EP33 Play and NVR; an Interview with Penny Willis

In this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy, Philippa welcomes Penny from NVR Northampton to delve into the concept of Nonviolent Resistance (NVR) as a parenting approach. They discuss the origins of NVR, its application to different family dynamics, and how it provides caregivers with strategies to stand against harmful behaviours in a caring and collective manner. The episode explores key concepts like parental presence, relational safety, and the importance of community support in addressing child-to-parent violence, dysregulation, and other behavioural challenges.

Website: https://www.nvrnorthampton.co.uk/

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Transcript

Play and NVR; an interview with Penny Willis

Philippa: [00:00:00] welcome to this week's episode of Pondering Play and Therapy with me Philippa. And this week my guest is Penny from NVR Northampton, which is Nonviolent Resistance. So welcome Penny. Thanks for joining our podcast. Thank you. Alright, so NVR, is nonviolent resistance. Mm-hmm. So what does that mean for our listeners that are listening?

What, what does that really mean? 

Penny: Yeah. Yeah. It's that elevator pitch that we've been looking for ages. The how to encapsulate, what is a 10 week training to foundation level and or how do you summarize that? I was at, Haim Omer book launch online yesterday. Oma is the family therapist in Israel who came up with nonviolent resistance as a parenting approach in around the early two thousands.

So he is written about 15 books since, and the [00:01:00] latest one, the NVR case book, I think it's called he launched yesterday. So while he was there and it wasn't tons of people, we were able to ask questions. So I said, oh, no, it was, it was my colleague Donna who asked that this one for an elevator pitch for NVR because we get asked this a lot. So Dan Dulberger also an NVR practitioner therapist was doing the interview because Haim's very hard of hearing and Dan had to describe to Hiem what an elevator pitch was. And it's certainly not what I'm doing right now, but he'd never, never heard of it.

So he explained you, you get the distance from like the ground floor to wherever you are going to explain to this very busy person what your pitch is anyway. Right. So he, Hiem had to think about it. Oh, I'd never heard of that. And his elevator, which was seven and. 

Philippa: Okay, well you can give it a go if you wanna hope, right?

Penny: No, no. Well, Dan [00:02:00] watched and you could see him. It was getting to the point where we started almost giggling. 'cause it, you know, it got longer and longer and longer and it's a really tall building that I am obviously hand in mind. But Dan summarized afterwards and said his elevator pitch is really short, was NVR helps caregivers stand against harm Caringly and together.

Okay. Okay, so we put, we also put the seven minutes of Hiam through ai. Okay, and seven and a half minutes condensed into two sentences. NVR helps parents who feel they've lost control, connection, or hope with their child to reclaim their presence, not through force, but with calm, strength, support, and persistent care.

It replaces [00:03:00] isolation with community, fear, with purpose, and creates a path for rebuilding trust, respect, and belonging in the family. Okay. You've done the foundation level training Philippa. Do you think that encapsulates much of

Philippa: I think it's hard, isn't it, to kind of sum up what it is, but it's, I'm getting, it's aimed at people who are caring, looking after the main adults in a child or young person's life.

Yep. And what they're experiencing is children who are dysregulated. Mm-hmm. And that dysregulation is coming in more of maybe aggressive behaviors. And that doesn't necessarily have to be towards a parent. It may be towards items in the house. It may be towards their own things. It may be towards themselves.

Yeah. [00:04:00] And this is a way I think about it, is that then the, those parents, those caregivers can support that child in those big feelings with those dysregulation without themselves joining in the conflict Yeah. And escalating the conflict. 

Penny: Yeah. 

Philippa: And it's a way of kind of knowing what our parental presence can provide.

And the biggest thing about that is the safety that that child needs. Yes. Whether that's physical safety actually, because actually they're gonna hurt themselves or somebody else. How do we provide that physical safety? 

Penny: Mm. 

Philippa: Emotional safety and relational safety. Because I guess for me, one of the big things that I like about NVR is it prioritizes the child, parent relationship and how that remains intact yeah. And that some of these strategies, some of the interventions, that's what they're there to do is prioritize that [00:05:00] relationship as a way of supporting the child. 

Penny: Yeah. Would that be and re rebuild? Yeah. See, we're getting there now, aren't we? Yeah. But it's really tall building and that elevator skirt a long way.

Absolutely it can be rebuilding a relationship that's gone wrong. It can be establishing a relationship that never was. We've, we do lots of work with foster carers and adoptive parents, so, establishing a relationship that never was often, as you say, in the context of, of developmental and relational trauma.

But it was originally developed exactly for, child to parent violence. And then kind of expanded to any caregiver. So teachers, uh, residential care, home staff, and then adapted to all sorts of parenting and child raising dilemmas. So beyond challenging behaviors, violence, self-destructive behaviors now into eating disorders anxiety [00:06:00] based difficulties entitled dependent.

So adults who stay in the home and, you know, demand that their, you know, their 70-year-old parents, they're still bringing their dinner to that, those kind of problems. And suicide and self-harm. There's been a lot of work in NVR around that. What myself and my colleague Donna are working on at the moment is adapting the approach for situations where parental alienation is suspected, where people either feel that their ex is turning the children against them, or that parent is being accused of turning their children against the other parents.

So with non-violence helps because it brings in community. It's a very collective community problem solving way of doing things. It raises people's presence in their circles gives [00:07:00] them courage, hope and a feeling of being supported, which then, you know, it improves how the young person regards that parent as a, a person of worth with a credible voice.

