Your Mind Matters With Maria Kempinska – Jan Stimpson & Mark Acres, Children’s Minds

Welcome to youo Mind Matters. My name is Dr. Maria Kempinska. I'm a trained psychotherapist and practitioner and a businesswoman. I think everybody knows the saying it's all in the mind, which I think up to a point is true. Today I'm discussing children and the question I'm going to ask of my two guests and I'm very happy to have my guest join me today is are children's minds the parents minds? I have great pleasure in introducing my first invited guest, Mark Acre, who with his wife has fostered 30 children, raised his own children and overcome his personal struggles. Along with Mark, we have Jan Stimson, who works with families and is a best selling author of two books, Raising Happy Children and Raising Happy Brothers and Sisters. Mark. But firstly, can we start with you, Mark, to tell me how you have experienced your life and work with children, please. Okay. Good morning everybody, or good afternoon. Yes, it's a long story and I've told it many times before in the past, but you never quite know which point to start from. So shall I start from the point of being a foster carer today? Because when as a young child I was from a broken home, I went into a children's home and that has. And then abused physically and emotionally by my stepmother for many years. But as an adult, my wife, who we met in 1982, always, she was a waitress at the time. She always wanted to be a foster carer. But we had two children and I didn't know how to bring children up because I didn't really have any experience or anything to guide from that I felt was good enough for my children. So I asked if we could wait and she waited for another 10 years and then we became foster carers and boy, did our life change. We both, I became very interested in attachment theory just through a chance meeting that we had as foster carers. And I began to read and read and experience and understand attachment theory on a level that I'd never. I never even knew about it before foster care. And nor did my borough, interestingly, very much know about attachment theory. And because I'm quite gregarious type of guy, I managed to persuade my borough to really sort of embrace attachment theory. And so attachment based parenting and attachment theory became a very usual word in our parenting and our life as foster carers. We look after mostly children from 0 to the age of small, but if they arrive to us at the age of two and they've already had two years of trauma and neglect and chaotic lifestyle, then their personalities are pretty much set. And we then experience them from that very raw moment. And I know when we talk about attachment theory, we talk about the caregiving from the parents perspective and from the child's perspective that the first two years being important. But when as foster carers, you get the children come to you and they're already chaotic, then you have to very quickly observe and understand the child. You have to see the child. You can't just see their behaviors, you have to see the child. So you have to see what else when they're active. And my experience as a carer is that the theme of this program is the child's mind, the parents mind. Well, you would think, yes, initially, yes, because the children are trying to recreate the world. When they come to us, they're trying to recreate the world, or I call it their normal in our house. So if a child has a chaotic normal, then they'll create that because they know how to exist in that world. And our world isn't like that. And all four of us today, our worlds are different from each other's. Even my world and Ruth's world is different from each other. You know, we've grown together over the last 38 years, but her world was set when before she was 2, and my world was set before I was 2. And the way we all see the world is different. So we as carers, we have to understand that right from the very start with the children we look after. And then we have to see past the behaviours that have been acted out in front of our eyes. And they can be very extreme. You know, I don't need to say too much because I can't, but they can be extremely difficult to manage at the time. And we then bring our childhoods with us to respond to those. Mark, can you say a little bit more about combining your own personal family with adopted family? Yes, yes. Well, Ruth and I, we have two children, birth children. Kate's 35, Jo's 32. We. Kate was 18 years old when we first fostered, and Jo is 16, nearly 16. And so she was just off to university and he was just doing his GCSEs. And we spoke, we became foster carers, about how life would change when we became foster carers. And they were very agreeable to it at the time. And so we felt very secure in the knowledge that our children would be able to manage because of the personalities that they have, they would be able to manage it. But what we don't realize at the very beginning is just how Much challenging relationship with foster children can affect your birth family. And it's only in later years that we've had conversations with both Kate and Jo about how difficult it actually was for them and how they felt unable to say anything at the time because they could see how passionate both Ruth and I were. But also they were still trying to live their lives. But we were not able to give them the kind of later childhood parenting support that we could have done had we have not been foster carers. Does that make any sense? Absolutely. Thanks, Mark. I mean, it's such a big story yours. I would love to and I will come back to that. And I just want to introduce Jan, but before I do, can I just say it's such a profound story and such a. I'm so pleased that you're here to talk about this. And also Jan Stimson, if you can now say a little bit about yourself, your experience with children and then we can come back and open up the discussion. But it's going, it's such a profound and deeply personal and so important this subject. So thanks, Jan. If you can go ahead and give us where you are. Yes, of course. Thank you, Mark. It's lovely listening to you. Yes. I came rather in a similar way really to this work, which is work with family and balancing I think between parent, whether that's foster parent, grandparent, will parent, mother, father and, and the child they have, the baby they have. And at whatever point that child came to them. And as Mark said, you know, if you, you start