Restorative Practices for Caregivers
Do you find yourself having the same conversations with your child over and over again?
Are you tired of always being the referee, judge, and jury when your children fight amongst themselves?
Do you find it challenging to get your child to talk with you about what they are feeling or experiencing outside of the home?
Restorative Practices can help! Restorative Practices are a mindset, a way of being, that places emphasis on healthy, respectful relationships as a central value. The focus of a restorative mindset is on being curious rather than prescriptive, repairing rather than punishing, and is supported by practices such as regularly checking in and communicating about how people are doing or feeling. Restorative Practices help to build, maintain, and repair relationships between individuals living, working and functioning as a community. They foster communication and increase mutual understanding and empathy, leading to an overall sense of connection and increasing the capacity to handle conflict in a way that promotes growth and repairs relationships.
For children and teens, strong connected relationships with adult caregivers build resilience and provide a protective factor in the face of hardship and challenges. As young people reach adolescence a strong foundation, laid well before the teen years, supports healthy decision making.
Utilizing Restorative Practices in the home establishes that strong foundation for children. Engaging in relationship-building activities, developing family norms and routines, and using restorative language based in a mindset of curiosity when responding to conflicts helps create an environment where everyone can thrive.
Relationship-building might include family game nights, movie nights, family outings, or other family-based activities. True relationship-building, however, happens through active, non-judgemental listening - in other words, listening to another without our own projections getting in the way. It sounds simple but is often more nuanced than it seems. The next time you are in a conversation with someone, challenge yourself to listen without responding for at least a minute. You can smile, nod, and offer other non-verbal responses but don’t interject, react, share about a time when you…, or offer advice. Just listen. How does that change the conversation? When we listen in this way to our children they often say much more than they would have otherwise. Active listening helps children feel understood and seen, and helps us get to know them better and be able to respond more effectively to their needs.
Establishing regular communication with our family can mean holding family talking circles (see our video about Family Circles), or simply allowing time at meals for each person to check in and share about their day. When discussing a particular issue, it could mean intentionally making time and space for each person to express what they think or feel about it.
Conflict is an inevitable—and sometimes even productive!—reality of human interactions. Restorative Practices help adults and their children alike face conflict head-on and work together to find solutions to problems, leading to improved communication, healthier relationships, and more resilient families.
The next time conflict arises, use a restorative mindset to approach your child from a place of curiosity rather than shame or judgment. In a neutral, curious tone, ask, “What happened?” and then listen. Next ask, “What are you thinking about now?” and then listen. Next ask, “Who do you think was affected?” and then listen. Finally ask, “What do you think needs to happen to make things right?” and then listen. This approach helps children reflect on their behavior, understand the impact of their actions, engage in problem-solving and fix their own mistakes.
Restorative approaches provide practical ways to give the young people in our lives, and ourselves, a chance to be heard, and to be treated with fairness and respect.
Research has shown that the Restorative Practices approach led to a 43% reduction in overall disputes in homes, schools and families. The same research found that 87% of those who took part in Restorative Practices training reported being better able to deal with conflict in general.
Become the calm your child needs as they navigate the strong emotions, frustrations and joys of growing up.