Aware Parenting Stories with Joss Goulden

In this episode I welcome Kirsty Fernandes back to the show. Kirsty joined me in episode 44. Kirsty is an Aware Parenting Instructor in New Zealand and is passionate about supporting mothers in the post-partum period and offering birth debriefing. She is the mother of 2 children and shares her work supporting mothers through her business Honouring Māmā. In this conversation we share our own experiences of trauma in giving birth. We talk about what birth trauma is and some of the ways in which the current system often results in trauma for parents. We talk about how birth trauma can affect birthing women, their partners and children and share the profoundly transformative experience of receiving support to process and heal, by sharing our stories and having all our complex, layered feelings about our births welcomed, witnessed and validated. To learn more about Kirsty’s work, including her birth debriefing, please visit https://www.honouringmama.com and follow Kirsty on Instagram and Facebook at Kirsty Fernandes Honouring Mama. If you would like support on your parenting journey, in relation to birth trauma or any other aspect of aware parenting, I am here for you and I encourage you to get in touch [email protected] Or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/parenting-coaching/

This episode dives into why children so often need to cry. I talk about many of the different challenging and stressful experiences that children face, from their time in utero all the way through childhood and share some of the painful feeling they then experience. I offer compassion and support to parents listening so that they can offer compassionate understanding and support to their children. I normalise frequent big feelings for all children and remind parents how important it is to be taking care of ourselves and finding ways to try to meet our own needs in order to be able to take care of our children. If you would like support on your parenting journey, I am here for you and I encourage you to get in touch [email protected] or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/parent-coaching/ To learn more about needs and feelings, please visit www.cnvc.com

This episode dives into how we can support our children when they suck their thumbs or fingers. Often in sessions parents express their concern and frustration about these behaviours so if this is happening in your family, you are not alone. I talk about why children suck their thumbs/fingers, how we can support ourselves and how we can support them to not need to do this anymore. To learn more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community with Danni and Joss, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au/community To learn more about my new Aware Parenting Workshop, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/parenting-workshops/

In this episode I have a conversation with Lavinia Brown. Lavinia is a trauma-informed psychodynamic coach who supports mamas to become the conscious parents they want to be through healing their inner child. Through acknowledging and integrating unprocessed pain from the past, overcoming unconscious patterns and learning how to accept, love themselves and assert healthy boundaries, mamas stop feeling ashamed, anxious, guilty and angry, and can show up as the authentic parent, partner and woman that they want to be, instead of who their primary caregivers thought they should be. Lavinia lives with her partner and 3 children in the UK. In this episode Lavinia shares how she came to do this work after feeling overwhelmed and desperate as a parent herself. She explains what an inner child is and how these younger parts of us show up during the course of our day-to-day life as parents, as partners and in many of the interactions and experiences that we have. We talk about how to connect with our inner child and explore what is coming up for us, going towards the feelings and then supporting the integration of those painful experiences so we can become freer from the activations of our inner child wounding. To learn more about Lavina, please visit www.laviniabrown.com and follow her on social media at the.innerchild.healing.expert. The link to her podcast is here https://open.spotify.com/show/0NvSnxZWCG4uVTAUR4WRdc. Her partner’s work with fathers can be found here www.andrewlynn.net and https://www.instagram.com/life_coach_for_dads/ To learn more about Marion Rose’s Inner Loving Presence Process course, please visit https://innerlovingpresenceprocess.com To learn more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community with Danni and Joss, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au/community

I really love that I get to have regular conversations about Aware Parenting with Danni Willow. In this episode we talk about the parallel journey of parenting our children and reparenting ourselves. We share the on-going invitation that aware parenting our children offers us to be tending to ourselves, to be exploring our emotional reactions, unpacking our cultural conditioning and core beliefs, reconnecting with our own authenticity and learning to speak the language of compassion in order for our children to be able to be who they truly are, without having to also carry our baggage. We share examples of how we have seen this in our own families. We share how important it is to be getting support, compassion and connection with others on this journey. And we describe more about our Exploring Aware Parenting Community, which is starting its 3rd year in the coming weeks. It is a compassionate and connected community to support parents to develop a truly embodied understanding of Aware Parenting. And it also powerfully supports members on their own reparenting journey. If you would like to learn more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au/community. If you would like to go on the waitlist to receive a significant discount only available for the first week of sign up from 9th September 2024, please email [email protected]. If you are listening to this at another time and would like to join the community at a different time, we re-open the doors every September. To learn more about Danni Willow, please visit www.thewayofthewoman.com.au

This episode is in response to a question from a listener about how she can explain Aware Parenting to her parents. I talk about how important it is for us all to keep learning more, getting clearer and deepening our understanding of Aware Parenting in order to be able to explain it to others. I describe the key assumptions of Aware Parenting and outline the main aspects in a way that is easy to share with others. I talk about why it can be hard to explain this to our families and friends and how we can support ourselves when we are wanting to have these conversations with others so that it feels empowering and enjoyable. If you would like to access my free introductory course, my attachment play ebook or any of my articles or previous episodes, please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au. If you would like more support, with this or any other aspect of aware parenting, I invite you to get in touch.

In this episode I talk about how Aware Parenting supports us to understand our children’s behaviour and to make sense of the challenges in our families. I share how we can see behaviour as communication and explore the reasons for our children’s difficult behaviour. I share how we can bring compassion and curiosity to our children, support them and create the safety for them to use their innate healing mechanisms to return to balance. I also share how we can bring the same compassionate care to our own behaviour and find more support and capacity in parenting. I talk about why this is important, how significant it is for us to understand behaviour in this way and the power of our often bumpy and imperfect parenting for our children and for us. If you would like more support, please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/parent-coaching/ to learn more.

In this episode I talk with Raluca Stefan. Raluca is mom of two beautiful children, a certified Peaceful Parenting coach, an Aware Parenting instructor, and the founder of Peacefully Parenting. She helps families to find more balance, peace, and joy in their lives, running support groups for mothers, webinars, and offering 1-1 coaching for parents. She says “The first step into peaceful parenting is more compassion for our children and us. Our children can change the world if we raise them with respect, love, and compassion”. English is Raluca’s third language and yet she shares so beautifully her Aware Parenting story. In this conversation, Raluca describes how she found aware parenting and how she supported herself to be able to listen to her children’s feelings. She shares how raising our children in this way gives such profound learning for us as parents too and supports our children to have deep emotional awareness and self-connection. We talk about the power of journalling regularly to support ourselves to stay connected to our thoughts and feelings and internal world. Raluca shares how she supports her children with control patterns and with attachment play as well as bring joy, laughter and playfulness to herself. We talk of the effect of Aware Parenting on the world. If you want to learn more about Raluca, please follow her on Instagram at peacefully_parenting or visit her website www.yogalifeparenting.com

In this episode I talk with Kirsten Cobabe. Kirsten is a former therapist turned coach, teen and parent whisperer and artist, and specialises in supporting families navigate the waves of adolescence. For over two decades, she has guided parents in learning how to listen to, and talk with, their teens. She engages parents in personal reflection, embracing their evolving role, understanding the teen brain and restoring harmony in the home. In recognizing this unique stage of development, her hope is to bridge the widening gap between parents and their children, creating conscious, stronger bonds. Through compassionate guidance, intentional, sound strategies and tailored techniques, Kirsten empowers families to pilot these pivotal years with deeper awareness. Her work is not just about addressing immediate concerns, but about lighting the path to a more empowered future, ensuring that today's challenges become the foundation for tomorrow's brighter relationships. Her work aligns closely with Aware Parenting. In this conversation Kirsten and I talk about some of the stresses and challenges that our teenage children face as they are growing up. She shares how we can communicate with our teenagers in ways that support a strong, respectful relationship, whilst also guiding and modelling to them. We talk about some of the different ways parents need support and community in raising teens whilst also doing their own re-parenting work. Kirsten shares how she brings more care and joy to herself and encourages the parents she works with to do the same. We talk about how to bring more connection to our teenagers in ways that also respect their needs for privacy and individuation. We talk about cultivating trust in our families and the results of raising our teenagers in this way. If you want to learn more about Kirsten, please visit her website www.kirstencobabe.com and follow her on Instagram at kirstencobabe. If you want to know more about my Parenting Teenagers Course, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/aware-parenting-teenagers/

I am so excited to share this conversation with Meg Rankin about her journey with Aware Parenting, and the power of Birth Debrief support for healing trauma. Meg is a mother and Social Worker with 20 years of counselling experience, working predominantly in the pregnancy, birth and early parenthood space. She currently works in a tertiary hospital offering training to health professionals supporting women and babies who have experienced trauma. Meg also runs her own business, offering Birth Debriefing, Counselling for Parents, and Clinical Supervision to care professionals. Meg is an Aware Parenting Instructor-in-training, and is also currently undergoing Women’s Circle facilitation training. In this episode Meg shares how she explored the theory of aware parenting and then slowly learnt how to put it into practice. Meg shares how learning to take care of her own needs has enabled her to have capacity to listen to her daughter. Meg shares some of her expertise with birth debriefing – why it is so powerful and how we can heal from birth trauma. Meg shares the deepening in her understanding and practice of loving limits and we talk about the balance of offering limits whilst also meeting needs for autonomy and choice. We talk about attachment play and how powerful it has been in Meg’s family. If you would like to learn more about Meg, please visit her website www.megrankin.com.au or follow her on Instragram @meg.rankin.counselling. Meg offers Medicare rebates for parents who have been pregnant within the last 12 months to get up to 3 sessions rebated by Medicare, per pregnancy/child.

This episode explores death, loss and grief and how Aware Parenting can support us in the deeply painful process of grief. It is another conversation with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. Danni is an aware parenting instructor and mother to 2 girls. If you are currently experiencing grief, we are sending so much love to you and encourage you to reach out for support. In this conversation, we share some of the ways that we experience grief in our lives and some of the many intense, mixed feelings that we often experience in response. We talk about how our imprints around grief were not very supportive and we therefore often have a lot of accumulated unexpressed feelings about loss and death. We talk about the on-going, individual journey of grief and how Aware Parenting is so helpful in grief because it validates and welcomes all feelings. We share how grief can be a portal to access and release lots of other intense painful feelings. We share some of our own experiences of grief and how aware parenting helps us to support our children to process and integrate their grief. And we talk about bringing ceremony and ritual to support the on-going grieving process. Here are the resources that Danni has found helpful for her and her children on their on-going journey through grief. For kids: The invisible string and the invisible leash by Patrice Karst The Memory Tree -Britta Teckentrup Beginnings and Endings with Lifetimes in Between – Bryan Mellonie & Robert Ingpen Let’s Talk About When Someone Dies – Molly Potter & Sarah Jennings Adult books: The wild edge of sorrow by Francis Weller The grief deck by Adriene Jenik Bearing the unbearable by Joanne Cacciatore If you want to know more about Danni’s work, please visit her website https://www.thewayofthewoman.com.au and follow her on social media at Danni Willow, The Way of the Woman.

Carly Facius is mother to three beautiful children, who are her greatest teachers on this journey. She is a Registered Midwife, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), Aware Parenting Instructor and hold a Master of Primary Maternity Care. For more than a decade, she has supported parents from conception throughout the childbearing journey and into parenthood. She believes that people's intuition can be their greatest asset, and is passionate about offering a space where people can feel held and deeply seen, and know that they are not alone. In this conversation, Carly shares how she discovered Aware Parenting from a place of depletion and exhaustion and understanding how crucial it is for us to be finding ways to meet our needs as parents too. We talk about supporting our children’s big feelings, in particular how to respond when they are being aggressive in a way that bring us back to compassion and connection. We talk about the importance of us getting listening and care in order to us to be able to offer aware parenting and the profound shifts we see in our children’s behaviour after we have been supported ourselves. We talk about the power of moments of intentional presence and self-connection in parenting. To learn more about Carly please visit www.seedpodfamilies.com or find her on Instagram at seed_pod_ To learn more about Marion Rose’s Inner loving presence course, the link is here https://innerlovingpresenceprocess.com

In this episode I talk with Sarah Martin. Sarah is a mother to 2 now grown up children. She has taught handcrafts at the local Steiner school, worked as a birth doula, is a Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapist, and worked as a child and family practitioner for Relationships Australia, offering parenting support and child directed play therapy for children and various support processes for teens facing life challenges. She has also developed and run Rite of Passage Camps for mothers and their teen daughters. She is now taking her birth support role to the next level as a midwifery student working towards being a home-birth midwife for our local town alongside her women's rite of passage work. In this episode we talk about our own on-going journeys with body image and how the messages and imprints we received as children have affected us as adults. We share how we have supported ourselves (and continue to do so) as we have tried to create an accepting relationship with our body. We talk about how we have tried to support our children to have different experiences about body image, in the face of immense pressures of social media and global marketing. We talk about how Aware Parenting can support our children with this and how we can encourage a deeper spiritual connection with our bodies for us and our children, full of wonder, celebration, self-acceptance and compassion. To learn more about Sarah, please visit her website www.redtempletherapy.com.au and follow her on Facebook and Instagram at Red Temple Therapy.

