Why NVR?
A New Vision for Parenting
I speak from experience when I talk of NVR’s effectiveness, as a practitioner I’ve seen it in action and heard wonderful stories of NVR has transformed family life. More than that, I personally received NVR as a child; my parents used it to manage my own ADHD and the behavioural issues that came out of that. It helped during the bad times, and it stood strong in the good times. When our relationship was struggling, tools like relational gestures supported us both in building a bridge, because I began mirroring the relational gestures without realising it. Only much later did I realise that it was NVR at work, although that is a story for another post.
NVR is different. Very different. One of the ideas that has dominated parenting for many, many years is reward and punishment. Your child behaves well, they get a reward, maybe a chocolate bar or choosing the film you all sit down and watch together later, maybe even playing a game for an hour or two. Your child behaves badly, then the opposite happens; no chocolate bar, no film, no games, and more than likely the naughty step, sent to their room, grounded etc.
“NVR’s success is often down to the fact it does things very differently to other models, that is why it is employed in extreme situations where other approaches haven’t worked.”
What if we’ve had it wrong all this time? What if a reward and punishment model does not in fact work the way we intended? Well then, we best find a solution to that pretty quickly. And this solution is NVR. As a systemic behavioural model, NVR throws reward and punishment out of the window in favour of connection over correction, of getting behind the behaviour and what it tells us about a child’s unmet needs before correcting said behaviour. It also goes further by removing blame and shame from the parental vocabulary, NVR meets the parent where they are currently and works with them from this point.
This is so significant because often parents blame themselves for their children’s extreme behaviour. They’ve followed the model that has been offered to them, the reward and punishment model, or instead gone down the more liberal route where there is an abundance of freedom and fewer boundaries. Yet now they find themselves faced with behaviours like violence in the home, drug use, controlling behaviours, online addictions (to name but a few) and rewarding and punishing their child does not work.
It is at this point that NVR becomes so useful as it provides an intermediary point between the approaches of the old authority (think disciplinarian) and liberal authority (think permissiveness or little to no boundaries) with a New Authority. NVR operates at the intersection between these two approaches bringing the best of both to the fore and leaving the rest behind. There is no scolding in NVR nor is there no boundaries.
What NVR does very well is to emphasise more subtle modes of parenting whereby your child will not even know that it is a technique but will sense a change and respond to this change. Think about all the parenting courses, all of the new tools you learn, and then how quickly children learn to manoeuvre around them. In NVR therapy we’re strategic; we are raising your parental presence, unblocking care and rebuilding trust where it’s needed, and beginning a campaign of active resistance against the behaviours we’re trying to change.
What does this mean, practically? Firstly, it means asking the question “why is my child behaving this way?” Let’s take extremely controlling behaviour, for example, the child is monitoring the parent, constantly in contact with the parent whilst they are away from them via text or phone call and refuses to separate at times. This sort of behaviour slowly grows over time, it begins as a quick check-in text and over time grows into the situation I’ve described. The parent is likely exhausted at this point from the child’s behaviour.
Here we begin considering what unmet needs are being presented here, and how can we connect with the child to begin tackling this behaviour. There is likely anxiety at work here, the child feels out of control and is trying to cling on to security. There is perhaps blocked trust between the child and parent; this means the child at some level does not trust the parent.
Ultimately, there can numerous reasons for this, maybe the child got lost in the supermarket for 15 minutes and was then found by the parent. There could have been a time they felt they needed the parent and they weren’t there. Whatsmore it could be that this isn’t viewed as hugely impactful by the parent but to the child, this could have been earth-shattering, and now this has triggered this kind of controlling behaviour. Alternatively, there could have been some kind of developmental trauma as a child, an incident that has led to a deep wound that affects emotional regulation.
I offer these as an explanation in this situation but often we don’t know what has caused the behaviour, and that’s okay because that does not mean we can’t address the unmet needs that feed these behaviours. We must begin to help meet these needs through engaging with the child differently, by using techniques like relational gestures and beginning to change the way we respond to escalations. Between this and targeting a specific behaviour, in this case controlling of the parent, we begin to address some of these unmet needs.
