Ep23 Play and Attachment; an interview with Colby Pearce

Podcast Description:
This week, I had the privilege of interviewing Colby Pearce, who shares his wealth of experience working with care-experienced families. Colby dives deep into the importance of attachment, emphasising that connection and consistency are the most crucial aspects. He also discusses the programs he's developed to support professionals in providing care that fosters resilience and aids in repairing the effects of early-life adversity. Listen to hear Colby’s valuable insights into supporting families and building stronger, more resilient communities.

web:     securestart.com.au
blog:    colbypearce.net

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSm5x0fmZ2BU8vp7xmG4aOumz7nMMVcsi

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Transcript

Play and Attachment; an interview with Colby Pearce

Philippa: [00:00:00] Welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy with me Philippa. And this week my guest is Colby Pierce and he is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Kaurna (pronounced Garna). Nurungga (pronounced Nurunga), Nukunu (pronounced Nookanoo) in the land known as Australia. Across the last 30 years, Colby has worked continuously with children and young people recovering from a tough start to life, and adults who interact with them in care and professional roles.

He maintains three busy psychotherapy clinics. But also finds time to write and deliver programs intended to enhance awareness of the experienced needs and therapeutic care of young people who have experienced complex childhood drama, including in Ireland. Colby also [00:01:00] works with individuals and teams who support the stabilization of kinship care arrangements transition.

From and post guardianship care and family reunification. Colby is also looking to expand his work with individuals and teams working in child welfare and write more. And Colby's also written several books, which when we put the bio up, we'll add, some links to, at the end. So Colby, I think I probably did, a really poor job at pro at the pronunciation of some of those places.

So maybe you could help me and then tell me where they where they actually are. 

Colby: Yeah, sure. Thank you Philip, and thank you for having me on. I think they're a bit like Irish and perhaps some other languages, around the world where the way it's spelled often doesn't, have much relationship with how it's pronounced.

So I apologize. I [00:02:00] set you a little bit of a task there so they are the names of the Aboriginal communities that resided in the various places in which I live and work. So they're the traditional, owners or custodians of those lands. So the people of the, the Kaurna people lived primarily around Adelaide, which is where I live here in South Australia. I have a weekend place that I go to on, the Murray River. It's a bit over an hour away. And that's the ancestral lands of the Ngarrindjeri people and I do regional clinics on Nurungga and Nukunu land, and we acknowledge this, these lands in respect of the fact that the Aboriginal people have resided on these lands for millennia, prior to white settlement.

Philippa: Okay. And when we think of Australia, it's vast compared to the uk. And are you in the south, the [00:03:00] northeast, the west? Where are, these areas? 

Colby: I'm in the middle at the bottom, so to speak. Okay. So South Australia is like the mid, the middle section of Australia and Adelaide is on the coast or probably a third of the way cross from the east.

And we had the distinction of being the dry state on the dry continent on earth. We have, we're in the midst of a heat wave or a heat wave is really building at the moment. We've got a cyclone up in Queensland, which is a couple of days drive away. And yeah, and we're got highly elevated temperatures, although I often say people wonder about the weather here and how hot it is and how we cope.

And I would say that I would prefer 35 degree Celsius here to. High twenties to 30 in the uk 'cause it's dry here. Much more bearable. I, the closeness in the uk, the humidity, I can't stand that. No. 

Philippa: Yeah. Yeah. 

Colby: [00:04:00] But where I live in a very dry place. 

Philippa: Okay. And is that where neighbors comes from?

Adelaide? No, 

Colby: Melbourne. Melbourne, me, Victoria, Melbourne. Oh, okay. I haven't watched that for a long time. I believe time. 

Philippa: Okay. 

Colby: I don't want people to get the wrong idea that I 

Philippa: no, that's 

Colby: fair. I might have watched a few episodes right at the start when I was young. Okay. 

Philippa: And you, and when I read that out, it said you also do some work in Ireland.

So how I have done, 

Colby: yeah. 

Philippa: How did that come about? 

Colby: Largely through, I guess my writing and, so there was, a trainer in Ireland who picked up. Some of my staff, and interacted with me and interacted with the local Toula fostering service and out of that was became initially a three year project to roll out one of my programs to all Foster cares.

This was in Donal, in county Donal in Northwest [00:05:00] Ireland. And this year is the 10th year of the rollout. But I used to go over and assist with largely with the staff training. We would do a yearly staff training in the ula. Not just the fostering service, but other teams within too.