This episode explores what we can do when the feelings aren’t flowing for our children. This comes up so often in sessions with many clients and something that we all struggle with at times. I share some thoughts about why it is hard to truly welcome our children’s feelings, how we can support our children when their feelings and behaviour seems stuck and how we can support ourselves to shift what is there for us. I share some ideas for how we can come back to trusting the journey for ourselves and our children. If you are finding this challenging in your family, I am here to support you. If you want to connect with me please visit www.awareparenting.com.au If you would like a copy of my free Introduction to Attachment Play eBook, please email me [email protected]

In this episode I talk with Candice Morse. Candice started working with children and parents in 2012. She has crossed through many different rolls from face painter to art therapist. Having always been driven to inspire a deeper sense of wellbeing to the littlest members of our world, she is now a deeply loving mother of two. Since becoming a mother she has become passionate about the natural process of birth and devoted to cultivating and inspiring healthy and respectful relationships with children. In this episode Candice shares how she found Aware Parenting and how quickly she noticed big changes for her daughter and for a deeper connection to her authentic self too. She shares the stories of her births, what supported her and how she came to have a very empowering birthing experience for her second child. She shares the support in birth of aware parenting teaching her how to sit in the discomfort of big feelings and how to deeply listen in times of intensity, as well as bringing her back to connection and trust. Candice shares some of her own healing journey in motherhood and the power of aware parenting in that work. We talk about the benefit of rewind and repair and attachment play in parenting and the power of aware parenting to change the world. Here are the resources that we recommended in this conversation to support women in preparation for birth: Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation by Pam England and Rob Horowitz Face to face with Childbirth by Julia Sundin Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage by Rachel Reed The Art of Giving Birth: With Chanting, Breathing, and Movement by Frédérick Leboyer The Orgasmic Birth Podcast by Debra Pascali Bonaro Attachment Play by Aletha Solter Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen If you want to connect with Candice or learn more about her, please visit tending.the.temple on Instagram. If you want to connect and get support from me, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au or follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss

Episode 81 - You Are Not Alone with Joss & Danni by Aware Parenting Stories with Joss Goulden

In this episode I talk with Cath Hakanson about how to talk to our children about sex. Cath is a mother, sex educator and founder of Sex Ed Rescue. Bringing her 25+ years clinical knowledge, a practical down-to-earth approach, and passion for helping families, Cath inspires parents to talk to their kids about sex so that kids can talk to their parents about anything! Sex Ed Rescue arms you with the tools, advice and tips to make sex education a normal part of everyday life. In this episode, we talk about why it can be hard for parents to talk to their children about sex. Cath shares how to start having these important conversations with children to counter some of the unhelpful and often dangerous information and messaging that our children are now exposed to from a young age. We talk about supporting children with puberty, the prevalence of pornography, consent, masturbation and staying safe online. If you would like to learn more about Cath's work or explore her resources for parents, please visit www.sexedrescue.com. If you would like to learn more about my course for connected parents, Aware Partnering in Parenthood, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/aware-partnering-in-parenthood/

In this episode I respond to a listener’s question about what we can do when we are triggered by our children’s behaviour. I talk about how normal it is for us all to have many moments when we are activiated in response to our children. I share about some of the main ways in which we were wounded and hurt as children and how this can affect us as adults, underlying some of our reactions to our children. I share some of the ways we might be triggered by our children. And I share how we can get support and support ourselves to make this less likely to happen, less painful and intense so we can be more often the parent we want to be. I also describe the power and importance of offering rewind and repair to our children when we are triggered, As always, I end by sharing what I wish I had known 18 years ago at the beginning of my aware parenting journey about this. Information about my Aware Partnering in Parenthood course is here https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/aware-partnering-in-parenthood/ For more information about my circles, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/circles/

This episode is another conversation with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. Danni is an aware parenting instructor and mother to 2 girls. In this conversation we talk about the aware parenting perspective on supporting our children with food. We share really honestly some of our own stories about food and how that has played into us learning to offer self-directed eating with our children. We talk about learning to trust our children and ourselves with food when we are able to process our feelings about it. We talk about eating/feeding control patterns and offer practical strategies for how to encourage more self-connection about food for our children. If you want to know more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. Her webinar on Self Directed eating is available here https://www.thewayofthewoman.com.au/shop/p/the-self-regulated-eating-seminar Our Monthly Mothers Circle is available here https://www.thewayofthewoman.com.au/shop/p/aware-circle-with-joss-and-danni-2r78m If you would like to learn more about my offerings and courses, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au

In this episode I have a powerful and inspiring conversation with Dr Greer Kirshenbaum. Greer is an Author, Neuroscientist, Doula, Infant and Family Sleep Specialist and Mother. She trained at the University of Toronto, Columbia University, New York University and Yale University. Greer has combined her academic training with her experience as a doula and mother to lead The Nurture Revolution. A movement to nurture our babies’ brains to revolutionize mental health and impact larger systems in our world. Greer wants families, professionals, and workplaces to understand how early caregiving experience can boost mental wellness and diminish depression, anxiety, and addiction in adulthood by shaping babies’ brains through simple intuitive enriching experiences in pregnancy, birth and infancy. Her book is called The Nurture Revolution: Grow Your Baby’s Brain and Transform Their Mental Health Through the Art of Nurtured Parenting. She offers resources, workshops, and coaching. Her work aligns closely with many aspects of Aware Parenting. Greer brings her neuroscience lens to share information about some of the physiological brain changes that mothers experience in early parenting and how they are perfectly designed to support and enable deep connection, bonding, protection and safety with our babies. She describes how supporting the emotional development of babies is the foundation of physical health and mental health for life. Greer shares why she changed her career from research science to science communication in order to share with parents that early maternal care has profound impacts on wellbeing and to counter the beliefs in our low-nurture culture that are harmful to babies, children and parents. She shares how we can support our children’s needs for connection, for emotional responsiveness and with sleep. We discuss how important it is for parents to be getting support. To learn more about Greer, please follow her on Instagram at nurture_neuroscience_parenting and visit her website www.nurture-neuroscience.com

Ellie Gut-Silverman is an Aware Parenting Instructor who lives with her husband Gideon, their beautiful daughter Zeva, their Irish Wolfhound Alfie, three bulls and three goats just outside Bellingen in NSW. She is an aware parenting instructor, dedicated to supporting families throughout pregnancy and in early parenthood, and is passionate about supporting others on their paths of reparenting, repatterning, and healing so that they can live and parent with more presence, compassion, ease and joy. In this conversation, Ellie shares how she discovered aware parenting and started listening to feelings and what she has learnt to support herself to listen. We talk about learning to trust our children, through the on-going practice of listening to some of the many feelings our children have. Ellie shares how interconnected we are with our children and how important it is for us to offer ourselves these same practices of loving listening and meeting our needs in order to be able to support our children. She shares how aware parenting practices have supported a deepening in her relationship with her daughter, herself and her husband, and how she supports her daughter to be more willingly cooperative using attachment play. To learn more about Ellie, please visit www.awarevillage.com.au, and follow her on Instragram at aware_village.

Belynda Smith is mother to two beautiful boys are now in their tweens/teens, a single mum living in Perth WA. She has been a Certified Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor (since 2017) and built on this solid foundation with a Certification as a Level 1 Aware Parenting Instructor in 2023. She is passionate about parenting with connection, supporting parents in the many roles she has, sharing particularly about the importance of listening for us all and reading, connection and books. In this episode Belynda shares her journey with Aware Parenting. She describes how receiving listening for herself transformed her early parenting journey from struggle and overwhelm to being able to be the parent she wanted to be. She shares how aware parenting has given her a nuanced understanding of each of her children’s unique needs and what lies underneath behaviour in the difficult moments. We talk about all the ways getting regular, consistent listening for ourselves, ideally in multiple different spaces, supports us in ways that make aware parenting possible. We describe our current set ups for listening and we reassure listeners that having struggles is a normal part of being human and needing support is a natural need for us all. Belynda also shares her love of books and why books bring so much value and joy to her life. If you would like to learn more about Belynda please visit her website https://belyndasmith.com.au/ and follow her on Facebook: ParentingwithBelyndaSmith and Instagram: @belyndasmithparenting Her podcast is called Tales from the Toolbox Podcast

Welcome back to a new episode where I talk with one of my best friends, Helen Marshall. Helen is an inspiring speaker on real food, value-based business in wellness, and creating a life you love. She is the founder of Primal Alternative, a company that empowers people to run their own home-based baking business through the Primalista Licence. She has over 30 years of experience in the health and wellness industry. Based in Albany WA with her husband and 2 children, Helen enjoys Body Balance, meditation, walks in nature, and champagne in the spa. In this episode Helen shares her motherhood story and how she came to practising Aware Parenting when her children were teenagers. She shares some of the ways that she incorporates Aware parenting into her family, how she has learnt to listen to feelings and offer special time. She shares how she has learnt to meet her own needs and take care of herself. She shares how she set up her business Primal Alternative to help over 290 Primalistas in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and the UK create successful grain-free food businesses from home. To learn more about Primal Alternative, please visit www.primalalternative.com and follow her on Facebook and Instagram at Primal Alternative.

Welcome back to a new episode where I talk about healing from stress and trauma through loving listening. I talk about what trauma is, what some of the sources of stress are for children and how these experiences affect children. I share how our children’s bodies respond to stress and how the expression of feelings with loving support is a natural healing process. I talk about creating the necessary sense of emotional safety for healing to occur and what is not supportive for our children in this process. I share some very helpful quotes and descriptions from Dr Aletha Solter’s book Healing your Traumatized Child. I also share lots of tips and advice about how to listen to our children in a way that supports healing and how to get that for ourselves too and how to explore and process what comes up for us when listening to feelings. If you want support to listen to your children and help them to heal from stress and trauma or if you want support to explore and release your own feelings, I am here for you.

Welcome back to a new episode where I have the pleasure of talking with Marion Rose Ph.D. about her wonderful new book I’m Here and I’m Listening. Marion is the best-selling author of The Emotional Life of Babies and is the co-author of Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children with Lael Stone. She has been practicing Aware Parenting since 2002 and is the mother of two young adults. She has been an Aware Parenting instructor since 2005 and is a Level Two instructor and the Regional Coordinator for Australia and New Zealand. She hosts The Aware Parenting Podcast and The Psychospiritual Podcast, and co-hosts The Aware Parenting and Natural Learning Podcast with me! I love this book so much and highly recommend it for all parents. In this episode we have a beautiful conversation about some of the key themes of her new, best-selling book. Marion shares her wisdom about connection and relationships with our children, doing our own re-parenting work, trusting children’s innate wisdom, loving limits, supporting our children to heal and much more. It is such a powerful conversation. If you want to learn more about Marion’s book, please visit www.amazon.com in your country. She shares more about her work on social media, and on her website www.marionrose.net. If you want to learn more about my Aware Partnering in Parenthood Course, the link is here https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/aware-partnering-in-parenthood/

Welcome back to a new episode where I have a conversation with Leah McDermott. Leah is an unschooling advocate and mother of three. After over a decade spent in the world of education, two Masters of Education degrees, and multiple teaching certifications, Leah slowly began to realize that the way we are teaching our children in public schools went against everything that we knew to be true about learning acquisition and child development. Her passion for helping other children and families led to her developing a child-led learning curriculum, creating a supportive space online for parents, and opening Bridge Academy - a private umbrella school for homeschoolers, Leah continues her life’s work of encouraging adults to unlearn what they’ve always believed to be true as they lean fully into trusting their children as natural, capable learners. Leah currently lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Brian, their three boys, and a collection of pets. In this episode we have a powerful conversation about some of the damaging long-term effects of schooling and the pressure that children often face at school. We share many of the benefits we have seen of supporting children to learn in their own way, in their own timing, relaxed and self-connected at home. We talk about cultivating trust in our children and dealing with the judgements and questions of others so that we can truly enjoy facilitating our children’s learning at home. If you want to learn more about Leah’s work, please follow her on social media at Your Natural Learner or her website https://www.bridgeacademy.us/. If you want to learn more about Natural Learning from me, I have a series of articles on my website here https://awareparenting.com.au/articles/?_select_a_category=homeschoolingandnaturallearning. I also offer workshops on Natural Learning here https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/parenting-workshops/ and run an online natural learning and aware parenting community together with Marion Rose https://awareparenting.com.au/parenting-coaching/community/. We also have a podcast series together The Aware Parenting and Natural Learning Podcast, that you can find on all podcast platforms.

