For caring parents and educators who want to empower their children to be optimally healthy on every level.  Agape Parenting courses offers both useful tips and skills, as well as emotional support for parents.

  • Compassionate listening skills
  • Win-win conflict resolution strategies
  • Pro-actively deal with children who are judged as being disrespectful
  • Set clear limits in ways that inspire connection
  • Learn why the consensual, non-coercive approach is more practical than  authoritarian or permissive approaches
  • Support your child in dealing constructively with fear
  • Create a healthy home environment that helps them to cherish family and  resist peer pressure

You will learn what it means to parent in a peaceful manner that keeps your relationship strong and whole, while simultaneously maintaining strong, clear and fair boundaries for your children.

What I offer: We offer

*courses and coaching.

*2 hour talks,

* retreats

*one day seminars, longer one day

*parenting consultations by phone, skype, or chat

*CD’s for children that  help instill and reinforce all the concepts described are available for sale. above.

*email service, where you can send three questions and have them answered by email in return.

*Personal Development workshops and individual sessions to help parents deal with their own issues which lead to them acting in ways that do not nurture their children.  Many people who realize how essential it is for them to develop the ability to respond calmly and confidently to their children’s strong emotions are committing themselves to the gaining greater awareness of their own emotions, particularly the strong feelings from childhood that children’s defiant behavior can bring forward in adults. Because there is a greater understanding now of the importance of interacting more calmly and respectfully with children, parents, teachers and caregivers the world over are committing to providing for their children an environment of true emotional safety and respect. When adults realize the importance and necessity of responding in a more calm and attuned manner to their children, they begin to commit to the healing of their own unmet emotional needs and wounds from childhood and life in general.

The Parenting Journey

Parenting is an incredibly rich, deep and rewarding journey. It is a journey that opens the heart in new ways, a journey that’s ever changing, a journey of growth and discovery. Just as the pregnant mum’s belly begins to stretch and grow, parent’s emotions, self image and self understanding begins to stretch and grow right from the beginning and most parents find that the stretching, growing and changing never really ends.

Parenting is easy when we’re attuned to our child
Most parents think and hope from the beginning that their love and dedication to their child will lead and guide them through each step of the journey and to a large extent that is true. When our heart is open and we are attuned (in tune) with our child, incredible wisdom comes forth effortlessly and we marvel in the joys of giving our child what it is that they need to thrive.

The challenges of parenting
However, the challenges of parenting, which are immense, also can bring forward huge feelings of frustration, self doubt and confusion. The responsibility of this precious little human’s life being in your hands and the pressure to get it right can weigh heavily on parents and bring up worries and fears. The demands of needing to give so much of our time, energy, focus and head space to our child when there are also so many other places we need and want to focus our attention and head space can cause parents to feel incredibly torn and stressed.

The challenges that accompany change and the new
Parents often find that so many of the things and relationships that brought them so much happiness and fulfillment in their lives previously have been pushed out of their lives because of the 24/7 nature of parenting. The differences in opinion between yourself and your partner, family or friends about what is right for your child can bring up a lot of difficult emotions and even painful rifts for parents. And these issues are only the beginning, we haven’t even started with cultural and racial differences or bringing our children up in a world whose future seems so uncertain.

Accessing heart centered information and support
If you are interested in gaining more information and support in the journey of identifying and healing some of the stronger and more difficult emotions that the extremely challenging job of parenting can bring up for you, you’ve come to the right place. We understand that the journey of becoming the best parent that you can be and want to be and the journey of personal development cannot be separated.

How can parents meet their own emotional needs?
For most parents, they just don’t get enough emotional support along the way and yet can often feel like they’re expected to perform at their best at all times despite their frustrations, restrictions, hurts and confusion. The approaches that we put forward on this site and through our courses and other resources are for parents who want to heal themselves, heal their child, heal their family and even take it further to bring healing to their family tree.

Democratic Parenting – a more holistic, more balanced approach
Many parents are realizing that they need to adopt a more holistic perspective to all aspects of their lives including their parenting. Many parents want to learn how they can get the balance between being strong, clear and confident and remaining calm, caring and loving. There is a healthy balanced approach to parenting that is neither permissive nor authoritarian, but brings forth some of the positive qualities of each and is in fact a new model of parenting that many parents haven’t encountered before.

