Saying No in the Yes Cycle

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I took part in the second session of VIG (Video Interaction Guidance) so that my friend and old colleague to train as a practitioner in the intervention. My goal was to improve on saying "No" to Abbie in a consistent manner, to keep her boundaries where they need maintaining.

Since my friend bought me the Sears' Baby Book on Attachment Parenting, this style has resonated with me, but one thing I still find difficult is how to control and say No without damaging the secure base I'm trying to establish and grow between us. Being somebody who sets limits has made me feel uncomfortable as I didn't/don't want to cause distress, but more than this, I didn't want to be inconsistent in my boundary-setting, sometimes being strong about saying No about something, another time letting it go.


So this was my goal for the VIG therapy session.


I was videoed playing naturally in the family laboratory with Abigail, after setting my goals. Yesterday, I was shown some clips taken from that session to demonstrate my current communicative/interactive style with Abigail. Levels of interaction go from openess and attentiveness (being available for interaction), to turn-taking, and so on as the levels of communication get more complex. The four clips (only a few seconds) demonstrated examples of how we interact with one another, one of those was of a No situation. Abbie was trying to climb onto the table. I said "I don't really think you should be doing that", and afterwards put my hands on her leg and then hand to suggest she stopped. When she did I said "Thankyou, good girl" and Abbie did step down from trying to climb up. No tears or tantrums. Although at the beginning I thought I was coming across as wishy-washy and "not strong enough", as we talked it through I was really happy and relieved to realise that actually my natural style of controlling Abigail was working and that I didn't need to assume some Matron-Gina-Ford-Like persona. It was described as saying No but keeping it in the Yes cycle - being open, attentive (rather than closed off and inattentive to her).

Something that was pointed out was the consistency between communication channels - what I was saying, where I was positioned in space next to Abigail (at her height level, facing/alongside her), my gestures/tactile response, eye movements, tone, volume (calm, not shouting) all worked in the same direction to the goal intended.

Although reading and thinking back over it, it makes sense, at the time I thought that I should be being more strong/direct. Through the intervention, however, I have found more confidence in my approach (I didn't know I had one before this), and relieved that I don't have to insert some outside behaviour in (not be myself).

I can imagine that the rest of the video might not have examples of open communication throughout, but by seeing where it works and that I can do this in a way that I feel comfortable was a real validator of my instinctive approach, and took some stress away that you can get when feeling like you may have to do something else against your instincts.

I hope I've made some sense here.