Welcome to the world of the Moffles!

At the heart of all secure relationships is intersubjectivity. This concept is all about being open to each other – being open to influence.  I’m looking at you & I’m influencing you, & when you look back at me, you’re influencing me. Intersubjectivity has three main elements – matched affect (having the same energy & rhythm); shared attention & complementary intention.

Intersubjectivity is important in all relationships. For children, it’s critical in helping them become safely engaged & socially connected with their parents & care givers. The child is learning about themselves and their surroundings through the relationship.The way that they experience things when guided by their loving adult, determines how they learn to see themselves and the world.

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Part 3 of Moffled Improv Wisdom. The maxims are a call to lightening up & living an unscripted life.

These are techniques used by generations of musicians & actors that Dan Hughes recognised could be equally helpful to therapists, parents, teachers & other professionals in their relationships & work with traumatised children.

Gratitude, kindness & a willingness to try. All things that can be so easily lost when we work or live with trauma, in traumatised systems or families. Trauma increases our vigilance for danger & impacts on our ability to think creatively & flexibly. It reduces our capacity to stay open & engaged with each other & can lead to us becoming risk averse.

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It’s estimated that in the UK 3-5 % of school aged children have ADHD.

Let’s commit to increasing our awareness, understanding & acceptance of neuro diversity in our families, schools & communities.

‘When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower’ – Alexander Den Heijer.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ to supporting children with ADHD in school, but there are a range of strategies that can help.  This Moffle infographic highlights some suggestions. Good communication between home & school to develop a team approach & consistent intervention, is also very important.

‘…relationships are not sustained by violence but by love. Love is a creative act. When you love someone, you create a new world for them’.

This is a quote from Trevor Noah, who grew up in the 1990’s, surrounded by brutality & violence, in a newly post-apartheid South Africa. Through all his experiences of racism, beatings, bullying & ostracism, he talks of the sustaining support & love of his mother. He saw that she wanted a better life for him with more opportunities than she had been given. She bought him the books she never got to read & got him an education she never had. He knew that she believed in him.

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Here is part 2 of Moffled Improv Wisdom. The maxims are a call to lightening up & living an unscripted life.

These are techniques used by generations of musicians & actors that Dan Hughes recognised could be equally helpful to therapists, parents, teachers & other professionals in their relationships & work with traumatised children.

I like the call to celebrate the obvious & notice everything. It fits so well with the notion of approaching life with a ‘beginner’s mind’. Looking at the world with beginner’s eyes – as if we are seeing everything for the first time – can help us to be more curious & act less hastily. Being in attuned relationships relies on us being mindfully aware of what is happening moment by moment. It is the coordinated dance that can happen between us when we are paying close attention to what is in front of us. And attending to exactly what is in front of us is the true work.

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In National Adoption Week, we send love to all the different people who are affected by adoption in different ways. It’s a time to celebrate all the joy & happiness that adoption has brought to so many new families. A time to advocate for good support for adoptive families living with the ongoing challenges that relational trauma can bring. And it’s also a time to remember the birth families that have experienced disruption, sadness & loss.

The Moffles by Mikenda Plant is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

We’ve Moffled the 13 strategies from the book, Improv Wisdom. Here is part 1. They are a call to lightening up & living an unscripted life.

 I was introduced to them by Dan Hughes many years ago on my DDP training & I have kept a copy on my office wall ever since.  A great prompt to try & stay present in the moment, to remember the importance of attending to exactly what is in front of us, & to keep trying.

These are techniques used by generations of musicians & actors that Dan recognised could be equally helpful to therapists, parents, teachers & other professionals in their relationships & work with traumatised children. A recognition of the artistry we all engage in when we are in attuned relationships.

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In National Adoption Week, we send love to all the different people who are affected by adoption in different ways. It’s a time to celebrate all the joy & happiness that adoption has brought to so many new families. A time to advocate for good support for adoptive families living with the ongoing challenges that relational trauma can bring. And it’s also a time to remember the birth families that have experienced disruption, sadness & loss.

Since the 1990’s, adoption has become a more open process, with encouragement for children to know & understand their birth history from an early age. There is better support (although this still needs much more investment) for ongoing contact with birth family members & research indicates that any contact works best where there is a clear focus on the needs of the child.

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