So Ula being the National Child Protection Agency within the Republic of Ireland. I did that from 2015 through to 2018, so four years. And while on those trips, I would deliver training and sessions for other organizations and in other locations around Ireland. But sadly, I haven't been back since be there was a big disruption in the world over a few years and that limited travel opportunities.

But I really I hope to get back there if not later this year, but next year. 

Philippa: Okay. 

Colby: And the uk of course. 

Philippa: Yeah. So do you come and work over in the UK as well? 

Colby: I've been largely a tourist. The [00:06:00] main work that I have done historically in the UK was in Northern Ireland, so just over the border where I would each year when I came over, I delivered training to a a disability charities staff and laterally the parents of children involved in the service.

And I currently, I supervise online two responsible individuals, nominated individuals. Can't remember which of the two I've seen both. You would know, you would perhaps know what I mean by that. But they are the two directors of leaving care residential facilities or transition from Care Re in, in the north of England.

Philippa: Yeah. So responsible individuals that's right. So you, I know you've written lots of books and lots of programs, and we're gonna talk about that, but I just wonder how did you get into this work? Have you, were you always [00:07:00] interested in it? Did you fall into it? What happened?

Colby: I think it was a mixture of both. I, when I was growing up I grew up in a family where service to others was really just part of life. I was very much involved in the Anglican church or Church of England there, but Anglican Church here growing up and in youth ministry and held leadership positions.

In there. I thought of myself as probably working primarily with teens because that was where I mostly had leadership roles within the church. And I had an uncle who was a clinical psychologist, and he was the youngest of all my uncles and aunts or relatives being 16 years older than me, but, still relatively youthful.

Youthful. And he was a favorite of mine and I'm probably speaking for my sisters, but I think they'd agree, but, he was the favorite uncle and he was a clinical psychologist, so I was, I had that interest [00:08:00] there I worked when I, so to become a clinical psychologist, you had to do an ordinary degree, an honors degree and a master's degree.

So between my honors degree and master's degree, I had a couple of years away, there was a gap between the honors and the master's. And I started working in child and adolescent mental health research. For the local cams. I think CAMS is a acronym that's known not only here but also in the uk.

So I was a researcher for the director there, and he was very much interested in 10 suicide. And it was in that context that I became more, I guess exposed to the role of family connectedness and family relationships and the impact of that on mental health and suicidality. And was also ex I really should look this up again.

It's been so many, so long, and I have been asked on other podcasts, but Durkheim, Emil Durkheim, great philosopher, wrote [00:09:00] philosopher and sociologist, wrote a book called Suicide. I think it was published in the 1890s. He had a construct. I probably butcher referring to, I recall it as being anime or something like that.

But anyway, the construct was intended to refer to social connectedness, and it was his thesis that people who have low social connectedness or are at greater risk of engaging in suicidal behavior. So that in turn, led me to be quite interested in attachment and attachment theory. And then it went on from there. And it was by accident or design after I'd finished my master's degree we traveled for a while, my wife and I, and when we came back, psychologists positions were very difficult to get at that time here. And I was a young male [00:10:00] maybe people didn't want to take much of a chance on me.

So I ended up getting my first job in our most disadvantaged community, working for the local Child Protection Authority. And I've never really left that community. I've left it physically but I've brought the clients with me. 

Yeah. 

When I've done that. But I back, on and off over the last 30 years, I've, I have been back in and working in that community.

Colby: So yeah that's I guess how I I don't know if you'd call that a brief version or a longer version. There's a much longer version, I can tell you that. 

Philippa: No, that's great. I think what I've learned interviewing people is that lots of people, although it feels like they fall into this work, there's actually quite a part of their childhood or teens leads them to this, it's almost like a vocation in some ways. That there's something, present that wants people to connect and be [00:11:00] part of. Even if you don't know, this is where I'm gonna be. 

Colby: I certainly belie Yeah I, that would be my observation as well. And there was research done at one stage. I can't quote who the researchers were, but I remember it being talked about when I was studying that looked into the background of people who enter the helping professions and and typically found that people who had been thrust in a role of looking after others from an earlier age were I, were more represented in the those who enter the helping professions. And as I said I took on leadership roles. I always felt that was something that I needed to do. And that, I developed a lot as a person. It was really a good thing for me growing up that I had those opportunities because there was some vexed relationships growing up and not very pleasant relational experiences growing up.

