art than a skill. It is a state of conscious awareness that you cultivate. It requires compassion and sensitivity to how neurology and development cooperate and compensate. It is a requirement for parents, teachers, therapists, PT's, OT's, physicians, pediatricians, pediatric nurses, pediatric dentists or anyone who serves the needs of children and families.
Attunement is not merely a feel good empathy. It is the neuroscience of human relationships. How we are with each other shapes our brains and therefore our nervous and immune systems. This is true of everyone but in terms of children and how we interact with them, this is the neuroscience of the future of humanity.
Attunement is not merely a feel good empathy. It is the neuroscience of human relationships. How we are with each other shapes our brains and therefore our nervous and immune systems. This is true of everyone but in terms of children and how we interact with them, this is the neuroscience of the future of humanity.
How Do You Learn to See from the Child's Perspective?
No two children are alike. It is through attunement to the individual child and following their behavior and expression that we surrender our analysis and join with them in their somatic, deeply sensory world. Whatever symptomology they express (allergies, sensory disorders, illnesses, behavioral issues, etc.) reflects a whole family constellation. Only in whole family engagement can true resolution occur.The TARA Approach provides an avenue into the child's experience through play, dialogue and applied touch.
The child's sensory experience is respected just as it is. Dialogue, interaction and treatment that is initiated completely by the child enacts the underlying truth of the child's inner world. Applied touch interventions tailored specifically for the young and developing nervous system, reorganize responses that are compensations and restores innate allostasis (stress free balance). We have seen symptoms disappear before our very eyes like the day a boy assessed as "probably autistic" came out of his tantrum driven withdrawal, never to return to anything remotely diagnosable. Parents and practitioners who were observing watched in amazement!
|
The Crisis in Maturity: A Vicious Cycle
Adults tend not to easily see the child's perspective because of what I call the maturity crisis. This crisis is a global one and is the result of young children being forced to function in ways that are inappropriate for their development because their parents do not have the skills to answer their basic needs to be seen and nourished spiritually and emotionally. These children internalize their parents' inadequacies and respond by becoming, ironically, responsible for their parents. Then these children get older without fully enjoying or even experiencing childhood. When they grow up and start families of their own they are crippled in their own parenting skills. These are the parents suffering from the crisis in maturity.
To stop the vicious cycle of the maturity crisis the TARA Approach advocates for measures that empower children to be children and delivers parenting skills so that parents can appreciate the glories of mature, wise, developmentally savvy parenthood. Our Family Clinic structure is an excellent vehicle for this learning. There are many avenues to develop the art of seeing from the child's perspective. Seeing from the child's perspective is a joyous exploration. In finding a way to see children as who they are we simultaneously rediscover the child within each of us who is ready to play and dance in relationship with others and with nature.
