• attunement, responsiveness, emotional resonance
• being in touch with child’s feelings, intentions, communications
• attention to child’s communication vs. controlling child’s behaviour
• being receptive to what child is feeling or trying to communicate
  rather than: trying to control or make child do something
• thinking about child’s thinking: what the child is/ could be thinking
  NOT what we want him to be thinking or doing

The Containing Mind is

• active + responsive
• lovingly attentive to and interested in every detail
• caring for the concrete suffering of real individuals
• a vehicle for growth and development
• focussing, discriminating, feeling + integrating these functions

The Containing Process is the work of a Containing Mind and the Active Integration of

• Feelingful Observation (not clinical or detached)
  - allowing emotional quality of the observation to resonate within
  vs. clinical observation that is stripped of feeling/ emotional resonance
  
• Differentiating and Naming (not teaching or controlling)
  sorting out one thing from the other, identifying, naming, especially anxieties
  - effort to think about and to understand what child is attending to
  - actively trying to make sense of what has been observed
  
• Emotional Resonance (not soppy or patronising)
  - trying to put oneself into child’s place
  - imagining what it feels like to be him
  - being open to receiving communications/ feelings from child
  - being in touch with child’s feelings, intentions, communications
  
• Appreciating that Growing up in a Struggle (+ doesn’t just happen)
  - mental development needs careful attention and nurturing
  - feeding the mind not just the mouth
  - we can never know exactly what goes on inside another person
  - adults/ parents need to be able/willing to tolerate the frustration of not-knowing to be motivated for further observation + discoveries

Containment is bringing together what we sense with what this may mean and what we feel about it

References: Sorensen in Reid (ed.) 1997, Phillips 1999

• appreciating the difficulty
• bringing together what we sense with what this may mean and what we feel about it

the containing process is the active integration of

• observation (not clinical or detached)
• clarification (not teacherish)
• emotional resonance (not soppy)
• plus valuing the struggle, the difficulty

bringing together what we sense with what this may mean and what we feel about it

Email: mentor@reachingtheautisticchild.org.uk