So, yeah, it's very powerful. 

Philippa: So when you talk about non-violence, are you talking about non-violence of the adult or the person kind of in that position of caring? Or are you talking about no violence from the child or the teen or the, the, the adult that's being cared for where I think what is the nonviolence bit, 

Penny: it's a controversial term.

And increasingly I'm hearing people changing it. Talking about a new authority, so a way of maintaining a, like I said, a credible authority, but in a new way, not, not the old version of kind of coercive control and force. Connecting authority is another one. But for [00:08:00] me, there's something about holding onto the nonviolent resistance and.

Building people's awareness of demean rather than, you know, kind of adjusting it to the audience too much. But for me, it's a very nonviolent, in a very broad sense. Not, so not, we are talking 

Philippa: about the adult. Are we, so we are talking about adult, we're talking about 

Penny: the yeah. The, yeah, mainly the adult, the people of influence in the child's life.

And that can be peers. If we are looking at some of the work done in schools, how peer groups are kind of recruited into the nonviolent resistance of a someone else's bullying. So yeah, it, it can be children and young people themselves. We've got NVR in kind of reverse where. Children are supported to resist the violence or the destructive behaviors of their parents who get dysregulated.

So yeah, the non-violence is a refusal to join a pattern of coercive control. So the violence in the broadest sense is [00:09:00] trying to make somebody do what you want them to do. Otherwise they will suffer pain in some way. Physical, emotional, social, humiliation is, can be seen as a, an act of violence.

Very broad. But yeah, it, it's doing things in, as Dan Berger described it, caringly together.

Philippa: So it's that, I suppose I'm just thinking if parents are listening to this, it's trying to really help them understand what we are talking about. And that is the, so some of it, it's not just about whether you smack your child, which hopefully people are, aren't doing now.

So it's not. The violence can be the, get to your room. You, you know, you horrible child. Why have you, you know, that kind of Yeah. Thing that creates, emotional harm to someone. Yes. It, it, it's, yeah. It's that emotional harm or that emotional rejection that can come sometimes damage 

Penny: to the relationship.

Yeah. 

Philippa: But sometimes it's really understandable Penny, isn't [00:10:00] it? When you are at the end of your blinking tether and you've had a whole weekend. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, we've got the school summer holidays coming up and you really don't feel that you've got any other kind of strategies left to, to manage the behavior that's going on.

Sometimes you do say things that you don't mean, don't you? And you maybe do. Put in consequences or, punishments as you know, as, as we would call them that you wouldn't maybe necessarily want to do, but you feel a bit helpless in that, well, what else do I do? How else do I manage this? So we revert back to maybe some of these old very draconian or very behavioral responses.

And I guess NVR is a way of trying to help people outta those very traditional types of behavior and think about it in a different way. Would that be right? 

Penny: [00:11:00] Definitely, I mean, those, like you say, they're very kind of old authority responses. The punishment, the becoming the frightening parent in order to get control.

And as you say, parents can't be expected to be perfect. Bud type characters who never show emotion. And of course Willcock would say that that would be failing the child anyway. We can't raise our children to think that the world is full of people who are never going to ruffle their feathers at all.

So, you know, we are, we are not looking for perfection, but awareness of doing those relational repairs. If you do find yourself dysregulated and parenting in a way that does not really honor how you want to, yeah, and, and they're often a kind of stress response and the idea that you've got to fix it now you've got to make this child stop doing this thing or start doing this thing.

Otherwise, you are not a good enough parent. There's a feeling of kind of [00:12:00] humiliation and isolation. If I am a good enough parent, then I should be able to control this child on my own. And for me, that was never the way, you know, the, the human species raised their children as, as far as I know, we did it collectively.

We did it in small tribes and children were bounced on many knees. And, but now we kind of live in boxes where we cut off and there's what, what hyam calls the privacy reflex where we, you know, we keep it all behind closed doors and we don't tell anyone that there's any problems going on. And it, it's kind of breaking down those con, those confinements and bringing in older wisdoms ways of parenting so that, yeah, you are supported and when you feel yourself getting to that burnout phase, you are aware of it.

And there are people who will come in. And, you know, assist you, [00:13:00] but it's training parents to be able to recognize where that support is already existing that they may not be utilizing because of the privacy reflex or the feeling that, everybody is busy and they've got their own problems and I should be able to manage this and, and kind of coaching them to plug into resources.

It becomes mutual. You know, it becomes a, you know, it, it's community changing. The ripples improve things for everybody really. 

Philippa: I think sometimes parents can think that, well, actually they don't misbehave at scouts or at guides. Yeah. So I don't want them to know about this part of my child. I want to protect that environment for them.

Mm-hmm. So I, I'm not gonna talk to them about it because actually yeah, we, we, we don't want those to know, but, but maybe school see it. So, so it's okay to talk, talk about it at school. Would that be what NVR would say is that the places where [00:14:00] these behaviors don't happen, we don't share it and we just share it with the people that already know.

Penny: No, um, no. It, it's important to kind of overcome that shame, that privacy reflex, that idea that your child will be judged or criminalized or, you know, and that that's a danger. But we coach parents how to ask for help in a way that is helpful to them and to think about which people in these areas.

