jump to content
 

Vickie Holland Interview

Ever wondered why there isn’t a Complete Idiot’s Guide to Parenting? When raising her two young children, parenting coach Vickie Holland, author of “You Can’t Make Me”: How to Parent with More Connecting and Less Correcting, pondered this question as she dealt with the same frustrations and challenges that all parents face. Longing not to repeat the negative patterns of the way she way parented, Vickie set out to create more peaceful communication with her children by learning spiritual teachings and devising practical applications parents can use to deal with everything from bedtime battles to fussy eaters.

In today’s complicated, complex world, parents struggle with simply finding the patience and time, while juggling busy schedules, to raise happy and connected children. Parents long for close, meaningful relationships with their kids and for a household without conflict and anger. Yet implementing the necessary tools to create harmony in the face of day-to-day parenting chaos can be overwhelming for parents. Holland excels at giving parents tangible tools that they can use right now to help improve communication, create positive discipline and help you cultivate a close, loving relationship with your child.

One option parents are discovering in increasing numbers as a means of connecting more with their preschool-age children are co-op schools. What is a co-op, you ask? It is a parent participation school in which parents are required to work a certain number of days per month. Co-ops are run by a parent Board and a director/teacher and staff. Parents of kids attending these schools know that they provide a wonderful opportunity to learn, grow and connect more with their child. Not only do co-ops allow parents to take an active role in their children’s education, but most also offer parent education classes to help parents learn new parenting skills and philosophies. For these reasons and many more, I chose to send my daughter to WPNS, a co-op preschool in Los Angeles and also proudly serve on its parent Board. When it came time for our Board to decide who we wanted to speak at our biggest parent education event of the year, we couldn’t think of a more dynamic and empowering parenting coach than Vickie Holland who has been on a journey of helping families create more meaningful relationships since 1993 when she began her movement known as the Positive Parenting Network.

I had the opportunity to interview Vickie Holland and WPNS school director/head teacher Joyce Woodruff.  We candidly discussed some of the challenges that today’s parents face and some of the simple tools that Holland uses to help parents and children connect and communicate effectively.

CB: Vickie, what motivated you to start this parenting movement?

VH: My own parenting challenges. Sometimes people asked me did you get into this because you were such a good parent and because you really wanted to spread the word. No, I guess I came in the back door. I got into this because I saw myself repeating hurtful patterns from the way I was parented and my family dynamics. Having said what a lot of us say, which is I’m going to do this and this differently from the way I was parented, I found myself slipping back into things I swore I’d never do and the first one was yelling at my kids and losing my temper. I started reading lots of parenting books and found the organization (The International Network for Children and Families) that trained me to be a parenting instructor because I couldn’t find a class in my area.

CB: What are a few of the biggest challenges that you think today’s parents face?

VH: I think parents really struggle with feeling like they can be patient with their kids. There are a few that I hear over and over. I think people struggle with power struggles and how to discipline kids without killing their spirit. And as children get older, parents struggle with setting boundaries and the thing I hear a lot is the child’s running the household at 10 months old and three years old and 17 years old. Trust me, it’s not pretty by the time they’re 17.

CB: How does your philosophy/approach help parents create more peaceful relationships with their children?

VH: My approach is helpful because I feel that my particular skill is in taking theoretical information, Harvard studies, UCLA studies and things that a lot of us would agree on--like you have to remain calm when dealing with your child--and break it down into very easy to understand actions that parents can take that work.

JW: You also acknowledge that it’s a process, it’s not going to happen overnight. I think that’s important for parents to hear because I think that a lot of time parents attend these seminars and read these books and expect it to change so quickly. You validate that you’re going to make mistakes along the way but you’re moving in the right direction and it’s going to take time.

CB: And that it should be tailored to the individual child to a certain extent?

