Perception of Self

‘Perception-of-self’ subtheme is defined as participants (Parents/TAs) coming to a new understanding about themselves. In the data there were numerous examples of participants stating that they had learnt something new about themselves that they hadn’t previously known prior to the VIG intervention. Two EPs, four parents and two TAs contributed to this subtheme. That also meant that every parent and TA interviewed for this research reported that they learnt something new about themselves that caused them to adjust their perception-of-self.

The quote below from Parent 5 summarised the change they felt because of VIG;

“…it hasn’t changed anything drastically…other than our perceptions.” This quote showed that they felt their perceptions had changed but it wasn’t a drastic change, however a psychologist may argue that a change in perceptions is a drastic or important change which led to a change in behaviour and that is the aim of the intervention. EP5’s perspective of the impact that VIG had on the parent was that it had a dramatic impact with moments of big changes in perception. EP5 stated;

“She mentioned in the second session how similar she feels she is with L…he likes structure and routine, and he likes to know what’s

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happening; and, she… I think we were talking about the activities she’d chosen, and I said that I’d noticed that they were quite structured activities, and then she said, “Ah! Structure is the key word,” and that kind of set her off on this thing talking about how difficult she finds sort of spontaneous play. And, from that, we were able to talk about why she felt frustrated in her play with L, and I think what happened was, she came to the conclusion that actually it was easier for her, and she felt for L, as if she’d had this ‘aha’ moment, she felt that L had managed the play, the board game, as well as he did because he knew it was going to happen, because they’d planned it in. So, that was like an ‘aha’ moment for her. She was like, “Oh!” …it had quite a dramatic impact.”

This quote showed that through viewing the video clips and analysing what was going on, EP5 felt that Parent 5 had had a shift in the perception of herself; realising how difficult she found spontaneous play which may be the root of her frustration with her son. EP5 felt this to be a dramatic impact.

Parent 6 came to a new understanding about themselves and the impact they have on their child. Parent 6 stated;

“I didn’t realise that I had such an effect on him. I think it was more things of him testing me, like ‘oh look dad’ that I remember from the videos most. How he reacts to me and how I should be different, how I need to actually …how what I do, I’m not consciously thinking of it, I’m not conscious of it but there are times when I ignore you and I don’t mean to be, that is what I thought about the video.”

This quote showed that Parent 6 became conscious of the interaction between himself and his child and he came to a new understanding that there are times when he is ignoring him but doesn’t mean to be.

EP2 and EP5 noted that showing clips of successful moments helped build confidence in people and helped to change their perception of themselves from someone to isn’t competent to someone who is competent. EP5 stated;

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“I think she just saw that she could. …she'd say things like, "I know I can do things". And I think that had been her, kind of, belief about herself was that she couldn't and she was useless. And actually, she'd been shown clips, and they weren't huge clips, and, yeah, you're competent; you can do stuff. And that's all she needed and she'd taken it forward. And it was just miraculous.”

This quote showed that EP2 felt that the shift in perception-of-self to someone who is competent had had a “miraculous” impact. EPs felt that VIG helped to change the Parent/TAs perception-of-self through enabling them to recognise their skills that they may not have thought of before. EP5 likewise felt that helping the parent to think about their relationship with the child changed their perception of themselves and of the problem. EP5 stated;

“I don’t think her confidence and her relationship with the child was necessarily at the forefront of her mind…in terms of the problem” EP5 had tried to bring ‘confidence’ and the ‘relationship’ to the forefront of the parent’s mind to help shift their perception. This suggested that an aim of EPs delivering VIG was to change their perception-of-self to one that is conscious of the relationship and feeling confident.

In addition, EPs reported that VIG helped Parents/TAs to see the impact that their own behaviour had on the child, which therefore readdressed their focus from the child to themselves. EP5 stated;

“…several times parents have said to me, "Oh my goodness. It's how I feel that is affecting how they are," or, "I didn’t realise that they looked to me so much. I thought we didn’t have a relationship. I thought that I didn't connect with them."

This was important to EPs as they wanted to shift the focus from what the child can do to change, to what the adults (Parents/TAs) can do to support the child which will result in a positive behaviour change.

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Challenging perception-of-self appears in the literature regarding VIG. Wels (2004) states that the use of video is so effective within family intervention due to its links to concepts of self-confrontation, self-awareness and self- modelling. Self-confrontation asserts that viewing positive clips of exceptions in video clips may lead to change in beliefs. In connection to this, Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (1977) is helpful when considering the cognitive change that occurs when people repeatedly see themselves on video achieving the goals they had set for themselves. People are confronted with video evidence of themselves as they would like to be, which leads to a change in their perceptions of their skills and capabilities.