These, school clubs, after school clubs, um, their family, their friends, the, the church, whatever communities they're plugged into, who in those circles are what we would call a, a safe supporter. Somebody who's not going to be critical and prescriptive and overbearing and judgemental and punishing.

And so we, we, we work with a parent to find a starting point. Who do [00:15:00] you feel, who gives you a felt sense of being accepted and supported and okay. And those are the kind of people that we want to bring closer and nurture those relationships and bring in those supports. But a child who experiences carving up the world into adults who get this version of me and adults who get this version of me, you know, is missing out on, uh, a feeling of being.

Contained and held consistently everywhere. And NVR kind of creates, uh, ways of communicating to the child that we are all singing off the same hymn sheet here, and that is, we care about you, you matter to us, you are one of us, and this isn't how we behave. Guess we're here to help. 

Philippa: I guess also, if you are having to hold it in, in some places, whether that's school or with grandparents or in a club, I suppose I think about it a little bit, [00:16:00] like having a, a bottle pot with a lid on it is just slowly being shaken Yeah.

In these environments. And eventually the lid does come off, doesn't it? And that may be at home, it may be at school, it may be somewhere, but eventually that pop is going to explode. Yeah. So I guess what you are saying is, is if, if all the supporters. Can know all of the child. Then actually the child doesn't have to kinda keep the lid on in all places.

That actually the strategies can support the child in every area. Yeah. So that he do, they don't have to be, fizzy and holding it in and then exploding. So they're getting these big behaviors, which I guess in itself is destructive in many ways to that self-esteem in some places. 'cause they are then having to explode to get to kinda let these big feelings out.

But then this explosion can be seen as a [00:17:00] misbehavior or negative behavior and that then goes back around that cycle. 

Penny: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You can kind of depressurize a bit with more people. Yeah. Yeah. We know what's going on. We are concerned, we are here to help. That's not okay. That has to change. What can we do, yeah. Yeah. 

Philippa: So tho those NVR call calls that kind of recruiting supporters. Mm-hmm. But there are lots of stages, lots of different kind of strategies I guess, that NVR uses. So can you, you know, can you talk us through some more of those and Yeah. You know, where do you start with a family? What do you start thinking about with a family?

Penny: You know, it, it depends on the family. You, you hear their story, you hear what's going on in their household. And we have something called the baskets or other people call it boxes or there's traffic lighting. But looking at all the things that they're [00:18:00] frightened about, upset about where the risk is and deciding which ones we're gonna prioritize.

So in the smallest basket go never more than two behaviors, and they're usually the ones that are most risky and dangerous. So the, you know, they're, they're the violence, they're the self-destructive behaviors In the medium basket, we put things that really need to change, but we can manage for now, well, we'll get to them later.

So perhaps, um, children not going to school when that hasn't been agreed. Perhaps swearing, door, slamming, you know, the, the things that bother a parent and need to change. And then in the big basket, all the things that we're just gonna let go of. We're just not going to, you know, ruin our days worrying about.

So as many of those as possible, they tend to be the things that are an issue because of this kind of faceless jury that parents have [00:19:00] that, if my child leaves a wet towel on the floor, it looks like I've raised a s slob, so therefore I'm gonna battle for, to get this child to pick the towel up.

When we could say, look, your child's 10, probably not thinking that it isn't, not doing it on purpose, can we just forget about it? Because, in seven years time they may have left home and you'll miss those wet towels. So let's just think about your blood pressure. Everybody's is different.

So we are working with the parents' own priorities and, what matters to them, but being careful what we focus on because that's where the time and energy goes. And we also want to leave enough time and energy available for, as you said earlier, the relationship stuff, the connecting stuff. A lot of parents who come to us have got to the point where there are no good moments, there are no positive interactions.

It's always got to be a battle to get your child to be this [00:20:00] person who does these things or stops doing these things. And when. They are, then they can have the nice things, then you'll be nice to them and smile at them and know what we do is we have both hands. We have the kind of disciplining in terms of, you know, the oldest sense of the word teaching, raising good citizens.

And on the other hand, we want to love our children. We want to enjoy our children. We want to nurture relationship with them and teach them those skills. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. 

Philippa: I'm gonna come, 'cause also, when when I did the training with you, you talked about the rainbow basket. So I want to come back to that.

So don't, let's forget about the Rainbow Basket. 'cause I think that's very important and I, I really loved that. So the baskets, I guess, are something that. Most people probably know about NVR, don't they? That that's quite, if you Google NM VR, those that comes up quite quickly o on Google and that, those sorts of [00:21:00] things.

So it seems quite simple, I think, where you think, oh, I just put two in the red, no more than five in the, the amber and everything else goes in the green. But I'm guessing in practice that's pretty hard really just only to accept and focus on two behaviors in the beginning. I think sometimes it might give parents permission to let the other stuff go, which in itself can be quite freeing, can't it?

But if you are asking a parent to not address the effing and effing that's going on. But just address the aggression, 

Penny: the punching. 

Philippa: That can be, that can be really hard because sometimes parents would much prefer to take the punching and deal with the effing and effing because the effing and ing could go outside and could be viewed as a different, but actually the punching and the, the violence is the risk.

Mm-hmm. So that's what need and I guess that's really quite a tricky thing for parents to [00:22:00] do is, is to let something extreme go. 

Penny: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's one of the things that em really emphasizes about NVR is that it grows that courage. It takes courage to appear in public with a child who uses bad language and not crumble in shame.