So they often say be the adult that you wished you [00:12:00] had in your life. Growing up and that's something that I really hold an awareness of every day. And so yeah, I think that it, it's that relief of suffering for children and young people that is, a major motivating or driving factor in my ongoing work in this area after 30 years, having my beard turned white and my hair fall out nonetheless. 

Philippa: Yeah. And I think, you're talking about that connectedness and that, the guy who was doing the re research really right back in the 18 hundreds that he, they were saying actually, lack of connection, really impacts our mental health and the more positive connections you have, the greater that is. And I wonder if even at a young age, play plays part of that, that being able to connect through [00:13:00] play, whether that be sport or in, in the church groups and things like that.

I imagine that you did community activities together and that builds that connectiveness. 

Colby: Yeah. There's no doubt that notwithstanding that the adversities that were present in my life growing up those, that, those involvements that I had in the church and I've written about this I think in the book about attach, about resilience.

But yes those roles provided an important buffer for the other lists. Yeah, that's good. Experiences growing up, 

Philippa: and you've written several books, haven't you? I know The one that I use quite often and recommend and will purchase and give to families that I'm working with is an introduction to attachment.

Yeah. And they're quite, for me, they're, they are very easily digested. Understood. But very comprehensive. [00:14:00] Really. It gives you a really good overview. You've done one on resilience, so you've written quite a few books, Colby, 

Colby: they're the two. The attachment book has gone to two editions and I always encourage people to purchase and read the second edition.

There are things that people loved about the first edition that I did not, so I tried to get a lot of that out. But the publisher was not, didn't, wouldn't let me. But the second edition was less an update and probably more a rewrite. Yeah. From my perspective. Yeah. And I, I. I've written a few periodical articles as well.

Back in the day I used to do publish more regularly with, in that regard. Yeah. And but probably in the last 10 years or so, most of my writing has been either through just blogs more recently I write and then speak to what I write in videos that go on YouTube, but programs is where I devote much of [00:15:00] my writing time now.

Philippa: So can you explain a bit about what your programs are? 'cause you said you, you do one over in Allen, so tell us a bit about that. 

Colby: Yeah I guess one of the things that. Occurred to me fairly, quite a long time ago. Is that training that is offered and delivered? I've been around for a long time, since there was very little training that was offered or very little good training.

But my observation very early on was training tended to focus a lot on what people needed to know and less so on what people needed to do. It was in that context that I began to first write and then write programs about not only what people needed to know and but also about what I thought people needed to do. I spent a lot of time reflecting on what I was learning about the roles that I was, or roles that I was performing. I at the beginning I thought attachment was really important and I read a lot [00:16:00] about attachment and kind of the thing that I think is really important about attachment is how it influences the way in which children and young people and in turn adults approach life and relationships and how attachment relationships and attachment style. And I've got some perhaps different perspectives about those two things. But how they impact the way in which a, a child or young person approaches life and relationships. So attachment theory was very much my first theoretical orientation to the work that I did.

Philippa: Colby just for people that maybe don't are, aren't in our profession and don't really understand what we mean by attachment theory. Could you just give a really brief, so if it, a parent was listening to this and they were thinking, what do you mean an attachment theory? What would you say to a parent who's, who's lessening? 

Colby: Yeah. So attachment refers to the de dependency relationship that a infant [00:17:00] child young person develops towards their primary caregiver in the first instance and towards other adults who are consistent recurrent figures in their life.

And it is thought to have stemmed from a an innate. Survival instinct in our species, not just our species. We see it in other species across the animal kingdom. We're we're the young orient to an adult who is better able to cope with and manage the challenges and dangers of the world. We form attachments through the lifespan. We form attachments in our adult life to our life partners. But at its core, attachment relates to, yeah, that relationship that we develop with someone who helps us through [00:18:00] life. And the infant and children form attachments. They form multiple attachments.

They form attachments to their primary caregivers. Usually mom and dad, not always in, some places have different parenting customs to what we do in white Western countries. But they form attachments to, to their main care givers and caretakers. And we, they tend to be referred to as primary attachment relationships, and they're seen as being the most influential over a child's attachment style.

But we also know that children and young people form lots of attachment or they are capable of forming lots of attachment relationships and they can differ. So attachment, there are classifications that have been developed. About to through observation of children relating with adults.