from the raw day of a two year old, it's different to giving birth and the moment of birth. But there I came to it for the same reason in a way that I didn't feel equipped in my own upbringing to look after my own children. And one of them had a very, very big challenge at birth and I just didn't feel adequate really to be able to cope with that. So I sought help, went to groups, started training and the more I learned, the more I realized that this whole complex area of therapy and support could be used by everybody and translated by everybody and made accessible. And that was my aim. It was a sort of real drive in life and I still have it that I believe changes so possible and I am so positive about that that I sort of interviewed everybody who was skilled and had experience, people like you, Mark, professionals, and just translated that in the best way I could for all parents, in whatever form the family took to translate and use on an everyday basis if it worked for them. And so they could Try it. And for me, personally, I do believe it transformed me as a parent. What I learned, it was like a light bulb going on that you could choose, that you could speak to children differently and on a much deeper level, where trauma has occurred, how much healing can take place of the behaviors of the actual personality and even the brain with neuroscience. So, yeah, it's a complete privilege for me to work in it at all. But I have to be totally honest. I learn all the time. You know, I'm far from perfect. And I think that's a good thing, that it's forever evolving for me. Really? Yeah. Jan, thank you. I was going to ask another question, but I think I want to dive straight into something you've brought up straight away, Jan. And I've. Obviously you touched upon Mark, which is the area of trauma. Mark, when children come into you, some of them, I take it, are traumatized and have had a traumatic start. And if you can go into that. And Jan, can you talk a little bit afterwards and just join in the discussion about trauma and the child and how do you settle them into a Mark in your home as a foster parent? And, Jan, how does a parent deal with trauma and the child? So, Mark, how do you cope with that? Well, we. We find that pretty much every child has a trauma. I mean, there are varying degrees of the trauma. I think all children have the trauma because they're basically separated from their birth family and brought to us. And so that. That is a trauma in itself, the trauma of separation. And. But the. But we have to understand that the children don't want to be with us. So they arrive, they want to be with mum and Dad. I remember when I was dropped off at the children's home, my dad just knocked on the door, the nurse came out, he said our names and he walked off. Can you just give us a bit more of a story around that, the fact that you were put into a children's home yourself? Well, my dad, God rest his soul, he was, you know, he was a lovely man and I loved him very much and I still do. And he was a night worker in the print. He worked. He was a compositor and he loved his job. It was his family. And he had three children, Mother and he had separated for whatever reason. And he tried to look after us on his own, working in the nighttime and with us during the day, and he just couldn't. He tried it for six months and he couldn't do it, so it nearly killed him. So he managed to find a private children's Home down in Hassocks. And he told us we were going to go to Brighton for the day. So off we went on the train with a suitcase. Didn't quite understand what the suitcase was for if we were just going for the day. And we got off at a separate, a different train station to Brian. I was three and a half at the time. And anyway we walked up the pathway to the children's home and he knocked on the door and as I say her name was Sister, she was in a white nurse's uniform. She came out and she said Mitchell and William, my name's William John Mark, everyone calls me Mark, my name's William. And just said that this is Mitchell and William Akers. And she said okay. And he just turned away and walked away. And I'd been bitten by a Labrador a week before and we sat in this room and a standard poodle walked in about two minutes after we got there. A great big golden Labrador. I thought it was going to kill me and the two of us were absolutely hysterical. Anyway, we stayed there for 18 months and that was that. But that moment it stayed with me as a trauma for a very long time until as a middle aged as late I must have been 45 years old. I mentioned it to my dad and he said to me, do you know, he said I was absolutely crying my eyes out. So I went from feeling abandoned to feeling sorry for my dad because I knew as a man how difficult that must have been for him to do and you know how his heart was broken. And I also found that in the last few months while he was dying that he paid. We weren't, we didn't go in as a children at risk, we were just placed in care and he paid for all three of us. Do you think that had he explained it would have made a difference? Because did he explain to you what was happening? It sounds as if you had no knowledge that you were going into a children's homemark. No, we had no knowledge. I can remember things that were happening before we were taken on that day to Hassock's And I remember we'd been during the day we were looked after by a friend of my dad's and then he would put us to bed. And in those days, you remember everybody used to live in a house and there was no separate front door and they was just lived upstairs. And as far as I'm aware we went to bed, he went to work and they just listened out for us and that's how it was. And he couldn't he just couldn't do it. So we were unaware that we were going. And are you different with your children? Yes, I am very different, yeah. Do you inform them more? I do, I keep. They. They actually say to me, dad, you know, come on, are you still talking? Yeah, I let them know. I mean, my dad, you know, he was blown up three times during the Second World War as a child and he had plenty of trauma in. In a way that. But he had love. I mean, his mum, my grandmother, absolutely adored him and he had a sister that was 12 years older than him and she absolutely adored him. So he was literally surrounded and engulfed in love. But it made him quite hedonistic as well. So he was very much a guy that went out and enjoyed himself and he could. He made friends