But we talk about, psychological presence that, you are knowing that you are choosing something that, you know, has a good evidence base. It will work most of the time. And persistence, you know, the NVR is unite, resist, persist, repair. So the unite is the gathering of the people and the regathering and the adding to, and the nurturing that the, uh, resist are the strategies that will come onto and persist.

And that does take, the support [00:23:00] and the encouragement from people around you to be able to withstand the face and the faceless juries that are gonna say, you know, you're a bad parent, your child swears, yeah. And yeah. Yeah. And, um, what was the last one? Repair, relational repair. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Putting the effort into that. 

Philippa: So you would really advocate that actually NVR is about you. We just are gonna focus on, on these two, two behaviors at the most because actually that's what you can manage. And also, I guess it reduces the conflict. 'cause if you're not nagging about picking the, the towels or put your shoes on the thing mm-hmm.

Then you've got more time. I guess for the other bit that I just wanted to you to add before we go into the stretches, the rainbow basket. Hmm. So just, I really liked that when I did the training with you that, that you'd added this. Rainbow Basket. So tell us what that is. 

Penny: So the rainbow basket, bit like the elevator pitch.

We are looking for a different word [00:24:00] for it. I'm not keen on Rainbow Basket. It's a bit,, basically the positives, the wins, the, the good things, the appreciations about your child. Quite often when parents first come to us, they have what Dan Hughes called blocked care. And, the child feels blocked trust because there's been so much damage to the relationship and the parent often feels blocked care.

It's like compassion fatigue. The relationship has become so punishing and mutually damaging that they can't connect to those feelings. So if you prioritize the rainbow basket, then you are consciously looking for things, signs of, good qualities in your child, signs of lovely interactions, and really pulling them out.

And we get them to, we get parents to write them in the back of their books. They're journals and things like, when you're struggling with a violent 8-year-old all day, you go in at night and you watch them asleep when they look like little angels and, you really kind [00:25:00] of amplify the stuff that brings out that caring, which helps the caring dialogue start to flow as Peter Jacob calls it.

And yeah, and you nurture that relationship by reducing the battling and it gives you much more wiggle room for good things to flow healthy interactions. And you may find that a lot of the stuff in the medium basket falls away because you can deal with it in playful ways. Maybe you have that connection with your child and then may be gentler ways of encouraging them to pick up the towel without battling.

Philippa: And I guess it's also about noticing those, aren't they? Because, often it feels like they never do it or that they always do it, but the reality is, is, is it's not never and always, because sometimes they're at school and sometimes they're asleep and sometimes they are [00:26:00] watching tv or sometimes they're engaged with granny or the neighbor next door.

So it's not always, and it's not never, and I guess for most families, there are moments where they do pick the towel up or they do shove their shoes, even if it doesn't go completely right into the cupboard, or they they do eat all their dinner, that you've coed them rather than chucking it away.

And I suppose that, for me, that extra basket, whatever you call it. Mm-hmm. Is about noticing those moments. They may be few and far between, 

Penny: but they're very like people. They're bad, aren't they? Yeah. 

Philippa: Yes. 

Penny: I mean, it's, as humans, it's cognitive economy, isn't it? You see what you expect to see. Mm-hmm.

And if you can consciously expect to see evidence of other things then you will be able to pick them out. And other people will be able to notice them. And you can comment, we don't advocate the kind of good boy pat on the head, rewarding acknowledgement of these [00:27:00] things, but an appreciation is more relational.

I don't wanna embarrass you, but I just wanted to say, I haven't had to pick a towel up off the floor for a whole week, and it's been lovely,

Philippa: yeah. That's great. So once you've got these behaviors, once you've got your ones in the basket mm-hmm. What happens next? What are you going to be thinking about them with VR?

Penny: One of the principles of NVR is transparency. It's really important that, you're transparent, it's fair. So you give the child fair warning that you are no longer gonna tolerate whatever risky, dangerous, damaging behavior it is. You need to tell them We have an announcement and there's a, a formula for that that helps parents and carers to, in a very kind, supportive way, starting with the appreciative talk from all the things they've noticed. We call it a bit of a a sandwich. Can I say the s word with four [00:28:00] letters? Starting with the positive, the more difficult stuff in the middle and ending on a positivity. It's a lot like that. But yeah, saying These are what we appreciate about you. This is, and, and they love hearing that bit. These are our concerns. These are the things that are happening that make us worried for you, for our relationship, for the future and we can't just let it carry on. We care too much. It's too important. And then a fair warning that things are gonna be changing, that there will be people that we're going to be telling about this, who will help us and support us. Resist these behaviors. You're not resisting the child. You love the child.

You are resisting the behaviors and then ending with your reasons why, your positive vision of the future. When things are better and we're all feeling happier, we'll be able to, go on that holiday like we did three years ago before all this started that kind of thing. Um, and you wouldn't. So I was 

Philippa: gonna say it's not, [00:29:00] it is not done an a shaming way is that you or this, it's more about , we know that you have really big feelings. Mm. And we know it's really hard for you to manage those sometimes. Mm-hmm. And we want to help you with this. Yes. And this is how we're gonna help you with this.

Penny: Yeah. Rather than 

Philippa: you or bad. 

Penny: Yeah, absolutely Not non-shaming. It's getting the balance right. We, we need the child to not feel okay about the behavior if possible, but not in a way that destroys their self-esteem. So it's separating the child and the personhood of the child from the behaviors that they're exhibiting.