I am so excited to share this latest conversation with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. It is my favourite of our conversations so far! In this episode we explore how we are invited time and time again in parenting to do our own inner work. We talk about why this is often so painful and difficult and share some of the things that can get in the way of us doing our own healing. We share some of the many ways we have supported ourselves and the clients we work with to heal stress and trauma in order for us to be able to offer Aware Parenting to our children. We talk about how doing our own healing work is such a powerful gift to our children too. We end by talking about what we would have loved to have known at the beginning of our Aware Reparenting journey to have made the process so much less painful. Stay tuned for more details about the new online monthly circle that Danni and I are offering soon. If you would like to learn more, please email me [email protected]. If you want to know more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn more about my offerings and courses, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au.

Welcome back to a new episode where I respond to a listener’s question about how to navigate the challenging, messy moments we have with our partner/co-parent. In this 3rd episode about partners, I talk about how to bring more compassion and connection to our partnerships using the Aware Parenting framework and how the aspects and principles support us to have better relations. I talk about cultivating trust in our families and supporting our children at times of conflict and disconnection. I talk about how to reduce conflict and tools for bringing more empathy and connection between us and the other parent of our children. If you want to learn more about this, my course Aware Partnering in Parenthood dives into all this in depth. To learn more, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/aware-partnering-in-parenthood/. At the time of recording this is January 2024, there is a 20% off sale on this course. I also offer joint sessions with both partners to support more ease and connection in parenting. I invite you to get in touch if you would like more support.

I am so happy to share this final conversation for 2023 with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. This episode explores how to bring the framework of aware parenting to the holiday times to bring more ease, joy and harmony to what can be a really challenging time of the year. We discuss why it’s often so hard to navigate the expectations and pressures of holiday times and share how to use all the beautiful tools of aware parenting to support ourselves and our children with the big feelings that come up at these times. We share how we have approached Christmas and holidays in our families and share some invitations to support you through it too. If you want to know more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn more about my offerings and courses, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au.

This episode is another in the series of conversations with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. This episode explores how to navigate parenting together with the other parent of our child/ren. We discuss the impact of becoming parents on our relationships and how to navigate parenthood when we have different perspectives on how to parent. We share some things we have found helpful to support conscious connection and respectful communication with our partners. We talk about how to navigate it when our inner children show up for us and our partners/co-parents and how to model more conscious and healthy relationships to our children, having not received that ourselves. We share how to support our children and ourselves at times of conflict, disconnection or separation. If you want to know more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn more about my new Aware Partnering in Parenthood Course, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/aware-partnering-in-parenthood/

In this episode I have a wonderful conversation with Bernadette Lack from Core Floor and Restore. B is a midwife, core and pelvic floor specialist, educator and author. She is the creator and founder of Core and Floor Restore, an online pregnancy, birth and postpartum hub, co-owner of Motheration with Lael Stone and co-host of The Great Birth Rebellion Podcast. She loves all things from pregnancy to parenting but mostly she loves her husband and two boys. In the episode, B shares how she came to Aware Parenting and how it supported big shifts in her relationships with her children, herself, her partner and her family. She shares how she came to understand the need for her to explore her own pain and imprints in order to be able to practise this with her children. We talk about why telling the stories of our births is so important and how she supports parents with that process. B shares about how to heal our bodies after birth, how to support the pelvic floor in a holistic way. We talk about how to support mothers to reconnect with their power and intuitive wisdom. We do touch briefly on pregnancy loss and death of babies in this conversation so I invite you to check in with yourself to see if you want to listen and we are sending love to anyone who has experienced the loss of a baby or child. To learn more about B, please visit www.coreandfloor.com.au and www.motheration.au with Lael Stone, and follow her on Instagram at coreandfloorrestore

In this episode I have a wonderful conversation with Shelly Robinson . Shelly is both a certified conscious parenting coach and certified family wellness coach who helps parents worldwide break generational cycles to fill their homes with more compassion, calm, and joy. She is the founder of Raising Yourself and the creator of the Connected Kid Toolkit. When she’s not cheering on parents to become more deeply connected with their kids, you can find Shelly in the kitchen baking with her two children, sneaking in a game of ping pong with her hubs, or releasing stress at her weekly boxing class. Shelley’s beautiful approach is not Aware Parenting but it aligns closely. In this episode, Shelly shares the profound realisation she had early in parenting, that she was raising herself alongside raising her children. She talks about how we can bring curiosity when we have big reactions to our children’s behaviour, in order to not be passing so much of our pain down to the next generation. She shares her question “I wonder what my anger has to tell me” that she uses to dive deeper into her inner child work and then finding ways to give to yourself now what you didn’t receive in childhood. We talk about repair, avoiding punishments, offering unconditional love and responding to family who view child-raising very differently to us. If you want to learn more about Shelly, please visit her website at shellyrobinson.com and download her free guide entitled “The Ultimate Guide to Less Yelling and More Compassion.” She is on Instagram and Facebook at Raising Yourself.

In this episode, I have another great conversation with Jai Singh. Jai joined us in episode 61 and here we have a second conversation about conscious fatherhood. Jai is a men's coach who works with fathers on their relationship with themselves, their partners, their kids and their sense of purpose in life. His work is inspired by his own humbling and growth-inspiring experience with marriage and fatherhood, and from seeing how deeply but silently most men struggle through the journey of fatherhood. He began offering coaching in 2016 and started running men's groups specifically for fathers in 2019. He is based in Richmond, Virginia in the U.S. and runs online and in-person men's programs. In this episode, we talk about how to support fathers to bring more self-connection to their parenting journey, whilst they navigate the stresses and challenges of parenting without the support that we evolved to rely on. He shares how fathers can bring more awareness of the full range of their emotional experience in order to be able to identify and meet their needs more, so they have more capacity for the emotional storms of parenting. We talk about the need for support for us all on the parenting journey and how to support men to feel safe to be vulnerable. To find out more about Jai’s work, please visit https://www.awakened-masculine.com/ and follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.awakened.masculine/.

This episode is another in the series of conversations with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. This episode is in response to a question from a listener about Tantrums. We explore why children have tantrums and describe the compassionate, trusting and loving approach to tantrums in Aware Parenting. We describe what is going on physiologically and emotionally when our children have tantrums. We share how we can learn to understand this and to support ourselves to process what comes up for us when our children have tantrums, and when we do too! We talk about how to support our children at the time of the tantrum, and more generally to make tantrums less necessary for our children. If you want to know more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow The Way of the Woman, or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd

In this episode I have a very touching conversation with Rafa Guadalupe. Rafa is an Aware Parenting Instructor based in Brisbane, Australia. Originally from Brazil, Rafa relocated to Australia in 2016. She is a Food Engineer and has worked for more than a decade in big corporations around the world. As a mother of two young children, she's very familiar with the challenges of juggling parenthood with a career. In 2022, she founded 'The Conscious Hive' — a platform dedicated to assisting working parents in achieving a harmonious balance in their lives through the principles of Aware Parenting. In this episode, Rafa shares with great vulnerability the challenge of her start to parenthood with her son born 10 weeks premature and how that completely changed her life. She describes how her baby was supported with close attachment and connection to overcome the challenges of his first weeks and months of life. She shares how powerful aware parenting has been in supporting her to balance her work and home life and the juggle of modern parenting. She shares how small changes bringing aware parenting into the homes of busy parents can make a big difference to our relationships with our children and to their behaviour. She shares her passion for bringing the Aware Parenting message to mainstream parents and the power of prioritising connection. If you want to learn more about Rafa’s work, please follow her on social media on Facebook at Rafa Guadalupe and Instagram at theconscious.hive. Her new website is coming soon.

I so enjoyed this episode, which is a conversation with Jai Singh. If you are a father or you have a father in your family, I highly recommend listening. Jai is a men's coach who works with fathers on their relationship with themselves, their partners, their kids and their sense of purpose in life. His work is inspired by his own humbling and growth-inspiring experience with marriage and fatherhood, and from seeing how deeply but silently most men struggle through the journey of fatherhood. He began offering coaching in 2016 and started running men's groups specifically for fathers in 2019. He is based in Richmond, Virginia in the U.S. and runs online and in-person men's programs. In this episode, Jai shares some of the challenges of fatherhood and how mothers can best support their partners to come on board with conscious parenting. We discuss how parenthood is an incredible opportunity for growth and healing and the impact of our childhoods on how we respond to our children. He shares strategies that he finds helpful when he is activated by his children’s behaviour. We talk about self-compassion for fathers and how we navigate the many messy moments of parenting and use our mistakes as a path to where we want to go and a sign that we need to take care of ourselves. Jai shares some strategies for nurturing our relationship with our partner or co-parent and how we learn to listen deeply and profoundly. We talk about how to move away from harsh and authoritarian styles of parenting to more conscious, aware approaches that focus on relationships and connection. To find out more about Jai’s work, please visit https://www.awakened-masculine.com/ and follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.awakened.masculine/. Jai has generously offered listeners the opportunity of a free to explore working together 1:1. Please use this link to book in your Free Call: https://www.awakened-masculine.com/call

This episode is a conversation with Dr Suzanne Zeedyk. Suzanne is a Developmental Psychologist and Research Scientist with an honorary post at the Univeristy of Dundee, Scotland. She is fascinated by baby’s innate capacity to communicate and is passionate about sharing the Science of Connection. She is the founder of Connected Baby, an organisation that shares the latest discoveries on infant communicative capacities, brain development and the parent-infant relationship with the wider public. Her goal is to increase awareness of the decisions we take about caring for children, because they are integrally connected to our vision of the kind of society we wish to build. Please note that this conversation is not specifically about Aware Parenting. In this episode, Suzanne shares her expertise about babies and the gap between what science now understands about the capacities and needs of babies and what is understood about that in our wider culture. She shares that babies are born already able to recognise the voices, the laughter and the songs of people who have been around them in utero. She shares that the way babies are treated in the early years has an impact on their biology. And she reassures listeners by explaining the positive impact on attachment of the rupture–repair process - that repair matters more than rupture. We discuss the need parents have for support and information if we are going to be able to meet our baby’s needs. She reassures parents that us being imperfect is exactly what our babies need and we discuss the impact of the wider economic and social context in which we are trying to raise our families. To find out more about Suzanne’s work, please visit www.connectedbaby.net, read her book Sabre Tooth Tigers and Teddy Bears, watch her film The Connected Baby and her many videos on YouTube. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @drsuzannezeedyk