very easily and so his social life was very important to him. And at the same time, he was in the Territorial army as well while I was young. So, yeah, he was very focused on doing what he wanted to do and he very rarely spoke about what happened to us. It was almost a taboo because of what came afterwards, the abuse from my stepmother. What came afterwards? We didn't really speak to. And I was talking the other day to Ruth and it, you know, I was saying we never actually spoke about anything because we didn't want to make dad feel bad, we didn't want to upset him. You know, we didn't want him to feel like we were struggling and we were kind of looking out for him as much as trying to deal with our own. He was going through it. It's a powerful thing you're talking about here. But, you know, the secrets that children keep, the things that are unspoken with children, which we'll come back to shortly. But, Jan, what's your experience of dealing with children with trauma? Is it better to talk to them? Is it better? You know, sort of. As Mark's experience was, he was put into a children's home without any explanation. What's your experience of trauma in children? It's quite a big question. I know. I'm going to just touch on one thing that you said, Mark, and it's an incredible story. It's so powerful and positive. But you said that the trauma is often in the parent as well as the child. And I think there's sort of this legacy of trauma is something that I work a lot in and it's very powerful and the breaking of those cycles because it's very hard to regulate ourselves if we have trauma stored in our emotions or our bodies or our brains, and it is quite common. You know, we do struggle with things in terms of specifically communication of something that would cause a child great distress or trauma. I think we have learned over the years, not perfectly, but we have learned that communication, honesty and gentleness in that communication is incredibly powerful in helping not take away the emotions because they're very real, those sort of emotions, but. But to. To stop them being shocked, the child being shocked. And that trauma being stored in an unconscious way or a way that's very, very traumatic to live with. And sometimes it gets stored for so long it only comes out when you have children or something else happens. But nonetheless it's there. I think that the communication, whilst it doesn't take away the seriousness of some things in life for all of us, it helps immensely with the healing or the acceptance afterwards. So yeah, I think Mark's story, that's probably one of the hardest ways to go into an environment that's very frightening, to not be tricked but just not be told about it because it's so confusing. And the trust in the parent who you clearly do love is thrown into question, rightly or wrongly. I mean, it sounds like your dad was in pieces, but without knowing that, it's a very, very hard thing to make sense of. And when we can't make sense of things, whether we're pre verbal or whether we're too young or whether they're too complex, we store them. And it does tend to shape us. Not always, but it does tend to. In my experience in therapy, when I go into adults who have experienced trauma as children, I love working with dreams because as you said, Jan, they're so unconscious, especially if you're pre verbal. And I actually believe that children are preverbal till the age of about eight, eight, they start really formulating the front, you know, the frontal lobe develops. And dreams often can bring things up for adults that they experienced when they were children. And I think that sometimes, regardless of how protected we think we help our children and protect our children, we can't protect them from everything. So you try to minimize the experience of trauma, but dreams can actually recover and uncover. And through uncovering, you recover. That's really interesting actually dreams, because the unconscious is the difficult part. Can I just say a little bit about sort of the approach of therapy for me with trauma? Is that a good time to. It's a good time to do it because I think that there's. I mean I'm a sound play therapist for younger children and that like the dream work, Maria is very much about unconscious creating a Worldview of yourself and how you fit into it. And, Mark, you started by saying you often have a child that comes in and they try and recreate their world in your home. Yes. And that's what. That's exactly where you start working with sound play therapy. Because when they can see their world, however young, you can start healing parts of it. So. But the other, the other. The thing I really wanted to say is that obviously some of the techniques and the strategies and the approaches, I think are really good, as I wouldn't work in them that I've learned and I can communicate. But there's, you know, this is a really real thing with trauma, that it can be quite simple. And a home like you're providing marks, that's got kindness in it and patience, touch that's safe and encouragement, and parents that regulate themselves, that's the healing. You know, you can help parents hugely with things that, you know, they can work with discipline and not punishment. And so many areas that I believe in that really support the parents and the child. But those healing things are often quite simple. It is kindness and safety and being patient and unconditional love. And it's just very, very hard for all of us to deliver that because of where we come from. So to sort of arrive in your home and you've worked through those things, Mark, that's so healing, I think. Yeah. And taking that forward then, Mark, and asking you specifically, because you and Ruth are foster carers, how did you. Before you took children in? You were aware, I take it, and you are made aware what type of children, what their background is. So how do you prepare your home for children who've come from, frankly, from families that cannot face looking after children or they have to be taken away from the family. How do you prepare your home and give us the basic structure of the mind of a young child that comes into your home? Because I know some of the parents are drug takers or alcoholics and so on. Yeah, okay. Well, what happens generally is that the children, for whatever reason, arrive to our house late afternoon, early evening. And it's mostly because the proceedings have taken that time during the day where the social