And you may well in, in different circumstances, various circumstances, if there are things that you feel you've done that have contributed, you can use. That announcement to say, we have responded in this way and we're sorry, I've shouted i've taken away things for weeks on end and made you unhappy.

I'm not gonna do that anymore. I don't want our household to be like that. And you [00:30:00] can express some understanding. A, a lot of children who have had difficult pasts know that they've had difficult pasts and know that they're somehow connected. A lot of children, if they're lucky, have had some of that life story work done.

So you can acknowledge there are good reasons why you respond like this. We get it and we're gonna help you not yeah, absolutely. It's no good shaming that feels like violence. Yeah. What ages 

Philippa: would you do this with? What is where would you start? Because I'm guessing two and three year olds, you wouldn't be doing it there.

'cause one is that, that we don't even know where the behavior's gonna go for them. 

Penny: No. What, 

Philippa: what age would you start do you think? 

Penny: I. As young as you feel able to, there are ways of adapting that framework for, for any age for a toddler you could do it with pictures. 

Philippa: Okay. Yeah. 

Penny: Um, for a [00:31:00] 36-year-old who won't leave their bedroom, um, you might write quite a long email perhaps, or, or read out quite a long Yeah.

Speech. But you adapt it and it's not, you know, all of this, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's not a onetime deal. You can do another one, you can redo it. You can come back and try again. It's the statement, what you are, you are expressing your position and giving them fair warning, so mm-hmm.

Yeah. Any age, but adjust it accordingly. We've seen people do very creative, PowerPoint presentations and videos and songs. I saw somebody who got a ukulele. Done the announcement in the form of a song for their little one. Um, so yeah. Many ways it's all, it's adaptable. 

Philippa: So you are letting the child know that this is a behavior that's not okay within, within your family.

Yeah. And you understand why that behavior's there. Yeah. And that you're gonna [00:32:00] seek support to support them. Yeah. So that, that, as a family, you can be more connected, have more joy in that. And so once you've done that announcement, what happens then? Where do you go with that?

Because I'm guessing that doesn't, it might shock them. Mm-hmm. What would they say? No, you are not, we are not doing this. Do you think there'd be a bit of resistance to that? 

Penny: Sometimes there's, there's all sorts of responses. You know, we've had it torn up and shoved back under the door.

We've silence it. It doesn't matter. It's not about the response from the child, it's the doing. NVR is about the adults doing. And again, that's where the courage comes from because for, for a lot of these parents, the thought of daring to say no, to resist, to not comply, to stop accommodating all this feels [00:33:00] way off.

So the act of actually doing it changes things. It changes the, the child's view of the adult and the adult's view of themselves. I'm now somebody who can speak my truth, my boundary, and it, it kind of starts to make a difference. 

Philippa: Are you support families with this, would you? If they needed you to be, would you be in the home with them?

Why, why they do it? Would you help them to write it? Yeah. 

Penny: All of that. There's quite a lot of preparation that goes into an announcement and the act of writing, creating the announcement is a process in itself that is change making, doing that detail, people find it very emotional, especially, the first bit, the appreciations, reconnecting with those feelings that they've been yearning to feel.

That kind of starts, um, the [00:34:00] clarity it's like Rosa Park said about the power of a made up mind. When you go through it in that detail and you speak, you label what's happening. You call it violence. You say when you hit kick smack spit at mom. Or dad or your sister or whatever it is, you are naming it.

You're not beating around the bush and euphemisms and know you, you are on the nose. This is the problem. This is how I feel about you. This is the problem, and this is why I want it to stop. This is what I'm going to, again, we have many, many parents who never actually deliver the announcement because something in their demeanor changes through the process of doing it.

Very subtle parents who carry them around in the announcement in their pocket for years never have to actually deliver it. Something changes having the conversations with their family and friends, perhaps about writing the announcement. Now you've started to speak into your circle about [00:35:00] what's going on.

The change process is subtle and not always predictable and unique to each each family. Mm-hmm. And yeah. Yeah, we would, um, we do, we have attended announcement deliveries or been there on the phone or by video or we've done role plays. Sometimes parents would like to rehearse it before they do it, so they feel what it's gonna be like and think about who they need sat next to them.

Slightly behind, maybe in the doorway, but not blocking the doorway. Be downstairs noisily, making tea cakes for after, just so that the child can hit, thinking of what, how do you need people to be, to support you in doing this? Yeah. 

Philippa: That sounds like a very powerful process. Really. 'cause you're connecting with something in you that's quite vulnerable. Mm. Why you are doing it. And I [00:36:00] guess there's a validation to that process, mms a parent That and itself can be, very powerful. That actually, yeah. This, this is hard. This is, and I'm doing a really great job 'cause I've been doing this for the last two and a half years on my own, and no wonder I need help.

No wonder, you know, that in itself, I guess is a very powerful, Yeah. Process to go through 

Penny: and you're seeing people who have shown up for you and they're reflecting back to you that you matter. So maybe I do matter, maybe I don't deserve to be treated this way. So yeah, again the supporters make a huge difference.

A lot of people will have a, a meeting of supporters before they do the announcement. If they really want to gather and say, I'm going to do this. This is what's going on in my household. I'm writing this, or I've written this, I want you to hear it. And then the announcement can become a kind [00:37:00] of unifying document so everybody knows.