VH: William Sears has a quote “know thy child.”  I may be speaking at a particular moment about being firmer and your child may need you to be less firm.
And two children in the same household may need different things from you. Anyone with more than one child knows that. And the thing with connecting is that if you’re really connected to your child, you’ll pick up their cues moment by moment. You wouldn’t even need a book on temperament if ideally you were an expert at connecting, listening and all of those skills. But it’s absolutely important to know your child and be able to deliver the different things your different children need.

CB: What are some of the simple tools you teach parents so they can connect more with their children?


VH: They are so simple that it may surprise you--but one of the most important things is making eye contact. I share a story in my book about how I was so proud to be stay-at-home mom; I wasn’t going to leave my kids to be raised at a daycare. I had taken care of my little three-year-old daughter all day and at the end of the day she came to me and had stuff oozing out of her eye. She had pinkeye. I thought “oh my goodness I have just gone through an entire day of taking good care of my child, making sure she was safe AND NOT made eye contact to pick up what was going on with her.” And it’s really easy to overlook how powerful connecting, loving eye contact is. I’m talking a few seconds, when you’re child walks in and wants to share a story with you and you’re busy with the stir-fry. Just taking the couple of beats to turn and make eye contact. Train yourself to look at your child anytime they call on you and other times when you instigate it, it communicates a lot. When it’s friendly, loving eye contact it says, “I love you. You are important to me. I want to hear what you are saying.”

Another one is using fewer words with your children. We tend to talk a lot, especially women, which can really disturb a nice flow of connecting energy and so what you can do instead of using too many words is try 10 percent of the words you normally use. It allows the space for the child to communicate, and contributes to great listening. People don’t think about how so many words can be disruptive even if they’re friendly.


 

Joyce, Vickie Holland, Cory

CB: How does your approach work with preschoolers? Are they responsive to your techniques?

VH: Most of my experience is in training teachers of preschoolers. This is where it all starts. This is the critical age for my work; my specialty for many years was two to twelve year olds. With that age group, especially the younger children, it’s getting down physically on their level. And these steps are so simple but you would be amazed at how many people don’t do these things because they don’t think of it. Another powerful, simple phrase to use with preschoolers when they are upset, on their way to a power struggle is “What do you want?” The two, three, and four year olds are in the power struggle phase of their life. It’s an extremely empowering question “What do you want?”  Another piece to that is to, no matter what they say, and you know the crazy things they’ll say like “I want cookies for dinner,” to stop yourself from interjecting the “no” until you’ve heard them talk a few sentences about what they want, until you’ve learned more about what they want.” So the ineffective conversation goes like this:

Child: “I want cookies for dinner.”

Parent: “You can’t have cookies for dinner. Cookies aren’t good for you. They are loaded with sugar. You need to eat healthy things like beans and peas.”

And the effective conversation is:

Parent: “What do you want for dinner?”

Child: “I want cookies for dinner.”

Parent: “You do? Tell me more about that. Yeah well cookies taste a lot better than bean burritos. I see, I understand.”

So let them express for a couple of sentences before you shut them down with a “no.” "Shut them down" is strong language but that is how it feels to them. So a couple things happen when you do that. Kids feel heard; you are less likely to have a power struggle. I can’t tell you how effective that’s been in my house. The “no” goes over so much easier when I just heard a few more things about how they were feeling or what they were wanting.

JW: You’re filling them up.

VH: Yes, and you’re helping them feel heard.  That’s a huge part of what they want. Now a lot of the time what they want is to eat two cookies for dinner. So that’s going to happen. It’s not a magic pill. But it has a significant impact on the energy in the house and shifting it from negative to more positive, kids feeing heard and not shut down, kids experiencing their power rather than having it stripped away.

Your most powerful parenting tool is the quality of your relationship with your child. If that’s not good every parenting tool I give you will be ineffective.

CB: Did you send your own children to co-op schools? How do you feel about co-ops and how can you tie it into your own philosophy about connecting with children?