So there's different types of attachment [00:19:00] style that have been noted that probably the longest lasting and most used is secure attachment. Insecure, avoidant, insecure, ambivalent, and disorganized. Now, children can form and one of those types of attachments to each adult who has continuity and consistency in their life.

So it could be their parents, grandparents as well, aunts and uncles childcare workers and so on. And but the atta, the type of attachment they develop to each of those individuals is heavily influenced by their experience of that relationship. So children and young people can have a secure attachment. To an adult and a insecure avoidant attachment to another adult and so on. And ultimately their attachment style is [00:20:00] a is representative of all of those attachment relationships. So you mentioned earlier you, you referred to chil children having lots of attachment relationships and the reality is that they can have more or less and the way in which they approach life and relationships is very much influenced by all of those experiences.

So attachment I, you can have a secure attachment. You can also have a secure attachment style if enough of your secure attachment, if enough of your attachments are secure ones, you can still be secure if you have several secure attachments and maybe a, an. Avoidant one to someone because, because often parents can, are not always on the same page when they're parenting children. And but overall attachment security where there's a mix is probably, you've gotta think about attachments, a spectrum with secure at one end and problematic disordered at the other. And a [00:21:00] young person sits where we sit, not just as children and young people, but into our adult life as well. Where we sit on that continuum is a reflection of all our attachment experiences. 

Philippa: I was gonna say, and for children and young people, it's like making a blueprint of what relationships are like. Is that it? So they might have seven relationships and four of them give them this consistent and nurturing one. One of them gives it sometimes and then maybe sometimes is not able to for whatever reason. And then there might be a couple that may be a bit avoidant or a bit more chaotic, but overall their blueprint says relationships are consistent, predictable, and worth engaging in. I get something from it.

And therefore, as they grow, as long as that, those are continually reinforced in a way [00:22:00] that is where they hold is that right's? 

Colby: Yeah, absolutely. Something. Yeah. It's. I think the best, as I said, the best way to think about attachment is as a continuum of, of depth and strength if you like and type. And a person who has a, has had a varied history of attachment relationships is probably you can probably anticipate that they're not gonna be necessarily as secure in their attachment as a person who's had primarily good experiences in their dependency relationships with adults. And yeah. That's why I say and you said it earlier, I think that, children can have a number of attachment relationships and the more they have, the better, more positive experiences they have, the better where they're variable. One of the, you were just mentioning about have the expectations, the blueprint, if children have any, if there's any [00:23:00] uncertainty based on, mom's like this, but dad's like that and granny's like that, and and at childcare, they're not well staffed and, I sit in the corner and up to left to my own device a lot of time. But if in those circumstances, uncertainty creeps in. 

Think we are, we're programmed to make certainties as much as we can. A certainty can be, it's difficult to predict how adults are going to be. 

Philippa: Yeah. 

Colby: That's a very, that that's a problematic scenario. And it really very much underpins why, getting back to your question before, why it's important to develop training packages for places like foster care and kinship care and other training packages that I've developed in that space, because consistency of relational experience is really [00:24:00] important. So there's a construct referred to as primary task, and I used to be able to remember the name starts with a g used to be able to remember the not. Name of the fellow who first wrote about it. But anyway, your primary task is that most important thing that you do upon which all else sits. Consistency, I think is close to being the primary task that we have in caring for children. But it is, but it probably isn't. I think the, our primary task is connection. 

Philippa: Yeah. The con 

Colby: consistency runs a very close second. So what hap, just jumping back again to where children have any uncertainty, they'll test adults. And sadly what tends to happen is that the negative gets confirmed more than the positive. Inconsistency of relational experience is a big problem. Because when children try to reconcile those differences. They [00:25:00] more often than not will be confirming the negative. 

Philippa: Yeah. 

Colby: The adults can't always be relied upon.

Philippa: Yeah. 

Colby: You need to steer clear of them or control, or be exert some coercive controlling behaviors towards them to ensure that your needs are met. 

Philippa: And that's what I was gonna say. It's about needs, isn't it? When we are talking about attachment it, we are talking about those things that keep us alive. 'cause when we're babies, when we're toddlers, we can't do that for cells. So we are talking about food, connection, shelter, warmth, that, that regulation of. Of, of being hot and cold, being hungry and thirsty that we actually rely on another human being, which is our adult. Yeah. To meet those very primary needs. And what we want in a positive attachment relationship is that they are met predictably, consistently with connection. [00:26:00] So it's, that's when a baby's being fed, they're being held, they're being lookeded at, they're being talked to and rather than they're, sometimes they're fed and sometimes they're not.

