Peaceful Parenting

The Way of the Peaceful Parent
Seminars

For pro-active parents who want the very best for their children. These talks and courses are also very helpful for health care professionals, teachers, caregivers, therapists and healers who work with children.

Our Parenting Courses offer both useful tips and skills, as well as emotional support for parents.  Some of the topics generally covered are:

• Active listening skills
• Conflict resolution skills 
• Positively deal with children's defiance
• Set clear limits without creating conflict
• Help your child overcome fears and anxieties
• Support them to resist peer pressure
• Develop Emotional Intelligence in your child
• Deal with your child’s aggressive behaviour
• Meet your child’s needs for secure attachment

Genevieve and Dan offer a holistic perspective, offering effective parenting tips and techniques that foster the child's emotional wellbeing and emotional intelligence. Learn what it means to parent in a kind, calm and peaceful manner, while maintaining strong, clear and fair boundaries for your children.

We offer one day introductory seminars, evening courses, parent coaching and weekend intensives retreats. The introductory seminar offers an overview of the basic principles and philosophies that form the foundation of our parenting courses and teaches essential positive parenting skills and invaluable communication skills that can effectively be applied to improving all relationships.

Parent Coaching: For those who would benefit from Genevieve's one on one guidance in relation to their parenting and who want to get down to the finer details of the issues between themselves and their child, parent coaching is extremely valuable. People who access this service find it to be educational, empowering, supportive and overall a healing and uplifting experience. Parent Coaching is generally one on one. Cost is NZ$70 per hour or $80 per hour for groups of 2 or more.

Coaching by phone or Skype: However, phone sessions can be arranged with people who live overseas. Peaceful Parent will pay for the price of phone calls to England, Ireland, USA and Canada when the price of the coaching session is more than NZ$60 (approx US$50). To get started, just send an email with your phone number and we will arrange a time. If you live in a different country, please enquire with us about whether or not you are eligible to free calls depending on your country.

Mailing List: Please email us if you're interested in booking one of our courses or weekends or if you'd like to organize one to be run in your area (within New Zealand).

Key Principles: The concepts and approaches that participants are presented in our Parenting Seminars are based on a combination of attachment style parenting, active listening skills and a deeper understanding of children’s emotions.  Genevieve gives information and examples from her years of working with individuals, children and families. She also shares her in-depth study of the work of Dr. Aletha Solter, psychologist and author of “The Aware Baby”, “Tears and Tantrums” and “Raising Drug-Free Children”, the work of Daniel Siegel, psychiatrist, author of “Parenting from the Inside Out” and others in the field of cutting edge research in child development.

Meeting emotional needs and Dealing with Challenging Behaviour for Parents and Caregivers of Young Children: 

* What are the alternatives to yelling, time out or threats? 
* How do I deal with my child’s aggressive behaviour? 
* How can I teach my child to be considerate of the needs of others? 
* How can I know when my child’s upsets relate to previously traumatic experiences? 
* How can I help my child release stresses and fears?
 
Genevieve recommends interested participants to read one or more of the books of Dr. Aletha Solter. Dr. Solter is a Swiss/American developmental psychologist and author of four parenting books. Dr. Solter is recognized internationally as an expert on attachment, trauma, and non-punitive discipline.  
 
Cost of evening talks are $25 or $15 for playcentre members when run at Playcentres.

Testimonials:

"I have read so many parenting books in the last four years and I have to say that Genevieve's workshop stands out among the best. From her workshop, I realized how important it is to validate my children's emotions, by allowing them to cry in my supportive arms. We were going down the road of control patterns and distractions. I was distracting my children when they cried. Now I embrace them and let them "cry it out". I'd like to thank Genevieve for sharing her wisdom and making me aware of Dr. Aletha Solter's books."
Vicki Haverkort, mother of two boys, aged 4 and 2.

"Genevieve's parenting advice has made me feel more empowered and confident in positive parenting techniques.  She combines her practical personal experience with professional knowledge.  Genevieve creates an open welcoming atmosphere to educate and inform.  The seminar was very relaxed and I felt very comfortable asking questions.  I am enjoying the success of understanding myself and my children more and having a more peaceful home.  thank-you!!" Jane, Whangarei

More about the Peaceful Parent Philosophy:

As opposed to focusing on the child's behaviour in isolation, we give a broader understanding of the dynamics between parent and child. The mood between parent and child is the main factor in determining a child’s “good” or “bad” behaviour. Although using rewards or threats may work in the short term, we teach that adopting a punishment free approach to parenting is a key factor in establishing harmony and a good team spirit in the family. 

Not only is there an alternative to punishment, it is the only alternative that leads to long term peace and harmony in families and effectively meets children's emotional needs for safety, security and unconditional love.

Adopting a therapeutic approach to parenting lifts both the adult and child out of the power struggle

Our approach differs to many in that parents are taught to relate primarily to the feelings beneath the behaviour and to respond primarily to the feelings. Many parenting approaches focus on changing a child's behaviour using techniques that involve time out and creating artificial consequences for the child. We will be looking deeper into the negative side effects of approaches that involve punishments, threats or bribes. The overall approach being presented is a therapeutic approach for both adult and child, where the adult learns to stay in their adult and focuses on resolving conflicts in a way that meets both the needs of the parent and the child.