VH: First, can I ask you, Joyce, what is your experience like as a teacher of a co-op?

JW: Having the parents be a part of our school and actually working in the classroom is amazing and the feeling that the children get is that this is a safe place, a good place and it’s important enough for the parents to be here. And then in the meantime, it’s hand-on learning for the parents as well with informative parent education seminars.

VH: That’s great. Well to answer your question. I sent my kids to a Montessori school. At the time, I lived in a tiny community where there were no co-ops but it was the closest thing. I was there the year they decided to make it parent participation required. It was funny to watch what happened. You either had to participate or you had to pay. And it sort of broke my heart to see how many chose to pay. I had the opportunity to study second-hand and research some of the indigenous cultures of the rainforest, including the very, very deepest, most untouched by Western civilization, the Ecuana tribe. What’s fascinating to me is to see how children are parented without all the crazy interference we’ve had. Babies were carried on the mothers in all cultures for all time until the 1800s when Queen Victoria made it very en vogue to separate from your baby. She had the first baby buggy and the first baby crib designed. And it was very cool and very fashionable to live your life like royalty, where the nursemaids took care of all the yucky baby stuff and mom lived largely separate from the babies and there was the “nursery.” And so as does with all fads, it went from the nobility to the upper class to the middles class until it filtered down and everyone could afford to buy a separate crib and buggy. And so my question is how do we do it when interference doesn’t come along and disturb a whole way that children are parented?  You can probably tell I’m pro-attachment parenting. One of the things is the community helps to raise the children. Of course, with the Ecuana Indians, their values are all the same and they are on the same wavelength and they don’t have to worry about who is with their child. It’s not like we could become like the Ecuana Indians right now but anything we can have that creates that community is a huge blessing for children and is a more natural way. As a woman, I was very isolated living on an acre in rural Colorado. I’m sad as I look back at how isolated I was and that’s just not normal for one mother to be at home all day with her children. It’s just never been how any culture has done it. So I love your mission and don’t get this excited about most places that I speak. I met a bunch of co-op folk at the Parent Participation Nursery Convention in 2007. I was so excited to see the value system of that whole organization and parents participating. It’s so beautiful to start to create community. It’s never perfect and none of us have it all figured out, but to move in the right direction is what children need and how they thrive.

CB: Joyce, how do Vickie’s tools help you as a parent and teacher?

JW:She has helped me with my family--it’s a continual process of becoming aware. She’s given me some tools to connect and to keep connecting with my family over and over. She’s taught me about breathing.

I do a lot of getting down on the level, physically, with the preschoolers I work with. With my son, I am remembering to walk over to him rather than talking from afar. I’m remembering to get down on his level and he is nine. I’m remembering to listen to him without interruption, hearing what he has to say, making him feel important and having some wonderful conversations with him. When I go back into read Vickie’s book, the tools remind me of the things I know I should be doing and I need to keep doing. We get so caught up in our busy lives unfortunately that occasionally I let some of if it goes, and I have to dip back in. You make the tools obtainable; you bring the audience and yourself together through your personal experience. It makes it real for people and you make people laugh.

VH: My first parenting instructor was a teacher at my daughter’s Montessori school and I commend you for learning these skills. When that teacher told me to get down on my knees--and she was a little sharp with the parents--to be honest (chuckles), but her gift was so obviously with this toddler age group. That changed me forever. I just acknowledge what you’re doing and how your philosophy is reaching the parents. It’s easy to forget what a huge impact you (as a teacher) are having.

Westchester Parent’s Nursery Schools invites you to hear Vickie Holland speak about creating more peace at home in a series of two lectures which will include topics ranging from how to get kids to listen and cooperate to how to enforce positive discipline—what you can do instead of yelling, nagging, threatening or punishing. Holland will speak at Loyola Marymount University on Jan. 24 from 10am to 1pm. Tickets are $18 each if purchased in advance and $20 at the door.

Vickie Holland