This episode is a deep conversation with Dr Sophie Brock. Sophie is a Motherhood Studies Sociologist and Mother living in Sydney, Australia. She provides analysis of Motherhood in our culture, exploring the ways individual experiences of Mothers are shaped by broader social constructs. Sophie’s work contributes to changing the cultural conversation on Motherhood and the individual experiences of Mothers, to create a world where Mothers feel empowered, supported, and valued. Sophie’s offerings include self-study courses for Mothers and mother-supporting practitioners, mentoring for mother-supporting professionals, The Motherhood Studies Practitioner Certification online training, and her podcast The Good Enough Mother. In this episode, Sophie translates some complex theoretical ideas into accessible information and provides resources and ideas for mothers to understand these concepts, to explore them for their own unique lives and to bring compassion to themselves in the journey to “good enoughness”. She describes how our culture shapes and impacts us as mothers and how we can also shape and impact that world. She describes the concept of patriarchal motherhood and the myth of the perfect mother and how this impacts our experience of motherhood. We talk about what it means to parent our children against patriarchal norms and she shares some reflection exercises that we can use to start to gently explore, unpack and challenge this for ourselves. If you want to learn more about Sophie’s work please visit https://drsophiebrock.com/ and follow her @drsophiebrock on Instagram and Facebook or email [email protected]. If you want to learn more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community with Danni Willow, please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/community/

This episode is a powerful conversation with Marion Rose about her new extraordinary book The Emotional Life of Babies, which has just been released. Marion is a level 2 Aware Parenting Instructor and the regional coordinator for Australia and New Zealand and has a background in developmental psychology, pre and perinatal and post-natal psychology. She is an author and speaker and offers courses, workshops and mentoring for parents. In this episode, Marion, shares so generously from this incredibly beautiful book. She shares the wisdom of babies, how to distinguish between needs feelings and healing feelings and what to observe in our babies in order to get clarity about what they need. We talk about the support that parents need in order to offer loving listening in arms. She clearly describes the difference between mild dissociation and relaxation, how babies heal and how to offer the balance of attention. She shares information and compassion in relation to sleep, listening to feelings, attachment play and the effect on our babies and ourselves and our culture of receiving loving listening. I highly recommend this book for all parents and for anyone who wants to understand their own experience of being a baby. To buy this book, please visit Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CJ4DLB4V US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ4DLB4V UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CJ4DLB4V Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0CJ4DLB4V France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0CJ4DLB4V Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0CJ4DLB4V Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CJ4DLB4V Marion is on Instagram at _marion_rose_ and on Facebook at Marion Rose PhD. If you want to know more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au/community/

In this episode I have the pleasure of speaking with Eliza Parker. Eliza’s work helping babies sleep, move, and feel better revolves around her respect for babies and toddlers as whole people who enter the world aware, desiring to communicate and learn, and with the ability to process and self-heal within relationship. Her Conscious Baby practice employs unique approaches to non-cry-it-out sleep, baby-led milestone development, healing birth trauma, and parental attunement to non-verbal cues and crying. She is a certified Aware Parenting Instructor, Infant Developmental Movement Educator, Body-Mind Centering®Practitioner, and trained Feldenkrais® practitioner. Her life-changing perspectives and respectful solutions toward common parenting challenges transcend “typical” parenting advice. In this episode, Eliza shares how she discovered Aware Parenting and what she most loves about this approach. We talk about the need to treat babies as people and to recognise that they are born with awareness, consciousness, and understanding emotion, as well as how to heal from stress and trauma and how to communicate with us. We discuss how to learn to tune in to the communication of babies and young children’s behaviour and to understand the meaning of their crying. Eliza describes how this often reflects their birth stories and how we can support babies to sleep by allowing them to release and heal the stress of their early experiences. We talk about how to offer the balance of attention to support healing of stress and trauma. If you would like to learn more about Eliza’s work, please visit www.consciousbaby.com or follow her on Facebook and Instagram at Consious baby with Eliza Parker. If you want to learn more about my Exploring Aware Parenting Community with Danni Willow, please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/community/. If you want to hear more from me, please Sign up for my mailing list here .

In this episode I am speaking with Katie Parker. Katie is a social worker, postpartum doula, parenting educator, women's circle facilitator and mentor for mums in business, passionate about supporting women to find their most authentic and resourced experience of motherhood and business, without the guilt, overwhelm and depletion. She loves supporting parents to build connected and respectful relationships with their children, through listening to feelings, play, and exploring their own childhood imprinting. Katie provides perinatal counselling, parenting and motherhood support through one-on-one sessions, workshops, local mothers' groups and retreats both online and in Gippsland, Victoria. She is also a mother of two beautiful children who have been her biggest teachers in life. Katie shares how she discovered Aware Parenting and all the different supports that she benefitted from as she started to practice it in her family. We discuss the deconditioning process from the cultural conditioning of the selfless mother as we learned to take care of ourselves as well as our children, to ask for help and to drop the guilt, the shoulds, the comparisons and the self-judgment. We talk about how we all need to have support in our lives for the role of motherhood and finding places where we can be authentically ourselves. We talk about how to intentionally slow down and having the space to receive listening ourselves in order to then hold space for our children. If you want to learn more about Katie, please visit her website www.katieparker.com.au and follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/katieparkerparenting/?hl=en. If you want to learn more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community with Danni Willow, please visit www.awareparenting.com.au/community/

In this episode I have the pleasure of speaking with Charlotte Pointeaux. Charlotte is a Menstrual cycle coach, speaker, entrepreneur and mother. She empowers children and parents on the transformative journey of puberty and the menstrual cycle. Her First Moon Circles school, trains global menstrual cycle educators to foster period positivity and open communication. In this powerful conversation, we talk about how Charlotte came to be doing this work and why it is that our collective cultural awareness about the menstrual cycle is so limited. She describes the seasons of our cycle and how we can live so deeply connected to the rhythm of our flow. We talk about how I supported my daughter as she approached puberty. Charlotte shares the profound impact of how we experience our first cycle on all the other rites of passage we experience as mothers, because it teaches us how to relate to and trust our bodies and cycles. She shares the importance of healing our parts around our menstrual cycle and what we have learnt about being a woman, in order to start to really embody the changes that we want to pass on to our children and experience for ourselves in the next chapters of our womanhood. We discuss the impact on the wider culture and the future of the world of increased awareness, understanding and connection to our bodies and our power, in order to bring change to the current capitalist, patriarchal system. Please note, this episode is not specifically about Aware Parenting. If you would like to learn more about Charolotte’s work, please visit www.thefirstmooncycle.com and www.charlottepointeaux.com and follow her on Instagram at charlotte.pointeaux.coach. If you want to learn more about my Aware Parenting and Natural Learning workshop on the 17th September 2023, please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/aware-pareting-workshops/ If you want to hear more from me, please Sign up for my mailing list here .

This conversation with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow, explores how we can make Aware Parenting a way of life. We talk about how Aware Parenting is an on-going way of being with our children and with ourselves. We share how we have learnt, and re-learnt and deepened our knowledge and understanding of Aware Parenting over and over again, to learn new nuances and layers. We talk about how we are invited to be exploring our thoughts, ways to meet our needs and our own stress and trauma. We highlight the need for support and community in this process and describe how our Exploring Aware Parenting Community is such a powerful way to dive deep into this approach and how to bring it to our families. We end with some invitations, suggestions and reflections for the listeners to live Aware Parenting more fully in their families. If you would like to learn more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community with Danni and Joss, the doors open on the 28th August and will only be open for a month. The doors will then close again on the 22nd September, ready for the community to start again for another year on the 25th September. If you would like to join this amazing group of parents, deeply committed to this way of life, please go to my website www.awareparenting.com.au/community/ If you want to know more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd

I am so happy to be releasing another powerful conversation with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. In this episode we talk about how to practice Aware Parenting with our partner/the co-parent of our children. We share different ways that we can support our partner/co-parent to come on board with Aware Parenting. We discuss how we can often become a source of suppression for our children through breast-feeding control patterns and how we can encourage our partner/co-parent to create connection with our children, to be able to support them to release and heal too. We share some powerful words from the "Aware Baby" by Dr Aletha Solter and share how we have supported our partners and ourselves on this journey. If you would like to learn more about the Exploring Aware Parenting Community with Danni and Joss, please go to my website www.awareparenting.com.au/community . If you want to know more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au and follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss.

In this episode I have the pleasure of speaking with one of my favourite authors, Robin Grille. Robin is a psychologist in private practice, international speaker, trainer and parenting educator. He is the author of three internationally acclaimed books: ‘Parenting for a Peaceful World’, ‘Heart to Heart Parenting’ and ‘Inner Child Journeys’. His books, seminars and courses focus on healthy emotional development for children as well as parents; while building supportive, co-operative parenting communities. His work is animated by his belief that humanity’s future is largely dependent on the way we collectively relate to our children. In this conversation, Robin shares how the way we raise our children is so influential in terms of how our culture is shaped. He describes the impact on children of intentionally delivered, culturally normalised trauma on the resting baseline of the stress response of our children, and how this impacts us all at a cultural level. He describes some of the key ingredients necessary for promoting our children’s wellbeing, particularly the healing power of receiving listening and connection. He offers so much compassion to parents and shares how to do our own inner child healing, at the invitation of our children, so we are better resourced to then be the parent we want to be, and can reclaim our right to enjoy parenting. Please note this episode is not specifically about Aware Parenting. If you would like to learn more about Robin Grille, his website is www.robingrille.com and he is on Facebook and Instagram at Robin Grille. I highly recommend his books Parenting for a Peaceful World, Heart to Heart Parenting and Inner Child Journey’s – How our Children Grow us Up. If you would like to learn more from me please Sign up for my mailing list.

In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking with Marianne Littlejohn. Marianne has been a midwife for 40 years, an Aware Parenting Consultant for 30 years, and is a home-birth midwife. She has a Psychology degree and is currently studying through the school of Infant Mental Health in London. She has 3 sones and a grand-daughter. Marianne shares her powerful story of healing in motherhood, learning to bring authenticity to her relationship with herself and her relationships in her family. She describes how Aware Parenting has supported healing for herself and her children by teaching her how to give space to her children to express their feelings with loving, safe support. She shares her journey with compassion and kindness, for herself, for her mother and for her children. She shares how she now supports parents to develop attuned relationships with their babies, understanding the rich communication of babies so their needs can be met. She gives a beautiful example of how her son and daughter-in-law have practised Elimination Communication with her grand-daughter. If you would like to learn more about Marianne Littlejohn, please follow her on Facebook and Instagram @ Marianne Littlejohn and visit her website www.spiritualbirth.net If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd

This episode is part 4 of a series of conversations that I am sharing with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow about supporting sibling relationships and navigating the challenges of having more than one child. We share how we have approached the parallel process of healing and processing our wounds from our sibling relationships as well as how to prepare our first born child for the birth of another child. We share how we have supported harmony between our children and how to listen to feelings of more than one child at once. We give examples of attachment play that we have found particularly helpful and we talk about the need for us to get support and listening in order to support and listen to our children, particularly at times of conflict between them. If you would like to learn more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her beautiful brand new website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn. More from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au and follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss.