workers need to get permission from the court to remove the children from the home. And it often takes a long time during the day for that to happen. So they arrive to us in the afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, and the first thing we do is just to let them breathe in the house. Now, often they're running around with their coat, you know, if they can speak. I want my mum going home and they'll be crying or they'll say, as you said, Jan, they'll freeze. And they would do nothing. I think you said that. But the. The first thing we do is instill routine. So the first night they come in, they, because they're traumatized, because they're completely confused, they go to bed. We give them something to eat if they want, if they don't, they don't have to eat. We give them a drink if they want, if they don't, they don't have to. We, if they, if they don't feel comfortable with us cleaning them or washing them, then they can go. They go to bed at 7 o'. Clock. So the first night they go to bed at 7 o', clock, if they haven't arrived after that, obviously. And then the second night they go to bed at 7 o'. Clock. So we instill the routine right at the start. So the following morning they wake up, we give them breakfast and we give them space to look around, just to take in the surroundings. People always say that our house is a very friendly, It's a nice house, it's warm and it's welcoming. And I think this structure likes us. I think that helps. So everybody feels at home in here. And so we have a routine right at the start. And for that I thank CBeebies. The bedtime hour, we can introduce storytelling, reading books to them, singing nursery rhymes, calming down after the bath. So dinner times around about half four to quarter past five, that sort of time. Then they have a bit of play and then quarter six upstairs for a bath, six o', clock, back down again. And depending on the children, and it's on in the background, the CBeebies programs will be on. They can either watch them or they don't. They can play with some toys, we can read a story. You just cannot get past. Sorry. And how do the parents who have had experiences or they've been addicted to drugs or alcohol, how does that affect a child's mind, a brain, actually, and mind? Well, I think with alcohol it's affected during pregnancy. You know, if they're drinking during pregnancy, then the brain structure is different. And, you know, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is a real condition. It's an umbrella condition. Fas. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the physical manifestation of that. And you can look at a child and you can see that a child, because of certain physical traits that, that they have, that you can see that they have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. But if the umbrella term is Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and you can't see that always Sometimes the physical attributes aren't there, but the alcohol has affected the brain throughout the pregnancy. So if a child is. The mathematical brain is being developed whilst the drink's been taken, then that's probably going to be affected by the alcohol that's in the amniotic sac. Similarly with heart or lungs or kidneys or legs or arms. You know, wherever the pregnancy is, wherever the alcohol is taken throughout the pregnancy, it will affect the child. So a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is the only condition that shows traits from all of the others. Add, adhd, odd, Asperger's. It's the only one that shows all of those symptoms. Or none of them. Or none of them. You might have some. You know, my daughters have it and they are absolutely fantastic at maths. She says she's not, but I think she's amazing. Her sister can't do maths in the same way. In my experience. I don't know if you've experienced this and when you recognize it. Jan, when you do sound play with your children, does your approach to sound play change when you've got a child who has got ADHD or some spectrum disorder? Yeah, good question. I mean, I think they're continuums. I do think that there's lots of scales where lots of us find ourselves with different parts of things. And then of course, there's extreme and there's definitely related things that have happened. Yes, I think my approach can be slightly different. But I just wanted to say, actually, and it's answering the question is that responsiveness to the children we have is so important and sort of bringing out the best of them, but accepting how they are in a way. So, you know, there are very serious developmental delays and complications for a baby, as we all know, who's had a lot of alcohol in the womb through the mother. So I do think that we have to be responsive to who's in front of us and how we help them. And yes, my approach does change and respond to whatever child is in front of me. But I also think and believe quite strongly that improvements can be incredible. I mean, it is always a surprise to me how much when I meet a parent or a child, where they are on any scale and how much they can move doesn't really matter where they start, though obviously we'd like it to be better. But wherever they start, it is so possible to move people, move families, you know, members of that family, children and how they're behaving. And one of the key things, I think, you know this and you, Maria, in your work is how they feel about themselves. So as parents and as therapists, how you feel about yourself as a parent and as a child in the world is so critical to how we respond. So we don't all have to have perfect skills and perfect performance in all areas. You know, we don't. We know that. But how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves in the world, very shaped by our home environment, I think. So there's that and there's also, I mean, the prevention part, which my heart breaks a bit, Mark, that your dad didn't get a bit more help. You know, it just wasn't around then. But obviously if we help a mother who is drinking in pregnancy or even afterwards and a father, there are preventions that can take place and improvements. That means separation isn't always necessary or, you know, hopefully not necessary. And that. That's really important to me too, that we do support people who are struggling. You know, just becoming a parent doesn't stop you suddenly struggling, does it? No. Can I just add to that because ask you both a question about