Sometimes they're smiled at, sometimes they're not. And that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about whether they get a PlayStation or whether they get the newish rattle. It's this very basic, this is what keeps me alive. 

Colby: Yeah, that's right. Attachment, as I said, was the primary theoretical orientation. I then probably in the late nineties, was influenced by the early work of Bruce Perry. But I did, I haven't gone down that path as much as others do. I've really stuck to central nervous system, arousal or level of activation and the relationship between that and, attachment and anxiety proneness, which then anxiety proneness then translates into behaviors of concern associated with the fight, flight, freeze response.

But just picking up what you said about needs and Bowlby was who [00:27:00] Bowlby was the founder, the father of attachment. He was the a psychiatrist who back in the 1930s, started to think about, write about, talk about these relationships, these important relationships that he was observing children young children to have towards their primary caregivers. And he was also, he worked in an a facility for young people who were, very problematic in their behaviors in the community. And he was able, he was reflecting on the impact of not having enough of those sorts of experiences. Now, the thing I would say about Bulbie also is that he didn't confine himself to the contemporary psychoanalytic thinking at the time to understand what he was observing in children's relationships, including the impact of those four separations of children from parents during the blitz where children were sent out to live in the country away from their parents who were in, in the big cities in [00:28:00] London.

Philippa: So this is John Bowlby, isn't it? And Mary they did those Yeah. Mary, those Mary, yeah. 

Colby: Yeah. Mary Ainsworth. And so John was very much he was some, someone who drew knowledge from various areas. He didn't just find himself. And so I found and people find this somewhat perplexing but one of the things that getting back to needs provision and the regularity and consistency of that, there's a lot to be learned from behaviorist knowledge, in that area and the impact of inconsistent reinforcement schedules on, on behavior. For example, I was working with intercountry adoption or in the intercountry adoption area for a number of years, and I was noticing the children who are coming out of orphan orphanages in third world countries into quite an enriched family and fa and care environment.

And they were still behaving for a long time as [00:29:00] if they were still in a inconsistently responding environment. And so I was thinking you know what explains that? And sure enough, the work of Skinner and the work on reinforcement schedules is actually very helpful to understand that because a lot of people are focused on, the rats and the pigeons in Skinner's experiments that, that are on a consistent reinforcement schedule and how well they learn and how, for example, if you stop feeding them for pressing a lever or a bar, they'll soon stop the behavior. And this is, this has had big implications, confirmatory implications for how, for conventional behavior management. But less attention has been paid to the animals in his experiments that were on inconsistent reinforcement schedules.

Now, why they're in near interesting to me is because that describes the kids I work with it. They haven't been raised by wolves. They haven't had no care. I've yet to meet a child [00:30:00] who's had no care in the problematic care environment from which they were placed away. Yeah. It the main issue was that they, sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't get care. Yeah. And what Skinner's work if you look at that particular group shows is that those is that where there is an incon inconsistent responsiveness, that learning is slow. That you can rely on this behavior to get your needs met. But once you have a sense that you can get it, sometimes you go at it like a bullet, a gate.

You keep going and going and going, even if you, even though you don't always get a response. You just keep going until you, you think you can. And now this is. This is endemic to the experience of adoptive parents, foster parents, kinship carers that, when I've done survey, I did a big survey of them a few years ago, it confirmed what I suspected would be the case, which is the biggest behavioral challenge [00:31:00] that they have is how demanding the children are.

And this is, I think, very well understood in terms of operant conditioning. So anyway, to get back to your earlier question I had all these insights and knowledge. I put them, I wrote about them. I wrote about 'em as a model, the AAA model, attachment, arousal, accessibility to needs provision is what I refer to as the operant stuff.

And wrote about that in my first edition of the attachment book, the subsequent paper after that. And then, brought that all together into a package called the AAA Model of Therapeutic Care. Could talk, we probably don't have time to talk about all of that and the AAA is what they've been implementing in Ireland for the last 10 years.

But going back to the point I made about consistency and primary tasks, consistency. As I said, it's a toss up between consistent and connection. It's connection because connection will always win over we, as an organism we function best in consistent environments.