“What NVR does very well is to emphasise more subtle modes of parenting whereby your child will not even know that it is a technique but will sense a change and respond to this change”
NVR has a plethora of tools that can be used here; a big part of my role as a practitioner is to focus on escalations, and more importantly, de-escalations. Many parents are unaware of escalation patterns and how we can fall into two distinct patterns of escalations, symmetrical and asymmetrical escalations. Symmetrical escalations are when the child begins shouting, escalating the situation, and then the parent begins raising there voice too, also escalating the situation, and this carries on to the point where both end up angry: the escalation is symmetrical in their responses.
An asymmetrical escalation is also known as a giving in escalation. So in this situation, the child would shout, and the parent would give in and allow the child to have what they want. Both create patterns of behaviour whereby escalations take the same form each time. Additionally, it can be the case that parents respond to the child differently, one parent could escalate symmetrically and one could respond asymmetrically.
Understanding this is a cornerstone to change, getting parents on the same page and learning how they can de-escalate situations without the situation becoming increasingly escalated is hugely significant and a means of raising parental presence. We would also begin a separate journey to use a tool called relational gestures. This is a way of the parent connecting to the young person, by means of gestures aimed at being altruistic; things given without expectations. This could be time, it could be their favourite meal, a cup of tea. One of the relational gestures my mum used for me was putting my towel on the radiator after I had left on the floor so that when I came to use it, it would warm and dry.
The relational gestures used can be strategic, so that the gestures themselves are aimed at targeting the child’s controlling behaviour, so in this case making them feel more secure. In that sense, it could be as simple as texting the child when you’re apart saying that you were thinking of them, leaving notes for them around the house or putting a note in their lunch box, or sitting with them whilst they watch TV. What this achieves is the raising of parental presence, and the child’s sense of security raises in line with this. Leaving fingerprints of parental care around the home and in their orbit achieves a meeting of the unmet and perhaps unvoiced needs that is causing some of these behaviours.
Understanding escalation patterns and shifting from reactions to responses to escalations and using relational gestures to meet unmet needs is the beginning of a campaign of active resistance. It is remarkable to see how much can change simply through the changing of our responses to situations. This is where NVR excels because, through the work that I do with parents, the goal is always to change target behaviours i.e. controlling behaviour, however, we can achieve this through work with the parents. Whilst NVR can work with the child directly, it primarily works with parents and giving them the tools to change their reactions, and through their reactions change the behaviour.
“It also goes further by removing blame and shame from the parental vocabulary, NVR meets the parent where they are currently and works with them from this point.”
This is why it is a campaign of active resistance; over time the families I work with are slowly resisting the target behaviours, strategically and consciously, to achieve the behavioural change. What’s more, is the goal of NVR is communicated honestly and openly with the child, there is no secrecy, no dishonesty. We’re building trust back up, and offering it up to the young person.
NVR’s success is often down to the fact it does things very differently to other models, that is why it is employed in extreme situations where other approaches haven’t worked. It sounds very different, it feels very different, and it is very different from traditional ideas of behavioural change. Fundamentally, it is a model based on compassion; the very fact the parents engage with something so different is itself an act of compassion. And very often, they’re rewarded for their efforts; change does come.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post I speak from experience when I talk of NVR’s effectiveness, I have seen it work in practice and I have felt it work in my family life. NVR has helped during the bad times, and it stood strong in the good times. When our family life was difficult, tools like relational gestures supported us in building a bridge, because we all began mirroring the relational gestures my parents used. It was only when becoming a practitioner did I realise why it worked and how it worked. And it is this I bring to my practice.
My practice is informed by experience as a professional but is also informed by what it is like to receive NVR, and what that is like for a child with ADHD. It has offered me a unique perspective that you will not find with anyone else practising NVR.
