Circle of Security have the concept of Shark Music, the uncomfortable and even fearful feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations that arise when we perceive a threat or challenge in our relationships that is actually safe.

Grab is a similar thing. Someone's actions cause an emotional response from yourself. This could be positive or negative. Interpersonal relationships often fall into the pattern of always trying to 'grab' another persons emotions so they respond to your needs. This forms from the parent child dynamic growing up.

Watch for moments when you engage with children, when do they make your emotions grab. In those moments focus on the child's feelings and not their actions, like the broken cookie concept it is often not the thing they are triggering you about.

Try not to describe how they might be feeling as that can trigger distress from misattunement. Describe your sensory experience. "I see you are having a hard time", "I can feel how important this is to you" etc. Remind them that they are safe and use grounding wording. "I am here with you", "Things are different now, I'll keep you safe" . As they start to come back into balance move to explorative collaborative talk. "I wonder what we could do to xxx".

Reflect for yourself, explore what specific thing made your emotions grab, what does it relate back to? How can you meet that need in yourself, how can your partner help as a restorative relationship? In return how can you help your partner through moments where their emotions grab in relational situations.

Using a symbolic nonsense play game is a good way to repair and manage Emotional Bite. Playing the game when not in a rupture can help build confidence for the rupture that you will act the new way you have both been playing out in the silly game.

e.g The child gets to role play as what they think the parent is like in a rupture when your emotions bite, you get to play them (don't tease though)

At random times, get them to act like you and come up to you telling you off, you act like them, but run up for a hug. They can then act out the resolve they want from you. You then do that in a rupture with the roles switched back. Use play to build trust this way.

We should strive to be aware of the ways in which own childhood interferes with our ability to be effective parents and make conscious efforts to avoid passing on our own hurts to children.

Use Non-Sense & Power-Reversal play to build trust and lower any fear in the parent child relationship. Create games that model ruptures with silly playfulness.

Sometimes a child's play can go off track. In this instance a child would need to be retaught how to play with another person. The back and forth of sharing and adding ideas might need to be re-learnt. This could be due to the parent's play being too overstimulating, erratic and inconsistent, causing over-control, distrust or avoidance. Things like Occupational Therapy and DIRFloor play is beneficial to supporting parents with play.

If children are in overload, or unregulated they struggle to learn. Using visual aids like a mini white board to draw game ideas out and agree the game and rules together at the start can be an effective way to teach play concepts.

Create a game based on the child's special interests where the parent defines all of the rules of the game. For example: dinosaurs.

Explain the scenario and rules of the game:

1) The bed is a safari jeep, Dad/Mum will pretend to drive the jeep around a zoo of different dinosaurs, stopping at each dinosaur to feed them.

2) The child gets to be the different dinosaurs and act out being friendly or fierce whilst the parent tries to feed them.

3) The child can not get into the bed/jeep and has to stay on the floor, if they are a fierce dinosaur they can pretend to try and eat the parents from out of the jeep but not stepping into the jeep. etc.

Play one round of the game. Ask the child what did they like about it and if they have any ideas to add if you play the game again. This starts to restore power and control dynamics in play. Celebrate their suggestions and add theirs ideas into the game as you play it a second time.

Repeat again asking what other ideas the child might have, this time around also make your own suggestions and start to negotiate whilst ideas to add to the game.

Children can't imagine emotions. In asking a 7 year old to imagine feeling love they would see the image of a happy face, not the feeling of love in the body. They need to use an external anchor like a rock, picture. As children have magical thinking. Explaining to a child that crystals have magical powers and can make you feel stuff can be a good way to find something. Let the child browse the shop trying different crystals. A parents scarf or treasured item is another way. Another good way is nature and the golden hour. If your child is spiritual you can use faith/a higher being.

A child that had gone through the a trauma stated that the sunset at golden hour was so pretty that it made her feel "love" and that it made her feel that she was here to help protect nature and to give her the strength to face bad people.

Once you have established a way to feel the desired emotion, utilize it with the child, ask them to bring their thoughts to their hearts and feel the emotion via the object. Then they can imagine an ideal parent figure giving them that emotion. Or as a care giver you can point out that is how much you love them all the time, even at times you might not be able to show it. Start to teach that we are all fallible and to keep learning and trying.

There might be times when releasing of emotions isn't appropriate. e.g. on an airplane or class. In those moment a breathing game can help. If doing this, expect the calming to be only temporary and the emotions to come out at a later time.

When children have a nightly space to release emotions, they develop a capacity to balance their emotions through out the day, not having to release them in the moment knowing they have the space at home to release.

To teach the concepts, play this co-operative game when a child is happy. Add elements of power-reversal and non-sense and have the child blow you over or the animal impression being so scary and powerful that you run and hide! When utilizing in moments of distress, ask the child to pick their own animal breath to match their emotion. Lion for angry, Bunny or Bee for hyper and silly, Bear for sad. etc

Jung and Dr. Richard Schwartz's Inner family systems all speak of parts. When one goes though something traumatic, parts of their psych might freeze, protecting emotions hide more complex emotions.

Use cards to help children visually identify their own parts and personality. Note which cards children strongly reject. They can be good shadow work.

Astrology is an example of using animals to describe humanistic traits.

To help children connect to their more difficult parts use animals to play and act out things like their shadow parts.

E.g. An 8 year old girl developed a playful nickname pretending to be a rat with her teacher. The girl had been through a trauma and was scared of people like teachers. She would suppress emotions and try to be a perfectionist. Through the character, her cheeky mischievous side would come out via a form of nonsense attachment play between the teacher to process the fear of getting told off and breaking rules in playful ways whilst in character. Due to the play with the teacher, it also became a way to increase confidence with engaging in symbolic play with female peers vs only playing with boys. Other children wanted to join in that it became a playtime group game.

At home she had developed an angry protector. A bull symbolism was used to embrace that part of her as she was a Taurus star sign.

Learn when you have fallen into a Drama triangle.

Turn the roles into Creator, Coach & Challenger.

Use symbolic play with props to act out this dynamic and teach the child how to be the Creator in the moment. You might notice the child is playing out a similar theme to life stressors or relational dynamics. You can play several characters in the game with teddies/puppets to act out the roles on the triangle.

There are a number of different feeling wheels available online that can be used to trace secondary emotions back to primary emotions to help with awareness of ones emotional state.

When children are upset they might only be aware of a surface emotion, if you label their emotions whilst trying to provide balance of attention you risk misattunement. Wait until the evening to explore what they felt via a feelings wheel.

Use colors to describe emotional state. Blue for sadness, Red for Anger/over stimulation, Yellow for emotions starting to go out of balance, Green for calm and happy

Create collaborative passion projects with the teacher and child focusing on the child's strengths. The parent and child can work on the project at home, bringing the results to the teacher for the teacher to delight and celebrate and mentor future development of the skill, to be practiced further at home with the parent. e.g. building something, narrative writing.

To encourage friendship building, teachers can pair up children with similar interests for collaborative classroom activities. Children will then often take this relationship onto the playground. e.g. two children work together on a project before break. If they enjoyed working together, they will often ask each other to play together over the break period.

The first 10 minute segment of Kid's who can't features Frieda case. The next slide provides a suggestion on how it could be handled in an alternative, trauma-informed way, sensitive to a child's natural healing process.