that, especially with your work and being so hands on. Mark, very often I've heard from parents that say, I don't want to talk to the social services about my child because I'm afraid they will take the child away and they don't bring in therapy into the home. And taking your point further, both of everybody's points really about the home life and how crucial it is and how a child misses the family and so on. Do you think there should be more therapy in the home as opposed to taking a child out? Given a child? Yes, definitely. Well, supportive therapy. Sorry, Mark, you go ahead. Yes, well, as a foster carer, once they come into care, obviously the law is set so that the children need to have contact with their birth family until the point of adoption, if they go to adoption, because they may go home. So they don't want to be the children to be separated physically and emotionally from their birth parents. But there is a big but to this and it's very something I have to. As a foster carer, I have to include in the parenting of the children that we look after. Because when the children have contact with their birth family, there are so many elements that come into play. For instance, I remember a long time ago, a little girl, we were looking after her and her sister. She really did take to Ruth. She didn't like me very much, but she. We had a bit of fun, but she didn't really take to me in a way that I would have I couldn't understand why she didn't, but. And I know why afterwards. So one day we were sitting in contact with birth family and I said to her parent, said to the little girl, tell Mum and Dad what you did on Friday. And we'd been away and we had a great time and we had lots of fun and there was lots of laughter. And the child looked at me as if I'd absolutely betrayed her because she didn't want her parents to know she was having a good time. So she felt like she had to be as dour as they were and as sad as they were because she could see the sadness in them. And she looked at me and I learned that was very early on in our time as carers, and I learned never, ever, ever to put the children in that position again, to actually say, yeah, we had a great time on Friday. Yeah, that's the secrets, Maria, isn't it, that you were talking about earlier? Yes, children keep. Yeah, they protect their parents. Yeah, but it's so. But, but in the same way that parents will say to the children, oh, we got a new dog, or we went away for the week, we're going away on Friday. They're quite happy to do that, but their children don't want us to tell their parents that they're having a good time. No, but coming back to this point of the secrets that children keep in a bigger sense. So that is such a. We all keep secrets from our parents. Doesn't matter what sort of family you come from. Yeah. And it is that you favor one parent potentially against another, and that might change depending on all sorts of different relationships and who you are as a child. But coming back to the hidden thoughts and feelings when a child and I will come back to the role of parents and taking things forward and involving the parents in this. But when you uncover the secrets from children, Mark and Jan, at what point do you tell the parents, if at all, is it enough just to reveal it to you? You, Mark, as a carer, foster carer, and at that point, your loco parentis, you are the parent. And Jan, to you as a therapist, at what point do you reveal, at what age do you make that decision for them? Right. Well, when, when a child is looked after, we have a lot of things that we have to take into account. And because it's a case in proceedings, in court proceedings, we have to be very mindful of what the children say. So if they say something that is, we call it disclosure. If they give, make a disclosure, and they often choose to do it when you're doing something else. You might be driving down the road and they'll just say, oh, by the way this happened. And so we as foster carers we have to be very careful what we do next. And what we have to do then is write down exactly what the child said in the child's words. We can't improve the grammar, we can't improve the spelling. If they use a wrong word, we have to say and write down exactly what the child said because that can be used in court. I mean, we had a child who told us about a physical incident that happened to her literally when the I was upstairs and the guardian ad litem was around visiting and we'd gone up, I'd gone upstairs with the child and the guardian and Ruth were having a chat and then the child disclosed to me something and then I quickly wrote it down and I took it. Amazingly, the guardian was there. So I took it down to the guardian and said this is what the child has just said. And what she just said was used in court and it was corroborated with, from the birth mother about it was true that what had happened had happened. So it was used in court. So when they do share secrets, we have to write them down and we have to share it with our social worker or somebody in the system. It's not something that you can't keep a secret. We don't keep secrets in my house. And is it always right to do that, Mark? Well, morally maybe sometimes you can not say something to protect somebody else. But when it comes to foster care, you have to share it. You can't keep it a secret because otherwise you're failing. Because if something happens again in the future and you haven't recorded it, then what do you do? You know, you're, you're not doing your role, your job. And Jan, in your experience, do you, do you as a therapist of a child keep secrets? Not secrets now in the room of therapy, your it's confidentiality. At what point do you involve the parent in something you're told? It's more complex. The role of a foster carer has a very important safety role, but as a report back mechanism I think that's very difficult but also essential. Often as a therapist it's slightly different I think because the trust is essential in the relationship with the child and the parent to build in order for healing to take place. And it is complex. For example, a unit I worked in where the police were involved as well, it was a very close unit with social workers and police and if the child was a witness at that point, we couldn't work as therapists, sound therapists at that point because we could lead the child. So there was complex issues. I think that they are always complex. I think for me personally