Philippa: Okay. So, so what happens next? Then? What, where do you go next? So, we've got this announcement. We are going to, we've narrowed the behaviors down that we're only gonna look at these one or two. So what happens now? What a parent's gonna do? Or does the child just change?

Penny: That's what I was gonna say. At each stage that can happen. Some, sometimes before anything's been said, like I say, that the parent's demeanor can change and sometimes everything changes. Quite often the act of making the announcement and those appreciations, it's, it should be quite a connecting activity.

So your relationship has changed. Yeah. There, there are practitioners who, who don't go much further than that because they haven't needed to. The thing about NVO, you do as much as you need to. And if you need to do a bit more, you do a bit more, or you might need to [00:38:00] do a bit more later.

Philippa: So you go as far as you need to, so if you need to start, if the announcement changes, I guess one of the things I was gonna ask about that is about the reconnecting. So you said you might have somebody downstairs making tea and cakes, and I suppose that's that reconnecting thing and I wonder if playfulness and play could come into that, that part. You're not gonna be , it's gonna be emotionally charged for a period of time. But I wonder , how if play and playfulness can be part of that reconnecting or that bringing together at the end of, of the announcement.

Penny: Definitely. And, and I would say, the. Scenario I've given you was a, a very kind of official proper, how you do an announcement and how you deliver an announcement. It's not like that for every family. An announcement can have that formula worked into a conversation over breakfast or a card game or, you can [00:39:00] mix, mix the two.

It doesn't have to be a negative experience for a child necessarily. 

Philippa: Yeah. So you can do it playfully, I guess playing the ukulele. Exactly. Not playfully. Yeah. Playful thing. Julie, who I do this podcast with, that's how she would do 'cause she's well into music and singing. She'd probably play the ukulele and sing it.

Yeah. You know, really quite, yeah. So, so, okay. One of the things that I remember from our course is the will wi is the whirlwind about, thinking about where do you. Interrupt before the, the before. There's an escalation. And again, I really liked, 

Penny: yeah, that 

Philippa: And actually the sheet that you gave me, I, it's quite playful.

I think it looks, I think it looks a bit like a sea snail, where the Yeah. The, it's really quite pretty. Yeah. And I know that that's not that to me, but it is quite playful. So tell us a little bit about thinking about how do you interrupt this and that whirlwind. 

Penny: [00:40:00] So the escalation whirlpool is, like you say, like a stale shell in, in like, bricks sections if you like.

So you, you take a, an inter you an interaction that has turned into an escalation and you kind of deconstruct it. So where did it start? What was the first thing you did or said? How was that responded to? How did you respond to that? Then what happened? And in, a calm place with that distance, you can see the spaces between where you might have done differently.

And yeah, I would say that humor and play used carefully could come into that one. Deescalation technique is always gonna be distraction. It's, well, we'll leave that until things are calm and we'll come back to that and why don't we go and do this? Yeah. Looking for those. Looking for those spaces where you can take it off the course it's going, 

Philippa: and I suppose that's [00:41:00] breaking it down.

Quite into very small moments, isn't it? So it's, it's rather than thinking, oh yeah, this happened. They just came from school and they, you know, they slammed up the stairs. It's thinking about, it is thinking about going back. Okay, so how do you know what, how did you know what they were feeling at that moment?

How did you, so you can build in that parental attunement at those moments, can't you? So you can help that I, 'cause again, the other thing that I quite like about NVR is that parental presence. It's about how can you be present for your child. Mm-hmm. Even if they don't want you to be present. And some of that is being able to see where they are.

If they don't know where they are. So when they walk in the door, escalation is thinking about, okay, how did you, how do you know what they're feeling when they walk through the door? Mm-hmm. And when you know what they're feeling, can you do something different at that moment, depending on the, and so it's breaking it down into, into the minutia really rather than taking a chunk of time. [00:42:00] Mm-hmm. Is that right? 

Penny: Yeah. And you can't do that unless you are in, what Paul Gilbert would call a compassionate mindset rather than a, a kind of self-protective defensive so. Before you act into those moments of the door slam, when they come in from school, checking in with yourself, how am I, is my heart racing?

Am I feeling really angry? Because it's gonna come out in ways that are not anywhere near your ideal of parenting? So again, we are back to it's about what you do. It's about your self-regulation. It's about you holding yourself and the quality of your presence as close to your ideal as possible. And then you can take action and respond in a way that you've decided not as a a knee jerk reflex.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Philippa: Because a lot of NVR is around knowing what you ha [00:43:00] can control rather than trying to control something that you can't. And I guess not a lot 

Penny: that you can control is there. Ultimately, you can't control what anybody does. You can't make your child do anything.

A lot of what your children do that you like is based on their goodwill and their logic. 'cause maybe they, hopefully they want things to be nice and they care about you, but you are not making them. 

Philippa: It's about the relationship though that's what I often think is that actually it's the relationship.

Yeah. When you are 15, you really don't have to come home, if you don't want to. If you are out and you decide not to come home, you don't have to come home. But what makes you come home is the relationship you have with your parent or your caregiver and the fact that you don't want them to be worried about you because you know that they're worry about you.

You, that's right. Or you don't want them to be awake appointed in you because you, you value their view of you. But that is about holding that relationship really [00:44:00] key and if you've got all this conflict going on, then I'm guessing that leads to them. Although probably deep down they care that out a bit.