We can also function [00:32:00] reasonably well in a consistently bad environment. Our primary task is not just to provide a consistent environment, it's to provide a consistently good environment with, where this connection and where there's other things that I'm interested in as well. And I suppose, 

Philippa: can I just, because that's one of the things that.

Often when I'm working with families who are then caring for children who've come from tricky backgrounds and had a hard, harder time, is that they feel like they're drawn back into the arguments or the, that their household is becoming something they don't want it to be. And I think just linking to what you are saying there is that children find a way to survive in a. In a home that provides consistency and that consistency hopefully is caring, nurturing, predictable, and they're getting all their needs met, but it can be consistent [00:33:00] and predictable in aggression and violence and neglect.

And they find a way, again, when you talked about the nervous system and thing, they find a way to survive in that don't they's. And actually, that's right. That in itself is the consistent safety. So when you are then in a household that is providing the opposite, almost it can feel unsafe because they actually don't have the skills to survive that in that.

Is that right? 

Colby: That's right. So they it can feel to the young people more threatening relationship and relational connection is I think the primary trigger. And I wrote about this in a, in one of my articles, periodical articles some years ago. Relationships are the primary trigger. So people get very focused on the behaviors of our young people. And we oftentimes want them to look beyond the behavior to what is [00:34:00] going on for the child. And we want them to respond therapeutically to the reasons for those behaviors. And somewhere in the middle there, people get interested on what is has triggered the behavior.

And I would say that on a great many occasions, you'll find that it was relational closeness that was the trigger. And yeah, many of the other triggers are very difficult to discern what set the children off. But you're right that, a there are certain environments that feel more familiar and more survivable, and they're not the kinds of environments that we would want the children to grow up in to independence.

Philippa: And when you say relational closeness do you mean that they've come from maybe a place where the attachment figure hasn't been as present as you'd want them to be? And then they are then living with adults [00:35:00] that want that closeness, but actually it can feel scary or unfamiliar or odd.

So they push away against that connective relationship. 

Colby: Yeah, so suffocating where it's just been that they've not had an adult particularly attentive and responsive to them. But for many of our children who de who display quite disordered attachment behavior the reality is that the adults have been inattentive and or overly or triggered by the child, triggered by the child's attempts to get comfort.

And usually that they have been a source of fear and distress and hurt. And so you can imagine if a child's been hurt, deeply hurt in their, those first dependency relationships, they're they're gonna find relational connection quite triggering again, drawing on a tradition outside of perhaps [00:36:00] attachment theory proper, so to speak I think about the the experience of the child in those circumstances where relational connection is the trigger for them. And I think that's, most of our children who've experienced abuse and neglect, they have a phobia of it. It's a phobia. And the most evidence-based treatment of phobias is exposure. So what we wanna do is actually expose them to relational connection as much as possible. But we wanna do it in such a way that it is low dose. It kind of sneaks in under under their guard, under their defenses. The only place where it's not low dose, I think is in therapy. Therapy is a high at least the therapy that I do is a very high dose of relational connection. Play is one of those that play is probably the best way, in my view, [00:37:00] to provide, re to expose the child to relational connection. Without them defending against that connection. Yeah. I would have, so just to finish off on those different packages and consistency so I've got d packages for the home, for school, for professionals, including how you do therapy with these children and young people. How you, you help caregivers, as a professional, how you help caregivers of these children and young people. And much of what I talk about is about how you respond to needs, how you acknowledge the experience and how you interact with the child, with interest, how you be present with the child. And those things translate very, you can see these, I import those important things in play. 

Philippa: Yeah. 

Colby: So in therapy is very playful, so to speak. But what my ultimate goal in my writing is to, as much as possible facilitate a [00:38:00] consistent relational experience between the home, the school, and the therapist consulting room. Consistent exposure. Low grade, except for when they're interacting with me. Low intensity or what's the word I used and I'm looking for, again, it's gone from my head. Low dose exposure. 

Philippa: Julie and I often talk about play, doesn't have to be an intense 30 minutes piece of, we're gonna get out the Lego or the Barbies and we're gonna sit and play. And it can be two minutes of blowing the bubbles out of the sink or a quick game of thumb wars or, a kick about in the garden. Or I guess where you guys are, a run on the beach in a build, in a sandcastle. And those few moments where we're completely regulated, we're in a whole brain is going to. Often provide, for children where relationships are more scary, those [00:39:00] moments of regulated connection is gonna just keep building. I just, I think about it. Somebody once said to me, it's like throwing pebbles in a pond and you can't see the pebbles until one day you've thrown that many in, they start to peak out the top, but you've got to throw a lot in and those two minutes, five minutes connections are like, those pebbles aren't they get going in.