there have been times when secrets have been essential to open in a family and what I would always try and do is build the trust and build the relationships so that they're revealed in a safe way that involves the safety particularly of the person sharing the secret that can be the parent or the child, but normally it's a child and it can also be the wider family. I've had it where one of the grandparents was the problem and was identified in sound therapy with the child and the parents didn't know that. So sometimes it takes longer, it's not a reporting back mechanism, more as an informed situation to help heal that dynamic. Yeah, can I. Yeah, can I just ask you to go into that a little bit, Jan? How do you do that? What is the process that you would use if a child has just revealed something and as you say, it's the grandparent. In that particular case I was working with a child who was very young but verbal, so six and seven years old, absent father and a mother that had been banished from the family and a very strong grandmother who was, as I said, some of the cause of extreme distress for the child. So it was a matter of building the trust with the child and working more with the absent father, involving the mother back in the family so that a dynamic could be re established that was safe for the child, which would then allow communication about what had been happening either within the family, the nuclear family or with me and the nuclear family. So it's not so much reporting or tell telling for me, but it's. It's finding the best solution through to create a better family environment for that child, if it's possible. So do you bring all. And that's where we differ because yes, we can't do the repair stuff. Sorry John, just to finalise on that, do you bring all the family in together into your therapy room? It varies. Actually it does vary. I do tend to respond to what I think would work best. It's not always possible, if I'm honest. That particular situation I was very lucky that the parents both reconnected and therefore there was a way to do it with them and the child. And yes, everyone was involved at one point, but generally the main work then happened in rebuilding the nuclear family, the smaller family, and giving them strength in their own understanding. Of what was going on and it worked very well. It can be a very different situation, as Mark says, where things are broken down more and often you can't bring all the members of a family together and sometimes it's not appropriate. It really does depend on, you know, sorry to be vague and I appreciate I am being vague because I have to be careful what I disclose, but I. Yes, I think you have to respond to each family and each child and each parent, whatever. As, as an individual, I don't think you can have absolute rules on what works because we're all so different. But just to take that a step forward. Yeah, I have. You're breaking. I have experienced people saying, but you're not allowed to do that through, you know, through therapeutic teaching. And I'm not allowed to do what sort of change the rules. The therapy rules are 50 minute session. You don't tell parents, you don't do this and you don't do that. There's an outside belief as to how therapy should happen. Not for you, Jan, but. So there's a theory out there in the world, the social, in society of what we should as therapists and what we should not do. And I think what you're talking about is using your own therapeutic knowledge to create new rules that suit the family as opposed to what has been superimposed on the theory. Not exactly in the sense that I was working within a very big structure then. So it wasn't sort of a distance, a individual decision. Exactly like that. You just think what's best. You, you know, I was within a. In a team and there were different modalities in that team and different professionals. And it was done very steadily over time. I do personally you're talking about, you know, should a therapy session be absolutely like this and dictated exactly to the time and be cut off even in moments of great breakthrough then I think you and I probably both agree that there are exceptions to that that are very important. But there's so many different structures of therapy at the moment and that was slightly different because it was within a team. So I think we do have to be careful that things are done carefully and professionally. But I don't believe there are rules that fit everybody in life. No, I think, I think that's quite a difficult thing to make everybody fit into a space like that, isn't it? So coming back to you, Mark, you've now settled a child or children. Do you often have more than one child with you? Yes, we're approved for. I'm going to say this Very. I'm just going to throw in a three. Oh, my God. And so we're naught to three. And we the moment we have a sibling group of two, but we could also take a baby as well. But then we've also got our twins. So you've now created a family setup. You've introduced them into your family, you've got a routine and the child has to leave and go back to their parent or are going to be adopted. Well, it's. Yeah. So what happens? Yeah, Can I just. Sorry, you're breaking up. Can I just ask you when you send, when they are ready to leave, how much of what you've done with them goes with them? Do you hand on notes? Do you tell them what they've got used to? Yeah, yeah. So what happens is that once the final hearing has happened and so that the local authority has a full care order and then the children are, it's decided that they're going to say move to adoption. So they put the contact with the birth family, which continues the trauma more often than not, which is a shame, but it does. If they're not going to go home, the trauma continues and then it's gradually reduced. So that's when I feel as a foster carer, as much as we're doing as much work as we can from day one, the real work really happens for the settling into a family and how to settle into a family. That really happens once the final hearing has happened. So that could be a period of maybe two, three plus months after the full care order is issued that we can then really start working securely with the children so that when they do move on, they're not moving on from a point of trauma. So when a child placed with an adoptive family, we have a transition period where the birth family, the adoption family, we meet them, they come to our house and