Is there, you know, that what you talked about before, that pre. Preconception of what people are gonna think. So they think, well, they not care anyway. They're just gonna shout at me. Hmm. So it's like, then there's no point in me going home on time, or there's no point in me behaving 'cause they feel like this.

Mm-hmm. Rather than I know they care about me. Yeah. Because, because care can be shown in, in different ways, can't, it can be shown through anger. Mm-hmm. Because we are scared. We are scared. And our kids don't come home on time. 

Penny: Mm. And 

Philippa: we can show it an anger or I guess for NVR it would say check in with yourself.

Mm-hmm. Because that's the only thing you've got control over. You haven't got control over that. Your kid's coming back two hours late. No. But you've got control over how you respond, how you respond. Coming back two hours late. Is that [00:45:00] right? Yeah.

Penny: Working with NVR, the question is always, who can help me in this? Yeah. Who will support me in this? You feel the more confidence. So you might phone, phone the neighbor that you've got a relationship with down the road to say can you just look out your window and see if my Tommy's there?

That kind of thing. So it's collective. 

Philippa: Yeah. Yeah. And that parental presence. Just talk about, in the last few minutes, just talk about the parental presence, penny. 'cause I, I really like that. I, I think I like everything about NVR. That's what I keep saying. I really like that. It's easy to, like, 

Penny: isn't it, I 

Philippa: parental presence is, um, I do struggle with NVR as well as, you know mm-hmm.

From our thing. There are bits where I think, oh, I like the announcement. I find that quite hard. I can see the value in it, but I also, um, find it quite hard. But so I think it's a it's very, yeah, very interesting. [00:46:00] But 

Penny: parental presence. That's why families and people who use NVR change it, and that's absolutely fine. It's no good having a manual where you have to follow the procedure, yeah. You've got to adapt it for your values, your parenting ethics, your child, your way of doing things. So yeah, it's all, it's all, um, adaptable to, to your circumstances, but the parental presence for me is very much about how you were seen and how you occupy the space and that, a lot of it's, do you remember, um, the looking Glass self?

I can't remember the name of the psychologist, Cooley, was it that we are, who is reflected back at us? So if you, if you find yourself surrounded by people telling you that you're a bad parent, that you're inadequate, that you are useless, that you get it all wrong, look what you've, look what you've produced, you don't wanna do that.

What you wanna do is this, [00:47:00] then it's going to sink your presence. You're going to shrink, it's gonna reduce into erasure. If you can bring in those voices of, reason that, okay, you're doing okay, you're a good person. Look, you've done this. Okay, you may have shouted a bit, and I know there, but you, we can do this.

I'll help you are worth helping you matter. Then your presence starts to, to go up. And in your child's mind, you start that, that starts to change because your child is seeing a community around you responding to you like you matter, like what you say is important. What you need is important, and they start to change how they see you.

So we're talking about kind of internalized images of you changing in the child and your systemic presence, how you are viewed in, in the community around the child is there. So it's far more like [00:48:00] it used to be. It's, everybody knows my mum. I'm seen and everybody's got her back. Everybody cares about me and cares about her care.

For me, I'm, yeah, I'm part of this village. It takes a village to raise a child and I belong to that village and my mum is valued. So does that. Is that your understanding of presence? 

Philippa: Yeah. And I was also thinking about how you can help your child know that you are present. So some of those can be that you actually are just present more.

Yeah. That you actually just say, we're gonna spend more time together, or I'm gonna come and sit in your room and watch you. But there's also those indirect presence isn't there, about and this is not about buying them, but about leaving them their favorite biscuit or writing the the relational gesture.

Yes. Yeah, 

Penny: yeah. The, the small acts of bothered the, the note in the lunch box when I'm talking about altering their expectations of you and their internalized [00:49:00] version of you confounding those expectations by doing differently. So you're no longer the dad who's grumpy in the morning and unavailable in the evening and only ever has complaints.

Suddenly you are the dad who. Makes me feel nice and leaves a note in my lunchbox and brings me a hot chocolate at six 30 when I'm playing on my iPad and says, you had a good day, I'm gonna leave. It changes your kind of psychological presence in, in the child's mind. And when they're out and about and they're at school, and like I said, there's a, a note in the lunchbox or a neighbor says, oh, how's your dad?

Your parent is always with you. And it, 

Philippa: yeah. And I wonder, for a teenager, if it's about checking in when they're out, doing a drive past where they're, they are, or if they are stump stomped off in a, in a strap and they've left the house, I guess it's knowing that you can't bring them back.

Yeah. [00:50:00] But you can have a parental presence by following behind them or, obviously we don't want to escalate it so they run off. So it's about, I guess there's a balance to that, but you can still have those parental presence in some ways even when your child is disconnecting from you.

Penny: Yeah. And those are the times when your parental presence needs to be raised physically and systemically in the community. It's, it's when you find that distance stretching that, that's when the vigilant care comes in more. And, and you do. And just like you said, if, if a child is out and about refusing to come home, you can't make them.

And mm-hmm. Yeah. The message is, I can't make you do anything, but I can do this, so I'm going to do this and I'm doing it because you matter. Which is very different to you are a bad person. I can't believe you're putting me through [00:51:00] this, dah, dah, dah, which just fractures and ruptures the relationship.

So it's working through that concern, through that connection to gently change behaviors. Hopefully by changing your own.

Philippa: And then you've got this support around you that's helping your emotional resilience to to be able to do this bit with your child, isn't it? 'cause it's that thing about you can't pour from an empty jog.