That's 

Colby: a fantastic, yeah, that's a fantastic metaphor for what it is. I I do a similar sort of of task in my training, but at the point, the same point is, and I would apply this to, all families and this is what parenting is all about the growing environment that you put into place.

And we have certain instincts, but also if we have a mind and we have experiences and if we have a mind too, we can have a look at what guidance is out there. But we, the guidance is about the [00:40:00] environment that we provide. And it's a bit like being a farmer, like you can put the fences around the field, you can turn over the soil, you can fertilize, you can't do anything about, necessarily about locusts or things of that nature.

But the farmer then seeds and then waits. And can't control the weather either, but just waits to see what happens. But the better you'd think, the better the growing environment you'd think the better the outcome. And that probably holds true to a greater or lesser extent because there are still things that you can't control.

Other things that, as I said, the weather or a plague. Locust or the like. But yeah, but play is a critical aspect of that growing environment. Not least because of what I said before is that children's guard is often down in those circumstances and they'll accept relational connection. But when we're playing with the children and I use acronyms a lot in my care. In my [00:41:00] care is one of them in my training packages. But an acronym that I like to use these days is Aura and Aura, not the new age kind of definition of aura, although that's why I use it 'cause I'm a little bit mischievous. But aura in the sense that felt quality of a person or a place. The person's experience, their aura, the aura of this place, the aura of this person and what we want in conventional nurturing care environments. And we, what we want enriched not in a high dose way, but enriched in where there's, whether a child or young people is re person is recovering from a tough start to life is we want them to experience, the adults are accessible.

They can be depended on in that way. The adults do understand what your needs are. They will respond to them in their words, in, in their actions, and in their expressed emotions. That, and the adults are attuned to your emotional [00:42:00] experience, accessible, understanding, responsive and attune. That's Aura, that's the Aura acronym.

That's what we want children to experience that. And that's what happens in play. In play. We are accessible. We are there for the child. For as little as five minutes a day. There is there is various indications in the research literature that as little I think it's Parent-Child Interaction therapy prescribes five minutes of play a day as homework. And that. That's a separate longer conversation about whether advice comes from. But yes, as you say, it doesn't need to be hours and hours. It can be moments and moments. But in those moments, the child experiences you ideally as present and accessible 'cause you naturally fall into sync with each other during play. So the child feels that you experiencing what I'm experiencing. You get me, you understand me, you are, you truly here with [00:43:00] me imply. And the children need that. All children need that. So that meets some very important needs for them, to that connection that we have for them, with them in play, reassures them that they can depend on us.

That they can depend on us to understand their experience and respond to it. That they can depend on us to understand and their emotions and respond to their emotions. And in turn, they feel experience themself as a person of worth, as being acceptable, as being capable. Because Kobe's terrible at games, Kolby always loses.

I do always lose at the start, I often say at the children I work with, adults will say, why don't, why do you let 'em win all the time? And I said they need to learn how to be a winner before they can learn how to be a loser. 

Philippa: Yeah, definitely. 

Colby: Yeah. 

Philippa: I think it's an art Colby to lose [00:44:00] UNO and Jenga every time.

Yeah. And I, when you've got the winning hand and you just want to win and then you have to lose, don't you? Do you know what I mean? Or Jenga. Yeah. It's an art in itself I think to lose so consistently. 

Colby: Yeah. The fun, funniest story is one where, I used to play balloon volleyball quite regularly with pretty much all the children that I saw or that I see. And I'm getting a bit too old for that now, but although I'm not really, I could do it. But anyway, the, I had one young person who'd been coming along to see me for a number of years, and balloon volleyball was just their favorite thing to do, and they turned to their foster. This is, I don't know, it was a significant moment, but we're in the reception.

It was, might have been just before they turned 18, and were aging out of care as such. They turned to their mum. We were having a conversation about the years of [00:45:00] involvement and they said, yeah, and balloon volleyball and thank you Colby for hyping her up before she came back and Right. Which I wasn't trying to do. But anyway, and the balloon volleyball's always been this big, a big hit. And she said, yeah, and I always won. And I said, and what was the score? She was, she needed to feel like a winner. The score was always 1514, 

Philippa: always. Was it? Always 

Colby: for years. 