they slowly are introduced to the children. And I kind of liken it to a scale that at the beginning of the transition, we as foster carers are the ones with all the power and we open our home up to the adopters. They come in and we say, look, this is your home now for the time, you know, this is the child's home. So this is your home. So you can go wherever you want to in the home. You can cook food if you want, you can lounge around in the front room, put them to bed, bathroom, all these things. We show them how to do it, we tell them what the children's likes and dislikes are and they literally become part of our Family for the time that they're in transition. And that enables the child to feel as secure as possible, given that they've come from a traumatic past. But they've generally been with us for 6, 9, 12, 15, 2 years, months. You know, it varies, but they have become part of our family. But we know that the whole process is just a transition. But when the adoptive family come, that is an intense transition. And the child, they have to go through that and they have to manage it. And we, you know, we withdraw very gradually throughout the process. So by the end of the transition, the child has gone from us waking them up to their adoptive family. Waking them up to the adoptive family, taking them out all day and coming back and feeding them and getting them ready for bed and putting them in bed. And we're just bystanders. We're just in another room. And that's how it works. So that the care responsibilities shift from us being in control to the adopters being in control at the end. You know what, Mark? Listening to you, wouldn't it be amazing if we had families like you to train parents? I mean, just, you know, all of us having children, just if we don't have the support of a family like that, just to be in your home and see how you are with children. It just occurs to me that our society expects so much of us when we have a baby and that just gradual understanding of how you are with this particular child. I know you're doing it for the, you know, gentleness and ease the trauma of the child, but just to give that those parents time to get to know what to do and learn parenting skills and how the child responds to things. I think it would be an amazing thing if we set up more support like that, because Mark is going to be going into the mode of teaching. So at this point, because I think, as you say, Jan, it's so important. Yeah. And I think it's such a big experience in our society. Our society is the way we are at the moment. People are very isolated. Yes. And I think that you have families that feel, you know, I've heard, and we had children. When you have children, it's like, oh, my goodness, what do I do now? You know, and in fact, most of most of my work, and I've chosen it that way, is about enabling parents to help their children. And it is about. It is teaching. It is, you know, gently showing how things work and what they could try and what the outcomes are. And. And it is teaching, and it's equipping someone to Be the best parent they can be. And so they're the expert, not me like that. That's the, that's my whole aim of my work too. Yeah. And to enable parents to do it, do it better so they feel better in it as well as the children. One of my, somebody I know is also a night sleeping sort of trainer, but she's a nurse who teaches children or parents how to train their children to sleep. So parents now are expected if they can't cope with this, to go to somebody and pay them to come in and help their child sleep. Because the older. I could just tell him a few jokes, Maria. You know, it is because a lot of families coming back to the isolation, whether you are in need and the, you know, sort of the health worker steps in and takes your child away, which they do and they continue to look after. But the ordinary parent, if you take it, what we're learning here, for the ordinary parent to help a child, as you're saying, if they can get advice from somebody like Mark, how to organize the day. But if you feel lost and alone, who do you turn exactly? And that's, that's the biggest reason I started this work because that's how I felt and it's the biggest amount of work I do. I mean, even simple things like Mark said earlier, you come as a parent with trauma in you quite often, or at least you come with what you've been exposed to. So to sort of pause. I mean, for example, you know, I got into a big debate years ago about whether hitting children worked or not. And I didn't think it did. I think punishment backfired. But I did understand that parents needed to understand how discipline worked, how, you know, the warmth and regularity and routine and training and teaching and it was essential that it was replaced by. With something. But we do tend to come our own children with our own patterns and often, I mean, I've heard so many parents say it, working with them. I sound like my mum or I just sound like I've just done what my dad did and that, that breaking that is sort of if people want to and if it's needed and it's not always, but it is incredibly rewarding. So yeah, that, that's something I feel really, really passionate about. So how do you deal? Can I just ask you then, Jan, and your opinion, Mark, because you've had lots of experience and I think this is crucial to your work as well. Mark. But how do you deal with parents who have opposing views and a child is in the middle of being, you know, forced to decide, oh, do I do it, Daddy? Do I do it? Well, actually, the other thing I was going to say then, and I'm really quite sad about this, is I don't think fathers really get a lot of focus. And I love the fact that Mark's talking about, you know, his role, because I think the masculine is quite missing and the focus isn't so great, especially in divorce. And I think that working with two parents who have different views is obvious. Fine. Like, we're with people and that's learning about the world. As long as it's, you know, managed and communicated in a way like every other skill. So that. That's definitely okay. You can work with that. And families thrive with very different approaches. What I think is harder is the absence. And there is just a lot of absence of good masculine, I think. Well, yeah, that's. I think I agree with that. But coming back to. In the communication with a child, you're at home and the mother says one thing and the father disagrees, or the father says one