Mastered

We did it!

Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) teaches skills for interacting with your child in two ways - Child Directed Interaction (CDI) and Parent Directed Interaction (PDI).

In order to move to PDI, you need to master the skills for CDI (labeled praises, describing behaviors, reflecting what is said, no questions, no commands, no criticism)

Interactions during CDI sound a little like this:

"You are putting the green Lego on top of the red Lego. I really like how carefully you are building. Now you are taking the pieces apart. You are really sitting nicely and focusing so well!"

If the child says something like, "I'm making a fast car" you would reflect back what he/she said by saying, "You're making a fast car." Just be careful not to raise your pitch. It can't sound like a question or it won't count as a reflection:).

You ignore unwanted behavior and give praise as soon as the kiddo is making a good choice.

The whole point of CDI is to increase the child's desire to gain positive attention from you.

During each session, we have five minutes where the clinician 'codes' us and basically counts how many times we use each of the skills (labeled praises, behavioral descriptions, and reflections). If you get 10 of each in five minutes, it is considered mastery. For the rest of the session, we are coached during our interactions.

So today, Lee and I both met mastery - yeah!!

Now on to Parent Directed Interaction (PDI) where we will be given opportunities to learn effective modes of discipline.

Should be fun:).