I really enjoyed this conversation in today’s episode with Linde Lambrechts. Linde is a psychologist, psychotherapist and aware parenting instructor in Belgium. She is training in the Marion Method and is mother to 2 boys aged 7 and 5. She is really passionate about supporting families with Aware Parenting and is deeply committed to preventing mental health problems in the next generation by supporting parent in their parenting and showing them that they can thrive in parenthood. In this episode we discuss how Linde has learnt to listen to feelings, the immense power of Aware parenting for both parents and children and how she uses loving limits with her children. She shares how she ensures that offering play to her children is enjoyable for everyone. She describes how Aware Parenting moves us from huge challenge and barely surviving, to a different way, where everyone gets their needs met, so we can thrive as a family and prevent mental health problems for our children. If you would like to learn more about Linde, I invite you to follow her on Instagram at lovinglimits. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd

In this episode I have the pleasure of talking with Yaelle Grinberg. Yaelle is a Child Psychologist, Montessori Educator and mother of one beautiful son. She supports parents in changing and shifting the family dynamic by translating children’s behaviours in order to have their emotional and developmental needs met. In this episode Yaelle shares how she came to work as a parenting specialist, how she supports parents and how she applied her knowledge of Montessori principles to her work and her family. We discuss the importance of us doing our healing work. She shares the impact of our early childhood experienced and having our emotions dismissed as children on the adult we become. She talks about the significant power of receiving acknowledgement in healing our individual trauma, our cultural trauma and inter-generational trauma. Yaelle describes how we attune to our children so we can meet their needs, see them for who they truly are and develop close and loving foundational relationships with them. We talk about how we can support ourselves through parenthood. If you would like to learn more about Yaelle, her website is www.llcrparenting.com.au and follow her on Instagram at llcr.parenting.specialist. If you would like to join the workshop I am hosting by Dr Aletha Solter on Discipline without Punishments or Rewards, the link is here https://awareparenting.com.au/discipline-without-punishments-or-rewards-workshop/ If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd #consciousparenting #awareparentingstories #parentingpodcast #supportforparents #compassion #motherhoodjourney #listeningtofeelings #respectfulparenting #healing #trust #montessori

This episode is part 4 of a series of conversations that I am sharing with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow about the lists of 3 in Aware Parenting and how to connect the theory to practice. In this episode we talk about the 3 things our children (and ourselves) need in order to sleep. We share the 3 steps that we can use when there has been rupture or conflict with our children in order to rewind, reconnect and repair so there is deepening of our connection. We also share the 3 aspects of offering compassion – to our children, to ourselves and to others. It is a really beautiful conversation and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. If you would like to learn more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn. More from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd

In this episode of the podcast I have the pleasure of speaking with Lainie Liberti. Lainie is a mother to her 24 year old son, Miro. She is an author, international speaker, alternative education advocate and spearhead of the World Schooling Movement. She is the founder of the Teen Mentoring Program, a TEDx speaker and the author of “Seen, Heard and Understood – Parenting and Partnership with Teens for Greater Mental Health”. Please note that this episode is not a conversation about aware parenting, but rather Lainie’s approach of partnership parenting. In this episode Lainie shares her extraordinary story of conscious partnership parenting and supporting her child’s learning outside of school through adventure and exploration. We discuss what it means to raise children with consciousness and in partnership. She shares how she designed with Miro an intentional family culture. We talk about how we can do our own healing work in parenting. She shares what their world-schooled, self-directed education was like and how they created community for their family. Please note this episode is not specifically about Aware Parenting. To learn more about Lainie’s work, please visit www.partnershipparent.com, www.projectworldschool.com, www.weareworldschoolers.org, www.worldschoolfamilysummit.com. Her book is available here1. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd

In this episode I have the pleasure of talking with Genevieve Simperingham. Genevieve is a psychosynthesis counsellor, the founder of the Peaceful Parent Institute, a Parenting Educator, writer and was an Aware Parenting Instructor for 14 years. She regularly contributes articles to publications and is a feature contributor to the Natural Parent Magazine. She offers workshops and courses in parenting, relationships, self-healing, meditation and personal development. In this episode, we talk about how she discovered Aware Parenting and the dual process of our continued healing journey and the journey of supporting our children to heal, with connection and compassion for us all. She describes in detail how we can bring the tools of Aware Parenting to repair with our children. We discuss listening to feelings, both with young children and our adult children and we describe the impact of raising our children this way on who they become as adults. If you would like to learn more about Genevieve, her website is www.peacefulparent.com or follow her on Instagram at Peaceful Parent Institute or Facebook at The way of the peaceful parent. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au and follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss.

In this episode I have the pleasure of talking with Kirsty Fernandes. Kirsty is mother to 2 children and is an Aware Parenting Instructor from New Zealand. She is passionate about supporting mothers in the post-partum period and is a certified Sacred Mother Roaster, and a certified Sacred Pregnancy Instructor. Her business to support mothers is Honouring Māmā. In this conversation, Kirsty shares how she found Aware Parenting how she learnt to listen to feelings and build capacity to hold space. We talk about the opportunities that parenting brings for our own healing. She shares how she has developed a deep trust for the process and timing of her healing and her children’s healing too. We discuss the power of attachment play and the challenges of practising Aware Parenting. If you would like to learn more about Kirsty, please follow her on social media at Kirsty Fernandes Honouring Mama or visit her website www.honouringmama.com. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au and follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss.

This episode is part 3 of a series of conversations that I am sharing with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. In this episode we continue our conversation that connects the theory to the practice. We talk about responding to painful feelings. We share the 3 responses that our children (and ourselves) can have when we have painful feelings – expression, repression and aggression. We also share the 3 things that we can focus on to support our children when they are upset. We give lots of examples of how we have done this to support our children’s healing and to support ourselves when we have big feelings too. If you would like to learn more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn. More from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au and follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss.

This episode is part 2 of a series of conversations that I will be sharing with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. In this episode we talk about connecting the theory of Aware Parenting to the practice. We discuss the 3 core aspects of Aware Parenting, the 3 things that are always underneath challenging behaviour. We also discuss the 3 main central nervous system states that our children (and ourselves) go into and how to support them back to balance. We talk about the uniqueness of each child and how aware parenting theory can be applied in practice for the individual needs of each child, and for us as adults too. If you would like to learn more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn more from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au and follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss.

This episode is part 1 of an exciting new series of conversations that I will be sharing with my wonderful friend and colleague Danni Willow. We co-run the Exploring Aware Parenting Community and work closely together in many spaces about Aware Parenting and felt called to share some of our many beautiful conversations about this paradigm, that we are both so passionate about. Danni is an Aware Parenting Instructor and mother to 2 gorgeous girls aged 6 and 4. She has been on the podcast before sharing her wisdom in episodes 5, 14 and 31. In this episode we talk about our backgrounds and lives before Aware Parenting and how these experiences have informed our understanding and practice of this approach. We describe the contrast between our early years and the early years of our children and some of the ways that we see the powerful impact on them of Aware Parenting them and re-parenting ourselves. We share honestly about some of the struggles from our past and how that shaped us in ways that were really challenging, both at the time and to unpack and heal from as adults. We talk about how grateful we are to Aletha Solter and to Marion Rose for this work and the impact it has on our children, on us and on the wider culture. If you would like to learn more about Danni, please follow her on social media at Danni Willow or visit her website www.thewayofthewoman.com.au. If you would like to learn. More from me please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd or visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au and follow me on social media at Aware Parenting with Joss.

Welcome back to another episode. This podcast episode is in response to a request from a client and listener to share more about learning to speak the language of compassion. This often comes up in sessions with clients and is something that I also really struggled with when I started Aware Parenting. In this episode I talk about what compassion is and share the 5 levels of compassion that are described by Gabor Maté in his recent book The Myth of Normal. I give detailed suggestions about how we learn to offer ourselves and our children compassion. I talk about the impact on our children and ourselves of receiving compassion and how this then impacts the whole world. I really want to acknowledge the impact of the work of both Marion Rose and Gabor Maté and how so much of what I understand about compassion has been shaped by their powerful work. Marion Rose’s courses are available here https://marionrose.net/marion-method-courses/ and her book, co-written with Lael Stone, is available here https://www.booktopia.com.au/raising-resilient-and-compassionate-children-marion-rose/book/9780645551532.html. The Myth of Normal is available here https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-myth-of-normal-gabor-mat-/book/9781785042720.html. If you would like to learn more, please use this link to sign up for my mailing list https://awareparenting.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b0f3fda38d97c32be4d00a4aa&id=0c0521fedd . I also have articles on my website to explore this more. If you would like further support to bring more compassion to your family, I am here. Sending love and compassion to you all.

Welcome back to another episode. In this podcast episode, I talk all about Control Patterns. I describe what control patterns are and how we use these mechanisms to supress feelings in order to stay safe. I talk about some of the many things we can use as control patterns and how to distinguish between when our behaviour or our children’s behaviour is being used to dissociate and when it is simply meeting a need. I offer lots of compassion about control patterns and describe in detail how to support our children and ourselves when engaging in control patterns in a way that feels loving and gentle and is effective. I offer reflections that we can explore about this topic to get more clarity and compassion for us all. If you would like more information, I have an article on my website about this topic https://awareparenting.com.au/2022/07/09/control-patterns-and-aware-parenting/ If you would like further support about this topic, I am here. Sending love to you all.

In this episode of the podcast, I have the pleasure of talking with Vicki Plomer. Vicki is the mother to three boys and a step daughter, aged 16, 12 and 4 and 27. She came to aware parenting in 2020. She is a trained dancer, dance teacher and choreographer. She has completed level 3 training in person-centred counselling and is an aware parenting instructor. Vicki describes how she came to Aware Parenting when her children were 13, 9 and 1 and how she has learnt to trust the timing of when she discovered this approach. She shares how powerful it has been to bring true listening to her family and how she supports her children to release the backlog of accumulated feelings from not being parented this way earlier in their life. She shares what she loves about attachment play and how she uses it in her family for connection and healing. She shares the opportunities that Aware Parenting has provided for her to do her own healing. She shares what she has found challenging and how she has navigated that, bringing more self-care, compassion, trust and choice and agency to everyone in her family. To learn more about Vicki, please visit www.vickiplomer.com and follow her on social media at Vicki Plomer Aware Parenting.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about Empathy Buddies. Aletha Solter, the founder of Aware Parenting recommends listening and support for parents in her books and I share the why and the how of this type of support. I discuss the 3 reasons for difficult behaviour in our parenting and how having an empathy buddy supports us to work through our thoughts and our feelings and to identify our unmet needs. I talk about how receiving and sharing compassionate listening with our EB increases our capacity to offer compassionate listening and play to our children and to practise all the other aspects of Aware Parenting. I share how to find an EB from the Aware Parenting community so there are shared and aligned values and understanding between you. I share the powerful value of having emergency EB’s to reach out to on the days in parenting that we all experience at times when things feel horrible, to get us back on track. I share the power of modelling this to our children so they grow up to be adults who normalise feelings and reach out for support when they need it. I share how to set up an EB partnership, the different types of EB’s, how to share and how to listen, so it is easier for us all to be the parent that we want to be. To learn more or to set up an EB please visit this group, set up by aware parenting instructor Carolina Valenica Coleman https://www.facebook.com/groups/2562318203992646/

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about how to support our children when they are being aggressive or hurtful. I acknowledge how hard it is when our children behave in these ways, biting, hitting, grabbin, hurting or shouting. I explain why children are sometimes aggressive and hurtful and what it tells us about what our children are feeling and needing. I explain the many ways that aggressive behaviour is misunderstood in our culture and how trauma and accumulated feelings push our children into hyperarousal which then can cause them to be aggressive. I describe in detail how Aware Parenting shows us how to support our children at these times by having a compassionate understanding of why they are aggressive, creating the emotional safety they need to heal, by listening to feelings, by offering attachment play, by having non-punitive discipline and by offering loving limits. I talk about how vital it is for us to get support too, to explore our beliefs, to receive listening to our feelings about the present and from our unhealed trauma from the past and to get our needs met. If you would like support to help your child with aggression, I offer 1 to 1 sessions where we can dive deep into all this. I highly recommend reading Aletha Solter’s books, particularly Healing your Traumatised Child and Attachment Play.

