Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) is often used to build healthy relationships with children from hard places, that is, children who have experienced early neglect, abuse, and trauma. The focus of TBRI® is usually on the caregiver-child relationship, but for those of the Christian faith, it can also apply to God.
Karyn Purvis and David Cross developed Trust-Based Relational Intervention. Drawing on research in the areas of attachment, sensory processing, and neuroscience, they developed a therapeutic model around empowering, correcting, and connecting principles (Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development, n.d.a.). Empowering principles contribute to helping children feel physically safe (Fleming, n.d.b.). Connecting principles help meet needs for attachment and connection. Correcting principles focus on attuning and attending to difficult behaviors. Together, these principles help children both become safe, and engage in healthy human relationships.
What about when caregivers are imperfect, though? As hard as caregivers try, they will occasionally make mistakes. This can disrupt the relationship process, even if only temporarily. Mess-ups and slip-ups can provide opportunities for rupture and repair. They can allow practice of the TBRI® concept of “redos,” or opportunities to redo a behavior and correct it the second (or third, etc.) time around (Winters & Herron, 2021a). For Christian parents, however, referring relationship to the perfect God can be a boon. God never fails. God never gives up. God is always loving and caring and safe. God always welcomes repentance and restoration. Caregivers who can point their children from hard places to God may see growth in both spiritual and human relationships.
Empowering principles work for relating to God, as well as for relating to humans. Children can develop routines and rituals around their spiritual lives that promote felt safety (Fleming, n.d.). These might include things like prayer at meals, prayer before bed, singing songs, and church attendance. Children might find an object or a photo that reminds them of God’s omnipresence and carry it with them. God always sees and knows the needs of His children, and encouraging children to reach out to Him can increase their overall well-being and regulation (Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development, n.d.b.). This, in turn, may widen their window of tolerance for other interactions.
God exists to be in relationship with His people. In fact, He designed them for this. For this reason, connecting principles also definitely apply to God. Children can benefit from mindful practices that focus on God and encourage connection (Fleming, n.d.a.). This might again include prayer, meditation, or other interventions like using the five senses to ground in the moment and become more aware of God (The Redeemed, n.d.). Connecting to God as a perfect, ever-present caregiver can do wonders for a child.
When it comes to correcting, God is in the business of sanctification, so correcting will come. TBRI® still applies here, as life values like using words to express needs, practicing respect, accepting no, and listening and obeying also apply to relationship to God (Winters & Herron, 2021b). Prayer uses words to communicate. Things like using God’s name correctly (rather than sacrilegiously, or in vain), and folding hands in prayer show respect (Jackson, 2023). Individual families may have other ways that they can teach respect based on their particular faith orientation, for example through participation in liturgy or rites such as communion. Showing respect may also come back full circle to increase connection to God.
Does relationship to God substitute for the important work of caregiving? No. Children desperately need earthly representations of God and His care. This is one of the many reasons God designed families. Still, using Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) to grow children’s connection to both caregivers and God can be profoundly healing, and in many cases, life-changing!
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