Aggression, hyperactivity and the speaking with "whining" tones in children are generally symptoms of the child's need to release their pent up stresses and frustrations. When we can give children the safety and permission to feel and express their feelings, children can return to balance and again live happily in the moment. When children are emotionally settled and calm, they naturally can give their full attention and enthusiasm to their daily play and learning. On the other hand, the child who carries a backlog of invalidated and unreleased tears and fears is less available mentally and emotionally and will be generally frustrated, unsettled or inhibited.

The parent's need for emotional support and release is just as big and just as valid as the child's and the first is actually a pre-requisite for the second. For this reason, we also offer understanding about how the patterns from the parent's own childhood influence how we parent as adults. Although most parents endeavor to parent with patience and kindness, all parents understand that putting the principle into practice is no easy task and it's unfair to "expect" ourselves as parents to just be calm and non-critical without a lot of learning, support and quite a lot of processing of our own emotional hurts.

Article: Connections between Energy Blocks and Children's Emotions

Genevieve's husband Dan assists on the courses and is also passionate about helping other parents learn the methods that will lead to greater peace and harmony in their families. Genevieve and Dan have two children, a son and daughter, aged 10 and 5 respectively. When pregnant with their first child, they were strongly influenced by Aletha Solter's book "the Aware Baby", "the Continuum Concept" by Jean Liedloff and "the Secret Life of the Unborn Child".

Dr. Aletha Solter is an internationally recognized expert in the field of child psychology.  Solter holds a Ph.D. in psychology, has led workshops in nine countries and is the founder of the Aware Parenting Institute (www.awareparenting.com).  She is the author of four parenting books.

Based on cutting-edge research and insights into child development, Dr. Solter's "Aware Parenting" concepts question most traditional assumptions about raising children, and proposes a new approach that can profoundly shift a parent's relationship with his or her child. Parents who follow this approach raise children who are bright, compassionate, competent, nonviolent, and drug free.

Some of the key aspects in Aletha Solter's books are the acceptance of emotional release, awareness of babies' and children's vulnerability to stress and trauma, recognition of repressed emotional pain as a contributing factor in many behavioral and emotional problems, recognition of the healing effects of laughter, crying, and raging, respectful, empathic listening and acceptance of children's emotions.

Aware Parenting also supports natural childbirth and early bonding, plenty of physical contact (including night-time closeness), breast-feeding, prompt responsiveness to crying, sensitive attunement, and non-punitive discipline -- no punishments of any kind (including "time-out" and artificial "consequences"), no rewards or bribes, searching for underlying needs and feelings, non-violent communication, peaceful conflict-resolution (family meetings, mediation, etc.).

These courses and coaching sessions offer an invaluable opportunity to take an objective look at the real issues and the real potential within your parent child relationships.

The courses offer a time to take a deeper look at your feelings and needs as a parent or caregiver. We cannot effectively meet our children's deeper emotional needs if we have not met our own emotional needs. Despite our deep desire as parents to give our children the very best that they deserve, the reality is that until we learn healthier ways of interacting, we continue to act and react out of deep rooted patterns and beliefs ingrained in us from our own childhood years. Understanding this actually allows us to have more patience and compassion for ourselves as well as giving us the hope that we can indeed change the patterns.

Changing Old Patterns of Behaviour: Through Genevieve's counselling work with adults and children, she has a deep understanding of how challenging, as well as how rewarding, the process of changing our parenting patterns can be. The reality is that for a parent to parent from the heart in a kind hearted manner without using punishment, a parent needs to have access to the correct information and some support in putting it into action. For most parents, being calm, patient and clear enough to parent in this way is easier said than done. It is a state that is reached through a journey of learning and increased self awareness.

Change happens slowly, one step at a time: Parents can be very hard on themselves if they revert back to their old methods of yelling and using punishments and threats despite having read a positive parenting book or attending a course. They can either give up on themselves or on their new methods. Parents need to understand that they can't change decades of conditioning overnight. Even though parents often revert back to old unhealthy habits, with new information and support parents can observe their behaviour in a new way, have a better understanding of exactly why the old behaviour is unhealthy and have an awareness of what the healthier alternative behaviour should be. Giving our kids the patience and kindness that they need and deserve is only possible when we are putting equal focus on learning to become kinder and more patient with ourselves!

It is extremely liberating to realize why you and your child act in the ways that you do and to realize that you can choose to create a more positive, empathetic and loving relationship for all concerned.

To parent, teach or be with children in a way that truly honors the child's soul, we need to connect back emotionally and energetically with how we as children viewed and experienced the world. The deepest way to truly understand the needs of a child is through reconnecting with our own childhood.

Healing our relationship with the children in our world truly can heal broken hearts and soften hardened hearts.

Because Genevieve is also a professionally trained energy healer, she can clearly see the connections between the physical ailments that a child presents and the places in their body where the flow of their emotions has become blocked. She has a clear understanding of the direct connections between emotional health and physical health.

She can see the obvious connections between a child's blocked emotional energy and blocks in their chakras, their body posture and natural movements of energy around the body. 

"In my private practice, it warms my heart hugely to witness the huge benefits that families experience when parents learn a parenting approach of actively listening to and validating the child’s emotions."

For participants of our Parenting Seminars who are now ready to take their healing of their relationship with their children, their partner and their own self to the next level, we recommend attending one of the "Healing Our Birth and Early Childhood " Weekend Retreats.

Click here to read Articles on Therapeutic Parenting