In this episode of the podcast, I really enjoyed talking to Megan Clinton. Megan is a relational Gestalt Psychotherapist, Energy Psychologist, Gestalt Play Therapist and Aware Parenting Instructor. She offers healing, integration and transformation to women seeking to change the world, be that through parenting, business practice or relationships of any kind. She offers one to one sessions, workshops, programmes and memberships to guide individuals and groups to feel and heal life experiences. Megan shares how she came across Aware Parenting and how it immediately made sense to her in light of her understanding about psychotherapy for adults. She describes how unhealed trauma repeats and comes up again and again in our life to be healed, how our children touch many of the unhealed parts of us and how painful and difficult it therefore is to practise Aware Parenting. We talk about the need for self-compassion in parenting because it is overwhelming and exhausting at times for us all and how we all need support and listening to process our trauma. Megan explains what trauma is and how to start processing it, as well as the profound impact on the world of us parenting in this way. She shares how attachment play supported her daughter to heal from school trauma and we talk about offering loving limits and how to support ourselves in that process. To learn more about Megan Clinton please follow her on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at Megan Clinton. To learn more about my Aware Parenting Teenagers course, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/aware-parenting-teenagers/ or to pay in instalments please use the link for the payment plan here https://awareparenting.com.au/register/awp-teenagers-instalment/

In this episode of the podcast, I have the pleasure of talking to Laura Shaz. Laura is mother to two children aged 7 and 4. She is currently studying to be a midwife and is passionate about sharing the AwP philosophy with new mothers and fathers and with birth workers. She is a certified yoga teacher, Aware Parenting instructor and massage therapist who has been working in the birth world as a pregnancy yoga and mums & bubs yoga instructor for the past 7 years. She holds a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution and Mediation, which she delved into the field while living in Israel and facilitating youth groups in high schools. She is passionate about physical and emotional healing for families and about making mothers’ and families lives more joyful. Laura currently lives in the northern rivers of Australia with her family. Laura shares how she came to Aware Parenting and how she has found receiving empathy and support herself so transformative in her parenting. We talk about how helpful learning to offer loving limits has been in our families. She shares how she learnt to listen to feelings and allow her baby to release and cry when she needed to. We talk about the magic of attachment play to support healing and closeness. She shares lots of examples of how she has used aware parenting to support her family and we talk about how powerfully healing it is for us all to receive empathy. To learn more about Laura, please visit https://www.ljspeace.com and follow her on Facebook at Laura Shaz. To learn more about my Aware Parenting Teenagers course, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/aware-parenting-teenagers/ or to pay in instalments please use the link for the payment plan here https://awareparenting.com.au/register/awp-teenagers-instalment/

In this episode of the podcast I have the pleasure of talking to Janie Spencer. Janie is a level 2 Aware Parenting instructor in France and the regional coordinator for France and French speaking Switzerland. She has been an instructor for over 20 years and has a 33 year old daughter, whom she raised with Aware Parenting. She has a Masters in Sociology of Emotions and, together with her colleague Gwenaëlle Ruella, she runs Place Des Emotions – an association providing individual and group trainings on the Aware Parenting approach. In this episode Janie shares how she discovered Aware Parenting from Aletha Solter’s mother and how she started practising this in her own family. She shares the vital importance of us receiving listening as parents and the powerful role that Re-evaluation Co-counselling has played in supporting her to heal from the trauma of her childhood. Janie shares about the impact Aware Parenting can have for people coming to this approach from both an authoritarian style or a more permissive attachment style parenting. She also shares about her association and how that is supporting parents to learn how to bring Aware Parenting to their families. To learn more about Janie, please visit www.placedesemotions.org or follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/placedesemotions/ or Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/janie-spencer-4937b18/

In this episode of the podcast I talk to Vivian Viester about birth and birthdays and how we can support parents to bring more compassion and connection and joy to birthdays for us and our children. Vivian is an Aware Parenting Instructor living in Switzerland and she has a 12 year old son. She supports parents with 1 to 1 consultations, online programs and listening circles. In this episode we talk about the impact of birth on us all and how we often develop themes from our perinatal experiences that continue to affect us into adulthood. We discuss how birthdays were for us as children and how painful feelings and unmet needs for us from those younger years still come up for our attention in adulthood too and how reflecting on these experiences can help us to heal and connect deeply with how we want birthday’s to be, for ourselves and our children. We talk about how important it is for parents to get to de-brief about the birth of their children and to share these stories many times, and with their children too. We discuss how birthdays are often a time of big emotions that come up for everyone in the family and how this awareness can help us to support healing for us all so that birthdays can be more enjoyable. Vivian shares about her offering to support parents to reflect on their birth experiences and tune into what they want now for their birthdays. She also shares about her second offering for parents and children to explore their birth and what we want for their day and for the next year of their life. I share some reflections for parents to support more healing, more connection and more joy for birthdays. To find out more about Vivian’s Birthday Offerings, please visit her Facebook and Instagram, Vivian Viester Aware Parenting.

In this episode of the podcast I talk to Danni Willow again, this time about how to use the tools and strategies of Aware Parenting to heal ourselves. Danni has already been on the podcast twice and is an Aware Parenting Instructor. She is the founder of The Way of the Women which supports families to practice Aware Parenting in their families. She offers one to one sessions, she runs the Exploring Aware Parenting Community with me and she runs women’s circles online and in-person. She is the mother of 2 gorgeous girls. In this episode we discuss why it is necessary for us to do our own healing work if we want to practice Aware Parenting in our families. This comes up so often in our sessions that Aware Parenting is as much about doing our work as it is supporting our children and this episode shares in detail how we support our clients to do this. We share why it is hard to do this healing work and reparent ourselves whilst also raising our children. We give detailed explanations of the tools that we use to support ourselves in these ways and why we all need support to do this work. We outline the different components of Aware Reparenting and we discuss how to bring more compassion to our lives. We both acknowledge the amazing work of Aletha Solter, the founder of Aware Parenting, as well as the extraordinary work of Marion Rose in supporting healing for parents. We also highly recommend Lael Stone and Marion Rose’s new book, Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children. To learn more about Danni, please visit www.thewayofthewomen.com.au and follow her on Instagram and Facebook at Danni Willow. Marion’s courses can be found at www.marionrose.net and the needs inventory from Marshall Rosenberg can be found here www.cnvc.org

In this episode I talk to Marion Rose Ph.D. and Lael Stone about their wonderful new book Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children. This extraordinary book is so incredibly helpful for parents. To purchase this book please visit https://www.booktopia.com.au/search.ep?keywords=raising+resilient+and+compassionate+children&productType=917504

Episode 29: Attuned and Empowering Parenting with Jurgen Peeters by Aware Parenting Stories with Joss Goulden

In this episode I have the pleasure of talking with Lia Wong. Lia has dedicated herself to studying Kinesiology and is a certified Neuro-Energetic Kinesiologist. She is passionate about gentle birth, trauma-informed care and is a certified Aware Parenting Instructor. Lia shares how she learnt to stop distracting her child and instead to welcome his feelings with the crying in arms approach. She describes how she was able to let go of the focus on making the crying stop and instead support her son to express and release feelings. We talk about deconditioning ourselves from strong cultural beliefs that children crying is bad and something we need to fix or make stop. She shares how powerful Aware Parenting has been to tune into children's behaviour and notice signs of accumulated stress and trauma. We discuss the importance of getting listening in this process and learning to honour our needs. To learn more about Lia, please visit www.raisingorion.com She is also on Instagram and Facebook at laiwong and raising Orion.

In this episode I share the second part of an interview with Naomi Aldort. Naomi is the author of Raising our Children, Raising Ourselves, which has been translated into 20 languages. She provides support and education for parents from around the world in sessions, workshops, web classes, lectures and running private intensive retreats. Please note that this episode is not about Aware Parenting but about Naomi’s approach to parenting and homeschooling. In this episode Naomi shares her experiences of homeschooling her 3 children. We discuss how natural learning with our children supports them to use their own creativity and innovation, unique to each individual child. She describes the difference between children being taught and children learning for themselves and how this supports more creativity, skill, invention, problem solving and resourcefulness. We talk about trusting our children’s inner path to support them to stay connected with their intrinsic motivation and authenticity. Please note this episode is not specifically about Aware Parenting. To find out more about Naomi Aldort, please visit www.naomialdort.com, www.authenticchild.com and www.authenticparent.com and follow her on Facebook at Naomi Aldort and Instagram at naomi_aldort_parenting. I highly recommend her book Raising Our Children Raising Ourselves.

In this episode, I have a wonderful conversation with Rebecca Sheikh. Rebecca is on the executive committee of The International Attachment Network and is the Aware Parenting regional co-ordinator of the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa. She runs Flourishing Childhood and loves supporting parents using the Aware Parenting Philosophy. She also incorporates other elements into her work with parents. She has an MA in Counselling in Education from The Tavistock Institute in London, a foundation course in NVC, and has completed the hand-in-hand professional training. She is currently completing the Sandplay therapy, therapeutic play practitioner training and the Practitioner course in Focussing with children. Rebecca shares how she has learnt to apply aware parenting in her family and to embody this approach. We talk about healing our trauma and shares her inner child work. She describes the power of not distracting, not chasing away, not avoiding feelings and instead allowing feelings to flow through our children and ourselves. She talks about the importance of self care and using attachment play and her journey to learn to embody loving limits. We discuss the power of rewind and repair and self-compassion. To learn more about Rebecca, please visit www.flourishingchildhood.com or follow her on Facebook and Instagram at flourishingchildhood.

In this episode I have the pleasure of talking to Lael Stone again. Lael is a champion of connection parenting. Her TEDx talk “Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children” has had over 2.8 milllion views. She is an author, public speaker and the co-founder of Woodline Primary school, a school based on connection and emotional wellbeing. She is the co-host of the Aware Parenting Podcast.   In this episode we talk about how Aware Parenting is so powerful to support our teens to navigate the many challenges that they now face. We discuss the pressure of the teen years including puberty, pornography, drugs and alcohol, sex and sexuality as well as the challenges of social media and the stress of our education system. We talk about how to hold space to offer listening and connection to our teens as well as doing our own healing work for our teenage parts. We discuss how to use attachment play with teens and how to support them to be free to be themselves.   To learn more about Lael, please visit www.laelstone.com Lael and Marion Rose’s new book Raising Resilient and Connected Children will soon be available online. Lael also recommended 2 websites for parents www.culturereframed.org and www.sexedrescue.com To learn more about my Aware Parenting Teenagers Course, please visit https://awareparenting.com.au/aware-parenting-teenagers/

In this episode, I have an inspiring conversation with Abbey Stanbrook. Abbey is an Aware Parenting Instructor and a Somatic Wellness Coach and is passionate about supporting parenting with these modalities to support nervous system balance and integration. She is also a Safe Sound Protocol practitioner and the host of the Somatic Seasons Podcast. In this episode Abbey shares both her aware parenting and somatic wellness perspectives. Abbey explains how she came to aware parenting via Hand in Hand parenting and Patty Wipfler’s work. She describes the power of this approach in parenting her children and re-parenting herself and the deep connection she has developed with her children as a result of practising aware parenting. She shares some of her self-healing journey and the need for us to receive support in order to support our physical and psychological wellbeing. She shares how she has navigated co-parenting and the power of attachment play in her family. We also discuss some of the challenges of practising aware parenting and the need for community, belonging and connection. To learn more about Abbey, please visit abbeyheartlove on Instagram and Abbey Stanbrook on Facebook.

In this episode, I have a beautiful conversation with Chiara Rossetti. Chiara and I discovered Aware Parenting together and were listening partners and Aware Parenting buddies for many years so it was so lovely to talk to her. Chiara has a background in Arts and discovered Aware Parenting 16 years ago and is now an Aware Parenting Facilitator. She is also a Field Facilitator, which remains her number one passion, and is a qualified Facial Reflexologist. She lives in WA with her teenage children. Chiara shares how finding Aware Parenting was so transformational for her family and how she has used this approach to support her children thought some major challenges in their lives. She shares her experiences of learning to listen to feelings and her huge passion for attachment play. We discuss the impact of raising our children this way on the teenagers they become as well as the challenges of holding space for our children, whilst also doing our own healing work surrounded by a culture that does not support or understand listening. To learn more about Chiara, you can contact her by email at [email protected] or via the FaceBook Aware Parenting group. Her guest article about attachment play can be found on Marion’s website https://marionrose.net/chiara-rossetti-fun-mum/. Her Advent Calendar offering can be found here https://mailchi.mp/a8ecfcb68d11/2domm24f69

In this episode, I am so excited to be talking again to the wonderful Marion Rose, Ph.D.. Marion is a Level 2 Aware Parenting Instructor and the Regional Coordinator for The Aware Parenting Institute in Australia and New Zealand. She is a Psychospiritual Mentor and the creator of the Marion Method for psychospiritual development, parenting and entrepreneurship. She has created many courses and workshops and passionately supports parents to bring more connection and compassion to their families. In this episode Marion shares some of her wealth of knowledge about Loving Limits, a central aspect of Aware Parenting. She distinguishes between limits given in a loving way and using loving limits to support our children when their behaviour is showing us that they have painful accumulated feelings, to release and heal from being in hyper-arousal or dissociation back to balance. She describes the language we can use to say “No” to the behaviour and “Yes” to the feelings underneath the behaviour, in a way that helps us to embody the “No” and that supports our children to feel safe to move into the feelings. Marion also describes how we can offer loving limits to ourselves. To learn more about Marion’s courses, including her Deep Dive in Loving Limits course, please visit her website www.marionrose.net She has also shared many posts about loving limits recently on her Facebook and Instagram pages. To learn more about my Aware Parenting Teenagers course please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/courses/aware-parenting-teenagers/ The first live round starts on the 28th November 2022.