thing and the mother disagrees, what happens? I mean, it's not great, but it's also. There's a great bit of research that talks about not in front of the children. And it's this sort of theory that if we hide everything, you know, we argue in private and stuff, the kids will be all right. And it's just not true. You know, what they need to see is difference and resolution, conflict and conflict resolved in a way that's peaceful or helpful, not aggressive and not one person winning all the time. So, you know, it isn't great when the mum and dad decided disagree in some ways, but if it's done in the right way, it's actually very healthy because everybody argues and everybody has different viewpoints, and that model is really important. We're not talking about a sanitiser. Oh, yes, dear, you know, no, dear, doesn't work. So. So I'm kind of. I think that's quite healthy. You know, there's movement in families and worldviews that are positive for them because relationships are challenging and the world is challenging, I think. And it's the positiveness is using those things and yes, perhaps helping parents communicate it better. And then they're modeling for their children really positively. So, yeah, I think that happens a lot. You're absolutely right, Janet. But I think children, because they're survivors, they are very good at noticing when a parent is disagreeing with another parent. Yeah, definitely. All of us are only ever trying to meet our Own needs. That's what we're all trying to do throughout our lives and stay safe. Absolutely safe. And, and so when a child is thinking, well, you know, I've asked Mum for that, but I'm going to just go up and ask dad because he's a bit softer or vice versa. And so what I do to, to, to stop that, because it happens all the time and it's happened throughout all the children I've looked after, I say, I'm just going to go and check with Ruth. Just go and check. Not because I'm negating responsibility, but what I'm doing is I'm stopping the child from playing one off against the other. Yeah, absolutely. Really good. And I think that is the. I think that is the training that we need to take into families, how to have a united front in that respect with a child so they know that kids can play one off against another. Just to ask another question about if there is a problem in the family and a parent is advised to go into therapy, how long does it take before. Is that the holy grail? Is parenting into therapy the answer? No, it isn't. I think, you know, to be absolutely honest, if we all had great families and support mechanisms around us and we weren't so isolated, isolated, like you say, Maria, that's the best way. But I think that, you know, therapy, the sort of work I do, which is sort of more teaching and support and belief in people and protection, I think it is necessary and I don't think there's enough of it. I think that, you know, this is more sort of hands on parental support. Yes. Identifying if there's something deep that's happened in a traumatic way to clear, but in order that they can be better parents with the relationships that have got in front of them, it's quite active. It's not sort of just sitting and talking, it's, you know, how do we make this better? What do we need to look at to help to free the parent up, to be happier with the child, to relieve some of the symptoms in the child that are very distressing for the child and the parent. So, yeah, I think it's a. Definitely, I would like to see more of it, but I think it's one option and there are many others. There are many others and some people don't need that sort of support at all. People are born to happy families with great skills and have happy families themselves. And that does exist. I mean, it didn't happen quite to me that way or you, Mark. But when it isn't in place. I think there are immensely powerful things we can do to heal relationships, to heal people, and that's what I'm really passionate about. So from that point of view, when it's needed, yes. But it's not always needed. No. And it's not always the answer. No. So my passion was always, you know, I did. Although my parents had nothing, I did have a lot of stability. My parents were both traumatized by the war, but my mother was a very stable mother. She was highly intelligent, very much below her ability, but she was incredibly stable and correct. Created a routine, but very fortunate. But you don't know that as a child, you know, we didn't have any money, so, you know, whereas other people were going off and having holidays or new clothes, I didn't have any clothes or holidays or, you know, we were limited in many, many ways, so brought up six of them in one room and so on. But yes, the love was there and the care and the structure was there, which I now know very well how important that is and should this. And when I trained to teach, what was the biggest disappointment for me and why I stopped teaching was that this was not taught in schools. How to parent, how to create a structure at home. What does it mean to be relationship skills. Amazing idea. It's a good idea. Yeah, it's a really good idea. Let's do it. But you know, how much of society needs to get involved in that and can we make a difference at this point, Mark, can you make a difference? And we're just coming to the end of this amazing program, this amazing discussion. There's so much more to be said. Do you think something can be done? I think they can. I think that if we are individually making ourselves the best that we can be, I think that that saved me just be the best. Best me that I can be. And that means being compassionate and caring and listening and understanding and being angry and being happy and being sad and allowing all the emotions to happen, being able to regulate yourself and quickly for you, Jan, how would you finalise, I think what Mark just said, actually, I think there's simple things. Caring, giving as much as you can, improving yourself, but I also think just giving the belief in other people. So much of my work is finding a parent and believing in them. Life can get better. Just to sort of round up, thank you, both of you, Mark and Jan, for this amazing conversation. It's clear your mind absolutely does matter. Thank you to all the listeners for joining and if you have any questions, please contact Women's radio station and men's radio station to take this conversation further. Thank you yet again. Thank you, Maria. Thank you, Maria.