Training
The fathers of Watch Wait & Wonder www are child psychiatrists Frank Johnson and his colleagues Jerome Dowling and David Wesner from Wisconsin USA, who first coined the term www in an article published in the Spring Edition of the Infant Mental Health Journal in 1980.
Psychiatry Vol.45, 1982.
“Non-directiveness on the part of the mother is the only stringent requirement”.
Get down on the floor for half an hour daily and develop the presence of a “passive but gently reinforcing interest that is shown in every discrete behaviour”.
He describes how this “sympathetic effort” is “difficult for some easy for others to share the infants world as it is being explored”.
www was further developed by Elizabeth Muir and colleagues in Toronto in early 90’s.
Used as a clinical method to heal troubled relationship between parents and their children.
Well researched and highly effective.
Original Method 4 to 6 months of weekly sessions
E.Muir. 1992
- Cohen, Lojkaser, Muir, Parker. 2002
Modified Version
- wide clinical application
- universal concept
The video describes a highly effective and simple way for parents to be with their children that has the potential to help them –
- enjoy their child more
- stimulate their child’s creativity and imagination
- help their child to play more by themselves
- settle difficult behaviors, especially sibling rivalries and jealousies
- foster a surge in development.
WHO can benefit from this modified program?
- Parents and children from about 8 months to 4 years in the form described in the DVD
- Concept from birth to much older than 4 years
Modified version of Watch, Wait and Wonder www is not aimed specifically at difficult or troublesome parent-child relationships. It is I believe a universal concept that has the potential to enrich the interaction between all children and their parents in every family.
May not work...
- severely depressed parents
- phychiatrically ill parents
- some children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders
www makes use of the infants innate desire for attachment and striving for development.
It allows the child to explore what they need to improve/heal the attachment relationship.
www uses a child-led approach to enrich the relationship between parents and their children.
“At first glance this approach is deceptively simple, however in practice it is often very difficult for parents to adopt the observer role if they are usually intrusive or directive”.
Lojkaser, Cohen, Muir. 1994
“Similarly it is often difficult for withdrawn or detached parents who have not attended to or avoided their child’s activities
to take on the active observer stance”.
Lojkaser, Cohen, Muir. 1994
“By learning to watch and not intervene the parent begins to appreciate their child’s individuality and gets to read the child’s signals more objectively less coloured by projections from the parent’s past.”
Lojkaser, Cohen, Muir. 1994
Our past history has conditioned us and became part of us.
These conditioned residues of experience lurk just beyond conscious awareness ready to jump out and react at a moments notice when the conditions and triggers are right.
The www experience creates the space for the parent to MINDFULLY take on the observer role.
In this place the likelihood of perpetuating past action and reaction behaviours is greatly reduced.
Stillness is the central core of all mindfulness practices
MINDFULNESS is the capacity to become an observer of one’s own thoughts, feelings and behaviors without acting them out. In this place of non reactivity the mother develops the capacity to observe and therefore actually see and be present with her child sometimes for the first time. In www the parent aims to cultivate a non-judgmental presence where she can sit still and be totally accepting of whatever arises in the child. The desire for her child to be in any way different from who he is falls away – i.e. less needy, greedy, clingy less angry more imaginative in his play. This intervention relieves the parent of the anxious need to teach, instruct or play with her / his child. It is remarkable how given the presence of a still focused parent the child almost always plays out and communicates the major themes of the relationship. The child will often communicate quite clearly what is missing or how he feels about the relationship and most parents will get this message. www increases mutual sensitivity and responsiveness and enhances true listening skills.
Winnicott
Winnicott beautifully expands in this concept where he describes that the freedom to explore while held in the safety net of the parents benign presence and attention develop into the capacity to be alone. He goes on to virtually describe www by saying that with too much interference from parents or too much absence a child is forced to use her mental energy to cope with her parents intrusiveness or absence instead of being free to explore herself. This mental energy and the child’s thinking mind then takes over and the child feels empty. When parents are intrusive or absent children have to remain onguard, mobilised, to respond to their parents fears and anxieties and unable to float away into their own experience to explore their own inner worlds. The capacity to be alone in ones own rich inner world is the antidote to feeling lost and empty. It is this kind of aloneness with ones own inner world that Winnicott proposed is the foundation of all creativity. However he adds that this is not possible when one is too alone, or on the other hand too intruded upon. It can only develop when the holding environment is safe and unobtrusive. At its best this is the space that www is attempting to achieve.