In this episode, I have the absolute pleasure of talking to Nic Wilson. Nic is an aware parenting instructor and has been aware parenting since her daughter was 3. She describes how she was in a very difficult place when she found aware parenting and it literally saved her life and her relationship with her daughter. She started her business Peaceful Parenting in 2021 and became an instructor in 2022. She loves to focus on all aspects of aware parenting, but particularly loves play and sharing with parents that it is never too late to start! In this episode, Nic shares about her journey through a traumatic pregnancy and birth and then how, desperate and exhausted she found aware parenting when her daughter was 4. We talk about holding space for crying, learning to stop the guilt and judgement and learning to offer ourselves compassion. Nic describes her love of attachment play for connection and healing and shares her inspiring games to support her daughter around school and other times of disconnection andseparation. Nic shares her wisdom about co-parenting in separated families. To learn more about Nic, visit her new website www.peacefulparenting.com.au and follow her on social media at Peaceful Parenting. Nic’s new wonderful introductory course The Parent Alchemy Journey is starting in 2 days on 29th October 2022. To learn more about my Aware Parenting Teenagers course please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/courses/aware-parenting-teenagers/

In this episode, I really enjoyed talking to Dace Flynn. Dace has a degree in politics and diplomacy, but after working in the field for a while, she decided to change her career and become an early childhood educator. After graduating and working in various childcare centres, she became disillusioned with the system and left her job. When her daughter was born, she came across aware parenting and because it was so transformative and lifechanging for her, she decided to become an aware parenting instructor and share this beautiful approach to parenting with others. In this episode, Dace shares her journey of discovering Aware Parenting and shifting from thinking she needed to stop her baby from crying to understanding that her baby had feelings to share and would thrive and sleep well and be so relaxed when she instead listened to her crying. Dace shares how she offers herself compassion and supports herself to heal her younger parts when she notices them coming up in her parenting. She describes how she has used play to heal trauma and to prevent trauma in her family. We discuss learning to offer loving limits and Dace’s decision to homeschool. To learn more about Dace, please visit Dace_flynn on Instagram or Freedom to Flourish on Facebook. To learn more about my Aware Parenting Teenagers course please visit my website www.awareparenting.com.au/courses/aware-parenting-teenagers/

In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking to Devon Harris. Devon is an aware parenting instructor and a specialist in child and adolescent behaviour. She supports parents to meet the developmental needs of their children, as well as to capitalise on undesirable behaviour as an opportunity to deepen trust and connection. She loves Attachment Play and sharing this beautiful approach with her clients. In this episode, we talk about how Devon came to aware parenting and her big picture understanding of the significant impact on the world at a societal level of raising emotionally mature and intelligent beings. We discuss her deep appreciation for respect and autonomy and the impacts of meeting those needs in our children to empower them. She shares her journey in learning to welcome big feelings in her son and the need for community for us all in this process. We discuss how speaking the language of aware parenting has supported us to create more nourishing friendships and relationships. Devon also shares her vision for aware parenting. To learn more about Devon Harris, please follow her on Facebook and Linked in.

In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking to Angela Wellman. Angela is a passionate women’s events facilitator who loves connection, community, nature, parenting and sisterhood. A mother of 4 children ranging from 16 to 2 years old, she is passionate about supporting mothers and creating deep sisterhood connections. Angela has a wide range of experiences delivering programs in areas of Community Building, Cycle Awareness, Aware Parenting, Non Violent Communication and Non-Verbal Women’s Temples, focussing on self-care, nourishment and deeper connection. In this episode we talk about how Angela discovered Aware Parenting with her 3rd child and she describes her experience of practising AwP later and the journey of learning to apply this approach with her family. We talk about connection for our children, as well as the vital need for connection to self and to other women to help with motherhood and the isolation that comes from lack of community. We discuss how to lovingly say no to our children and how to navigate the struggles around screen time. She shares her mantra of “Connection over Control” and shares with beautiful authenticity how she has used repair with her children in the harder moments. Angela is based in the beautiful Margaret River region of Western Australia and is not currently on social media. To contact her please use her email address – [email protected]

In this episode, I have the honour of interviewing the founder of Aware Parenting, Aletha Solter. Aletha is a Swiss/American developmental psychologist, mother of 2 grown children, international speaker, workshop leader and consultant. She studied with Dr Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where she earned her master’s degree in human biology. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has written several books which have been translated into many languages. Dr Solter is the founder of the Aware Parenting Institute and is recognised internationally as an expert on attachment, trauma, and non-punitive discipline. In this episode we discuss her latest book Healing your Traumatized Child. Dr Solter shares some of her considerable knowledge about trauma and how it impacts our children’s bodies. She shares how trauma affects feelings and behaviour, and challenges some of the main misunderstandings about how to support children who have experienced trauma. She describes how children are born knowing how to heal and how parents can facilitate this natural biological healing mechanism. She shares how emotional safety, attachment play and supported crying in arms are all vital parts of this healing process. She shares what her research has shown about how adults can also heal from trauma. She shares how this approach has far-reaching impacts on society at large, to address many of the challenges we currently face in the world. To find out more about Aletha Solter, please visit www.awareparenting.com and her many books, including this one, are available from all online sellers. The Aware Parenting Institute is also on Facebook. I highly recommend all of her books.

In this episode I have the pleasure of having a conversation with Chris Muller. Chris is a Psychologist, Counsellor and Coach in Transactional Analysis. She is a level 2 Aware Parenting instructor, the regional coordinator for Aware Parenting in Holland and the founder of the Aware Parenting Academy in the Netherlands. She helps parents and professionals connect to their own inner child, without fear, judgement or guilt and from a place of trust, safety and love to heal their trauma. In this episode we discuss how she discovered Aware Parenting and incorporated it into healing her own childhood trauma. Chris shares how important it is for us to do our own healing work in order to be able to support our children with Aware Parenting. We talk about how our children teach us to be more compassionate with ourselves and how this approach supports us to care for our inner child when it comes up in our parenting. She describes how to use Aware Parenting to heal her child’s trauma and the challenges to do so in a system that doesn’t understand, recognise or support Aware Parenting. For more information about Chris, please visit her websites www.chrismuller.nl and www.awareparenting.nl or follow her on social media at Chris Muller.

In this episode, I am so happy to be having a beautiful conversation with Vivian Viester. Vivian is an Aware Parenting Instructor from The Netherlands, who is currently living in Switzerland. She has an 11 year old son and loves supporting families to practise Aware Parenting with more compassion and offers 1 to 1 sessions, online programs and listening circles. In the episode we talk about how Vivian found Aware Parenting. She shares what compassion means to her and how she has learnt to be more compassionate with herself as a mother. She talks about learning to get everyone’s needs met in the family and acknowledges how hard it is to parent this way when we often don’t have the support we need. We discuss how to bring more compassion to ourselves and our children. For more information about Vivian, please follow her on Instagram and Facebook at Vivian Viester, Aware Parenting

In this episode I have the absolute pleasure of having another conversation with the wonderful Danni Willow. Danni came on to the podcast for episode 5 if you want to hear her wisdom there. She is an Aware Parenting instructor with 2 children aged 6 and 4. She is the founder of The Way of The Woman and offers 1 to 1 sessions and women’s circles. Today in the episode Danni and I share some of the things that we love most about Aware Parenting, how we have navigated some of the challenges that we all face and how we have been able to get support to do our work so we are able to support our children in this beautiful way. We offer some examples of using Aware Parenting in our families and how it has helped us so much in both parenting and in our own lives. We share our new Exploring Aware Parenting Community that is opening soon to support families to dive deep into the theory of Aware Parenting, whilst getting on-going deep compassionate support from Danni and myself and from all the other members of this beautiful community. If you want to know more about Danni, her website is www.thewayofthewoman.com.au and she is on social media at The Way of the Woman. To learn more about our Exploring Aware Parenting Community, the link for more information is here https://awareparenting.com.au/community

In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking to Helena Mooney. Helena is an Aware Parenting Instructor and Hand in Hand Instructor who has been supporting families for over 10 years. She loves helping mums to create deeply connected families where both parents and children thrive and have fun together. She is the host of the Parenting with Play podcast and works with parents 1:1 as well as through her 2 online programs: Aware Parenting Babies and Annoying to AMAZING! Helena has 2 children of her own aged 14 & 8 and lives in Sydney. In this episode Helena shares her story of how she found Aware Parenting and how learning how to listen to feelings and play with her children was so life changing. We dive deep into Attachment Play. Helena shares her considerable knowledge about the different forms of Attachment Play and why it is such a helpful aspect of Aware Parenting. We talk about how it works to support our children, and she gives many examples of how she has used play in her family and with the families that she supports. If you want to know about how to use Attachment Play with your family, then this is the episode to listen to! To find out more about Helena, follow her on social media at Parenting with Play on Facebook and Instagram and her website is www.parentingwithplay.com.au

In this episode, I have the pleasure of talking to Tracey Anderson Askew. Tracey is a Childbirth and Parenting educator and mother to 4 boys. She is the director of Transform Parenting, a support community that provides programs to prepare for birth and early parenthood. She has 20 years experience working with parents and has supported over 3000 families through their births. Today we talk about how to heal from our births by sharing our stories and finding the wisdom and learnings from our birth experiences. We talk about how birth is a catalyst for our growth and that we can support our babies to heal from their birth experiences too. Tracey shares about the wisdom of our bodies and how she counters the cultural conditioning around birth that often disempowers women. We discuss how she supports women to know that they are powerful and enough, both for birth and for early motherhood. She describes how she helps families to move from fear to trust, to demystify pain and how to support the nervous system for birth with the language of empowerment. We discuss the importance of trusting our bodies and trusting life and the importance of trust in parenting too. Please note this episode is not specifically about Aware Parenting. To find out more about Tracey, please visit www.transformparenting.com.au or follow Tracey on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at Transform Parenting. Her Transform Parenting Summit, featuring presentations by several Aware Parenting Instructors including myself, will be available on 23rd September 2022.

In this episode, I talk to Carolina Valencia Coleman. Carolina is a Colombian Australian, mother to 2 children, aged 11 and 8. She is a certified Aware Parenting Instructor and currently leads a Cultural Responsiveness Training Consultancy that specializes in safeguarding the cultural and racial dignity of children. Carolina is passionate about birth, caring for children and supporting parents through Listening Partnerships. In this episode Carolina shares her journey into Aware Parenting and how it saved her from the weight of exhaustion and worry that she originally experienced as a mother. We talk about the importance of Listening Partnerships – a term borrowed from Hand in Hand parenting – also known in Aware Parenting as Empathy Buddies. We discuss the need for us to be receiving compassion in order to be able to offer it to our children, and how this teaches our children compassion too. She describes how to undo our conditioning so we can listen with empathy and space in our listening partnerships and how to share, and how learning to do this makes it possible to support our children with loving, unconditional listening too. The Facebook group for finding a Listening Partnership that Carolina runs, can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2562318203992646/ The guide for Listening Partnerships can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GIec0EsSciZ0xeMuX8YbzkHnQlHz32lF/view?fbclid=IwAR2uV65FlgKkjCLyUvmbx-V9p83gcmORME-XE9GBMS4ilBiuo8E_eWjTiNE

In this episode, I talk to Maru Rojas. Maru is an Aware Parenting instructor from Mexico who lives in London. She has a keen interest in potty learning and elimination communication to help children be aware and learn about their bodies. She loves looking at Aware Parenting as a holistic philosophy for raising children and re-parenting ourselves. Maru describes how she has supported her children by listening to their feelings with her partner and with her mother and she acknowledges how hard it can be to do this and how much support we need in order to practise Aware Parenting. She describes how she has incorporated attachment play into her family and how effective it is to support babies and children to heal. She talks about her particular interest in elimination communication and how parents can support their children with aware parenting to be aware of their bodies. We talk about self compassion in motherhood and re-parenting our younger parts as part of our own healing with Aware Parenting. To find out more about Maru, please visit www.parenttogether.co.uk or follow her on Instagram at _maru.rojas_ or email her [email protected]