Philippa: Yeah. And it is so nice to, and I think that, that's the conversation. I therapy I do is thera play. So we lose a lot of things like thumb wars and cotton ball hockey and all those sorts of things. And often the conversation that I'll have with parents is it's not the winning or losing, it's the connection. That's right. It's the moment of joy that you can have in celebrating the win with your child. It's not the losing and [00:46:00] they, that joy that they can feel that you have in them is priceless, isn't it? And you'd lose a million times and to see that little smile or that, that connection, and that's what we want them to have, isn't it? 

Colby: Yeah. So trust in adults, but also they need to leave. They need, yeah. We need to, we need them to feel like winners. Because winners will go will explore the world with less anxiety and ex exploration is the key ingredient for realizing your potential developmental potential. If they leave us, leave home, leave the therapy room feeling like winners, then they'll be more persistent in their endeavors at school, for example.

Yeah I've seen, and I've seen I used to do a lot of observations of parent-child interactions in the child protection context and just seeing the looks on children's [00:47:00] face when they're crushed in a game of, by their parents. 'cause their parents are just not, they just haven't had a explain to them, haven't feel fully understood that you need to win.

That's what we do with little ones, isn't it? We wouldn't crush a very young child in an activity, make them feel small and bad. We build them up, we build them up, we build them up, we build them up and when they're confident in themselves and their abilities, then we might we might make things a little bit harder for them and a little bit harder for them.

Yeah. 

Philippa: I think they get. They get to that themselves, don't they? I you just think if we are generous with our children, we are modeling, generosity. And that is about winning. That is about sharing. That is about time. But if we can be generous with our children, then we model that this is what relationships are like. And then what I see even in therapy is, I play to of war and, I always fall over and they always win. And [00:48:00] then slowly over time I see them whisper to their parent, let win this time. Let the time. Yes. And they then let me win, and fall over and I'll. Rejoice in winning and then I'll say, I'll say, I think you let me win then, didn't you? But it's that generosity of spirit, isn't it? Yeah. That if we are generous then they, they can be generous back. 

Colby: So that comes back to as well to what we were saying earlier about needs is when our cup is full, we can be generous. When we're not worried about how full our cup is, when, when we're not worried about accessibility to needs provision, we can be generous. 

Philippa: Yeah. So just the very last question, 'cause we're coming to the end. I could ask you a million more, but I suppose I just, it's, it is just that ending on hope really, that, children and families that have maybe started with, tricky times, [00:49:00] that have had a harder life and their attachments maybe have been. Quite hard and insecure with consistent, predictable care. Do you think that, I'm hoping the answer's yes, Colby but that the, that when we pour all this in it, it creates change so that as they go into adulthood, as they go into their own adult relationships and their own relationships with their own children that we can make that difference.

Colby: Yeah. I, yeah, absolutely. Is it, your question is it recoverable? And it is, I think there are certain things that speed up the process or not in the absence of those things. And I think I ultimately some of the things that, that, that do speed up the process is having everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, basically school home therapist room.

[00:50:00] As I said, that's I've had programs, to try and facilitate that consistency. But I also think a lot about the one good adult research. So the one good adult research is the research that showed that as long as a child or young person has had someone in their life and adult who is there, who they can rely on to be there for them, to understand them and to respond to them in times in tough times that they are less likely to experience mental health issues addict addiction and other behavioral issues and suicidal behavior and there's various research around that shows that distinction. And I think that it, that, that works where you're looking at large populations. I think having at least one good adult in the life of our children and young people is a good thing. But it's the slow path. It's the slow path to change the quicker path [00:51:00] to recovery is having a number of good adults in their life. 

Philippa: Yeah. Yeah. So that's fantastic. Co co. Thank you very much. So your programs, if I, you've got a website, so if I put a link in the buy in the description of this episode, people who want to find out more from your books or your programs, they can just go onto your website and they'll be able to access all the information they need from there.

Colby: Yeah, the Secure Start that way. Secure Start website. 

Philippa: The Secure Start website. Yeah. I'll put a link in the bio. So thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. And if people even enjoyed this podcast, please hit subscribe or and yeah. Thank you very much, Kobe. 

Colby: You're welcome.