Pam Leo’s book “Connection Parenting” promotes compassionate family life. It is a wonderful read. The author advises to not read more than a chapter a day, and every chapter requires writing in a parenting journal. Leo encourages forming groups and using the book in a workshop setting. Although I imagine this could be very enriching, reading it and doing it on one’s own is also possible, and to me was very enlightening. I highly recommend it!
According to Leo, the two tools of connection parenting are connection and reconnection. The term connection and disconnection are used often in the book. By connection she means feeling loved and listened to and by disconnection she means feeling hurt and unheard. With connection parenting, the goal is to proactively meet the child’s need for connection. A child will communicate his need for more connection through his behavior. When we are challenged by this behavior, we use tool #1 – connection. This entails providing the child with a consistent, loving connection through spending time working and playing together, eye contact, a loving touch, respect and listening. Leo advises us to ask ourselves, prior to responding to a child’s behavior, : “Is this response connection or coercion?” She also admonishes us to look for a way to respond to the behavior without creating a disconnection. “Connect before you correct.” - we should try to create a loving connection as a solution to the displayed need.
If our buttons get pushed and we react before we connect, we might have possibly created a disconnection. We can tell if this is the case if our child starts to cry or scream, or if he retreats by avoiding eye contact, refusing to talk and rejecting our touch. These are signs that our child is hurt or feels unheard. As soon as we realize that we have created a disconnection because of our reaction, we use the tool #2, reconnection. The reconnecting tool involves three steps – rewind, repair, and replay. To rewind, we acknowledge our hurtful behavior (“What I said was hurtful”). Then we repair by apologizing, and letting the child know that he did not deserve our behavior. We finish by replaying – replaying the scenario so to speak. We present our new response with love and listening. When connection is re-established, our child will make eye contact again, they will talk to us and welcome our touch 
I find these are wonderful tools, and the book helps to develop the skills to use them effectively. Nevertheless, if you use your heart and insight, you can see how these can be put to practice right away. When we react to our children in a way we feel bad about, it is truly heartening to have a tool to help us make things better so that we can correct the situation immediately. The 3 R’s of reconnection offers us a second chance to give our children the respect they deserve when we missed it the first time.
We know that our behavior, or our children’s behavior might not always be ideal, yet the techniques Leo puts forward give us a simple formula to ensure that we offer our children the best of ourselves as parents. These easy to use and easy to remember tools help us practice humility, forgiveness and understanding, and most importantly they aid us in fostering and maintaining a loving connection despite the challenges that life will surely grant us.