Respect for your child’s feelings and boundaries
If you’re on the road to learning more about parenting, gaining new perspectives on parenting, learning good quality parenting tips and exploring attachment parenting, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re interested in learning or developing parenting techniques that are based on positive communication skills, respect for your child’s feelings and boundaries and generally parenting approaches that foster peace, trust, harmony and mutual co-operation in your family, again, you’ve come to the right place.

The big picture
Developing a holistic approach to parenting means solving the little annoying day to day issues you have with your child by stepping back and looking for the big picture patterns. To do this means to take a few deep breaths and refrain from shouting, threatening or punishing your child in any way, and instead own and rise above your anger and frustration. Despite your frustration, choose to come into closer relationship with your child when they act out.

When they act out – they need you to re-connect
Rather than responding with anger or coldness, try coming down to their level, becoming calmly focused on their feelings and telling them that you can see that they are really frustrated and that you want to help them. On a day to day basis, begin to practice observing, more objectively, how you treat their children and start to become more aware of the messages that you are giving your child and how these messages impact on the child’s relationship with you, with their self and with others.

The Quick Fix versus the Peaceful approach
The comparison of the two approaches can be compared with the “treat the symptom” (unhealthy behavior) versus the “treat the cause” (the child’s need for emotional connection) approaches. In a parent’s busy day to day life, it’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing exclusively on what they don’t like about their child’s behavior and then aiming to change that behavior through threats or punishments (e.g. withdrawal of attention). In fact, the majority of parenting advice currently available still advocates these outdated approaches.

When a parent responds to their child in an impatient way, as opposed to slowing down and really listening to and attuning to their child’s feelings, they often miss a lot of vitally important information relating to how their child is really feeling, what was their real intention behind their behavior and why they are feeling the way they are. However, if a parent views their child’s “misbehavior” as being symptomatic of unmet needs and consequently a cry for help to us, then parent will choose a very different response. When a parent sees “misbehaviour” as a symptom of the child being out of balance, the parent naturally asks themselves the question, “how can I help my child deal with those difficult feelings and come back to feeling at peace with themselves and others?”.

We may miss many of the gems and insights we can gain through asking questions like “what does my child really need to come back into balance”.

Who and how we see our child largely tells them “this is who you are, this is how you are”
When a parent says that their child “has always been a …. child”, always, their child knows they think that. Even if the parent never says it out loud, the message comes through. Also, the words you speak to your child are constantly programming your child, you are etching into their minds the beliefs, patterns and ways of behaving that will probably stay with them throughout their lives. To heal our hurts and resentments towards our children, we must heal the “inner child”, we must release our unresolved leftover hurts from childhood. Choosing not to heal these patterns, is choosing to pass those patterns on to your child.

Skills for Life: We all want our children to be the children, the teenagers and eventually the adults who can stay calm, logical, open minded and fair in the face of challenges and conflicts in life. We want our children to be able to communicate their thoughts and feelings clearly and equally listen to the thoughts and feelings of others and calmly work through difficulties and confusions until a fair resolution is reached. We don’t want them to be the child, teenager or adult who impatiently skips the process of communication that might eventually lead to clarity and resolution, but instead insist that it’s their way or the highway or simply walk away without ever learning how to resolve their issues with others. We don’t want them to be the kind of person who uses their anger to intimidate others to bend to their will. We don’t want our child to be the kind of person who wins favors through bribes, threats or punishments.

Children do as we do, not as we say: The kind of person we hope that they will become as an adult is the kind of person we need to learn to be as a parent with them and for them, not just when they’re happy and co-operative, but even more so when conflict arises, because that is when they’re hurt and need us the most.

This website offers a very balanced approach to disciplining and setting clear limits with your children in a way that still honors your child’s feelings and emotional needs.

On our seminars, parents learn how they can strengthen their bond with their child, while adopting a more therapeutic approach to dealing with their child’s strong emotions and, just as importantly, their own emotional reactions to their child.  Most of the time, the mood between parent and child is the main factor in determining a child’s “good” or “bad” behavior.

Adopting a punishment free approach to parenting is a key factor in establishing a stronger bond and maintaining a positive, caring and nurturing mood between parent and child.  On the courses, parents learn what it means to be a peaceful parent, while maintaining strong and clear boundaries for their children.

Parent Coaching I can help you with the specific issues you have in your family. You can describe the problems you are facing and answer a few questions about the history and I can help you learn some new approaches that will bring greater harmony to your child, to you and the whole family. Coaching can arranged by phone (which I pay for), skype or in person if you live in my area, which is Northwest Arkansas in the United States.

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