Yeah. So you need your supporters to be topping up your jog. Mm-hmm. So you can keep pouring it out into your little person or your big person, or whatever it is. 

Penny: And that's what we say. It takes a village to raise a child. What we tend to say is it takes a village to support a parent to raise a child.

Yeah. That's how it works. NVR is very parent centered, child focused, parent centered. It's the parents who often get left [00:52:00] behind and get. Blamed and criticized, but not supported. And then you end up with the child who's seeing this division. I'm, I'm supposed to do what my mom says, but everybody around her is telling us she's no good.

So how am I supposed, how am I supposed to respect her when nobody else does? So we're parent centered. This person is worthy of respect and they care about you. So it flows much better. There's, there's a much better, easier logic. 

Philippa: Mm, 

Penny: we all care. She cares. You matter. 

Philippa: Absolutely. And those, those are all relational based

yeah. So just, I am just aware we're, we're running outta it. But tell me about NVR Northampton. So this is your company, your, tell us about it. What do you do? How do people access you? 

Penny: We've got a website. It probably needs a bit of updating, but, um, yeah, you can find us on, you can find us online. Nvr northampton.co.uk.

Um, I'll put a 

Philippa: link [00:53:00] to it in the description of, of this podcast. Okay. So people can just click, but, so I'll have to polish 

Penny: it very quickly then if people are gonna be, looking up. Looking up now. So I set up NVR Northampton in 2016, I think. So I used to work for Relators a as a counselor there.

And I had A-E-E-A-P client who was suffering very bad. What's 

Philippa: EAP for? It was, 

Penny: um, employee assist programs. So relate, used to get, um, the contracts for, um, NHS staff or local authority staff, so we, we would be able to give them. Six sessions of counseling, and then if we begged, we may be able to give 'em a bit more if they needed it.

But so a, a mother of many children who had recently lost, um, the father in very tragic circumstances, and she was suffering incredible child to parent violence in the household. I've never even heard of child to parent violence. So I've got six sessions and all I can basically do, I think this was like 20 12, 13 maybe.

All I'd got was [00:54:00] basically six sessions of hand patting and they're there and I didn't know what, what are you gonna do? And she'd gone to Cams and the family therapists there when there were family therapists through their hands up and said we, I don't know. I don't know what to do with this. She basically ended up with a kind of bodyguard situation, both ends of the day.

Other than that she lived in a household dominated by two violent sons and two little is who she was trying to protect. So years later when I did my systemic training and heard about NVR, it's one of those light bulbs. If I knew then what I knew now, I could have done so much to help so seized upon it because it needed to happen because it wasn't known about and, and it was needed.

It still is very much needed. So got in touch with partnership projects, Peter Jacobs, um, training. Then he's now moved on to North America and begged him for an hour to to let me commission one of his trainers to, so that I could do my [00:55:00] foundation level. The one that you've done thinking it would be great, loads of people who wanna do this, is brilliant.

I made quite a big loss, got me training, and a few trained with me did it again and kind of built up. I've, I've gone from foundation to advance to train the trainer to supervisor, to now, as we roll out our own training in, in, in nine years. So now we, we, um, we get commissions from the local authority and child services or adoption support fund or schools or people who can and are able to, we'll self-fund and we run parenting groups or, bespoke packages for people if that helps to help them deal with them, mostly child to parent violence, um, anxiety based problems with children.

But most recently we're developing it for parental alienation and we've been doing some court work, which has been an interesting experience. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Philippa: [00:56:00] So people can come onto your website, whether they're parents, whether they're schools or social workers, and they can come on if they, and get support from you if they need support for their family.

But they can also come and do the, the training if they want to train in VR. Yeah. Um, or if they want you to come and maybe talk more about this subject, because I think a child to parent violence is a, is, it is quite a taboo boost subjects. Mm-hmm. Um, we've done a few bits on, on the podcast.

I've recently talked to somebody from CAPA first's response. Mm-hmm. Which is child aggression. Child against parent aggression which is, and they offer support. It's different than NVR, but, but I don't think there's a lot of support out there it's quite a closed door thing.

Penny: I mean, that was an another thing that kind of spurred me on, I, I stumbled across Helen [00:57:00] Bon's website, holes in the walls where she was plotting on the map services for people dealing with child parent violence. And there was just this vast desert Northampton, but, there, there was none. And these, yeah, a lots of services were kind of set up and then the funding goes and they, so it really, it needs to be embedded more.

I'm really pleased now that the local authority the health authority in Northampton now does provide an NVR service to parents. So it is now worth. People in our area to go into their GP and, and asking for it. So hopefully that will grow. But yeah there's plenty of work to be done and there, there's lots out there and the more parents hear about this is a thing that happens a lot.

You're not the only one, it's not your fault. There are things that you can do the more will speak up. Yeah, 

Philippa: absolutely. I [00:58:00] think that is the most important thing is that, for parents, for carers, for whoever it is, to know that they're not alone, there are support like NVR Northampton mm-hmm. Or, or whatever.

And it's not because you're a bad person. Mm-hmm. This is something that's going on within your family that you really can access support for and you really need support. Yeah. So thank you. So, no, not at all. Thank you. Your time, penny. And I'm sure we'll want to catch up with you again in the future.

Penny: I'd love to. Thanks 

Philippa: for being on pondering plane therapy. 

Penny: Thank you.