Episode 9: In today’s episode I have the pleasure of talking to Kate Baltrotsky. Kate has been an Aware Parenting Instructor since 2014 and is the mother to 3 children. She is completing her Ph.D. at Southern Cross university evaluating the Aware Parenting approach, focusing on playful discipline. She has recently had the first part of her research published in the Journal of Child and Family Behaviour Therapy titled “Parents’ Experiences of a Brief Online Parenting Program with Playful Discipline”. In the episode, Kate outlines this first research study on the effectiveness of the Aware Parenting approach and why she felt called to undertake research. She describes the contents of the training that was offered to parents as part of this study and her key findings. She explains how her research has found that short parent training programs on Playful Discipline are effective to support parents to be the parent they want to be, to understand that behaviour is a sign of unmet needs or unreleased feelings and to give parents effective strategies to respond to challenging behaviour in the form of special time, power-reversal games and loving limits. Kate describes the next stages of her Ph.D. and the need for additional evidence in the scientific literature to increase the mainstream acceptance of the Aware Parenting approach. She also talks about what she has learnt from parenting this way herself, including letting go of “perfect” in parenting and the importance of finding ways to meet our needs as mothers. To find out more about Kate, follow her on Instagram at Katesurfs or email her [email protected] Her research article can be found here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07317107.2022.2084596 The free Facebook group we mention is accessible here https://www.facebook.com/groups/484995275036830

Today on the podcast I talk to Shelley Clarke. Shelley supports parents to understand their child's behaviour and develop rich long lasting relationships. She is a Physiotherapist, CranioSacral Therapist, Aware Parenting Instructor and Parent Mentor. She is passionate about the nervous system, human body and helping families thrive. She is the host of the Mind Body Parenting Podcast and is the mother to three beautiful children. She is on a mission to shift the paradigm that we parent from. Shelley describes how hard parenting felt before finding Aware Parenting and how learning the strategies of AwP, brought back the joy, connection and laughter to her parenting. We talk about how this approach has allowed us to unpack our layers of conditioning to remember and reclaim our connection to our needs and feelings and how this then impacts on our relationships with our children, our partners, our friends and family. We discuss the power of attachment play in our families and how play works to shift their feelings, to make life easier and to encourage cooperation. To learn more about Shelley, her website is www.shelleyclarke.com, and she is on Instagram at _shelleyclarke_ and Facebook at Shelley Clarke Mind Body Parenting.

Today’s podcast is in 2 parts. In the first part, I was so fortunate to interview Alfie Kohn. Mr Kohn is a writer and speaker who specializes in human behaviour, education and parenting. He is the author of 14 books and hundreds of articles and lectures at education conferences and universities, as well as to parent groups and corporations. Mr Kohn talks today about moving away from an approach to parenting which is based on having power over our children, to one based on working with our children. He explains how research has challenged many of the assumptions about mainstream approaches to raising our children. He explains that punishments and rewards are really both manipulation and control of our children and only work temporarily and at great cost to our relationship with our children. He describes how intrinsic motivation is damaged by rewards, praise and punishments. We discuss how to offer our children unconditional love in a way that our children receive as unconditional and how to parent without these coercive “sticks”. He also briefly discusses the failings of education systems that are based on testing, homework, and grades, all of which destroy creativity, meaningful learning and the desire to learn. Please note this part of the episode is not specifically about Aware Parenting. In part 2 of this episode, I outline the Aware Parenting perspective on not using punishments or rewards. I describe how to shift our thinking away from the behaviour modification perspective of trying to control and coerce our children and move instead to an Aware Parenting perspective of power with our children. I explain how to treat our children in a way that allows them to feel unconditionally loved, and how to ‘discipline’ our children with a compassionate and connected approach that looks underneath our children’s behaviour so we can identity what is getting in the way of them being their natural, loving, cooperative selves. I provide many strategies that parents can use instead of punishments or rewards to make parenting more enjoyable, to deepen our relationship with our children and support ourselves to be the parent we want to be. To find out more about Alfie Kohn, please visit www.alfiekohn.org I highly recommend Alfie Kohn’s books “Punished by Rewards” and “Unconditional Parenting”, as well as “Cooperative and Connected” by Aletha Solter and her article “20 Alternatives to Punishment” available on her website www.awareparenting.com

In this episode of the podcast, I have the pleasure of interviewing Steph Fleeton. Steph is an Aware Parenting Instructor and mum to 2 boys. She is the founder of Spirited Hearts Natural Learning Haven, a family day care that is built on the foundations of Aware Parenting principles and is a home away from home. It is a safe, nurturing, joyful space where each child is accepted for the beautiful, unique individual that they are. We talk about the challenges of learning to hold space to listen to big feelings and to use Attachment Play in parenting. Steph describes how her day care center uses a holistic approach to support families with Aware Parenting, including loving limits, listening to and releasing feelings and play to support the children in her care. She talks about how she explains this approach to parents, builds trust and normalizes the expression of big feelings. Steph also shares honestly and with great self-compassion how she has coped with her son being diagnosed with ADHD and Generalised Anxiety Disorder. She describes how she has needed to be creative and finely tuned in to her child in order to use the tools of Aware Parenting to meet his unique needs. She talks about how to get support for how hard it is and how isolating it can feel to parent a child with a diagnosis and describes how beautiful, intense, difficult and powerful it is. We talk about how to see each child as a unique individual and to meet them where they are at in each moment. To learn more about Steph, please visit https://spiritedhearts.net/ . Steph is on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/spirited_hearts/ . Her podcast is https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spirited-hearts-the-podcast-with-steph-fleeton/id1629277929?app=podcast. Her download Holding Space for big Feelings in Early Childhood Education is available here https://www.inspiredeclearningcommunity.com/holding%20space%20for%20big%20feelings

This short extra episode is based on my Introduction to Aware Parenting Course. I describe what Aware Parenting is and what the core aspects and principles are. I explain how to practise Aware Parenting in our families and what strategies we can use to make parenting easier. I talk about how to listen to feelings, how to use attachment play, how to rewind and repair when it all goes wrong. I talk about the struggles and challenges of parenting, how to get support for us and why that is so important. I finish with some reflections that we can all use to help us get clear about how we want things to be. For more information, please visit Aletha Solter's website www.awareparenting.com. You will find all her articles and books on that link. My social media Aware Parenting with Joss also has lots of articles and information, as does my website www.awareparenting.com.au

In this episode I have the pleasure of talking to Danni Willow. Danni is an Aware Parenting Instructor, a parenting coach, early childhood educator, primary school teacher and holder of sacred space for Mother and women circles. She is the mother to 2 beautiful souls. She runs women’s groups on line and in person to support mothers to practise aware parenting for themselves and their children. I have so much respect for Danni and her passion for and understanding of Aware Parenting. Today we talked about many aspects of Aware Parenting. Danni shares with authentic honesty her journey from exhausted attachment parent to aware parenting with her girls and herself. She shares a beautifully inspiring in-depth description of supporting her daughter to let go of a control pattern with her dummy. She talks with great detail about implementing self-regulated eating in her family. She shares about her own experience of accepting support for herself and doing her own healing work in order to be able to effectively support her children. And she shares how she supports other mothers to do the same. To find out more about Danni, please visit www.thewayofthewoman.com.au or follow Danni on Facebook at The way of the woman, or on Instagram at danni.willow. Her Mothers circles are running at the Perinatal Hub in Jan Juc Victoria or in Melbourne or online and all are advertised on her Instagram page.

In this episode of the podcast, I was so excited to interview Naomi Aldort. Naomi is the author of Raising our Children, Raising Ourselves, which has been translated into 20 languages. She provides support and education for parents from around the world in sessions, workshops, web classes, lectures and running private intensive retreats. Her guidance is not about gentle ways to control a child, but about how to have peace without having to control. It is about a way of being and of understanding children so they can do their best, not because they fear us or seek our approval, but because they want to, of their own free will. Her approach has been praised as providing the best of The Work of Byron Katie and Nonviolent Communication combined, and more. She works with parents of children of all ages to create powerful parent-child relationships. Please note that this episode is not about Aware Parenting but about Naomi’s approach to parenting. In this episode Naomi describes her SALVE formula for supporting ourselves and our children when behaviour is challenging so that we can be unconditionally loving to our children. Naomi describes how to support our children to express their feelings using her “Magic Words” and how crying is a physical and chemical release of feelings. Naomi give many examples of how to support our children with disappointment and pain in a way that builds emotional intelligence, resilience, trust in themselves and empowerment. We discuss helpful ways to respond when we make mistakes so we know we don’t have to try to be perfect. And she offers some wonderful suggestions for how we can do our work to heal our pain so that we can be the parent that we want to be. To find out more about Naomi Aldort, please visit www.naomialdort.com, www.authenticchild.com and www.authenticparent.com and follow her on Facebook at Naomi Aldort and Instagram at naomi_aldort_parenting. I highly recommend her book Raising Our Children Raising Ourselves.

This week on the podcast I was so excited to speak with the lovely Lael Stone, who is a champion of creating connection in families. She is a TEDx speaker on Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children, an author, a parenting counsellor, an educator and the mother of 3 mostly grown-up children. She runs workshops, works for the Resilience Project and is the co-creator of Woodline Primary School, a new innovative school based on emotional wellbeing and connection. She also co-hosts the Aware Parenting Podcast. We talk about how she has practised aware parenting to support her 3rd child to heal from birth trauma and to support her older children to release feelings that had accumulated after not being parented with way for their first few years. We talk about the impact on our grown up children of having been raised this way and the amazing relationships we have with them as a result of Aware Parenting. We share about how we have increasingly been able to support ourselves and prioritise taking care of our needs as mothers, to heal our wounds and traumas. Lael talks about the creation of her school which aims to prioritise connection and emotional health. And we talk about learning to trust our children and ourselves. To find out more about Lael please visit www.laelstone.com.au and follow her at Lael Elizabeth on Facebook and laelstone on Instagram

This week on the Podcast I have the honour of talking to Pam Leo. Pam is the author of the wonderful book “Connection Parenting: Parenting through Connection instead of Coercion, through Love instead of Fear”, first published in 2005. She has worked for over 30 years as a childbirth and parent educator, grief work facilitator and parent mentor. She is a writer and has taught her Connection Parenting series “Meeting the Needs of Children” for many years. She is a founding member of the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children and is a family literacy activist and the founder of the Book Fairy Pantry Project, a not-for-profit grassroots project that advocates for literacy and aims to provide books donations for high risk families. They are hoping to reach the 10 million children in America who are living in poverty. She is the mother of 2 children, 5 grand-children and now a great-grandchild. Please note that this episode is not about Aware Parenting but rather Pam’ Leo’s approach - Connection Parenting. In today’s episode we talk about Connection Parenting and how to focus on building and maintaining strong, consistent loving connections with our children. We talk about the need to treat children with respect. We discuss how to listen to children’s feelings in a way that allows them to release and heal from stress and trauma. We discuss how to see our children’s behaviour as a communication of unmet needs and how to decode their behaviour when it is challenging. She shares lots of ideas on how to fill children’s ‘love cup’, how to communicate in ways that strengthen connection and how to ensure we meet our needs as parents too. Pam shares her wisdom and knowledge to encourage us to “raise children who won’t have to recover from their childhood”. To find out more about Pam Leo, please visit www.connectionparenting.com or www.bookfairypantryproject.org . Pam is also on Facebook as Pamela Leo and BookFairyPantryProject and on Instagram bookfairypantryproject.

In this first episode of my new podcast, I have the absolute pleasure of talking to Marion Rose Ph.D.. Marion is a Level 2 Aware Parenting Instructor, a Psychospiritual Mentor and the creator of the Marion Method for pscyhospiritual development, parenting and entrepreneurship. She has created many Aware Parenting courses, runs workshops and provides mentoring and support to people all around the world. Marion is passionate about supporting mothers to make the paradigm shift from disconnection and power-over to compassionate connectedness and powerful collaboration with ourselves, our families and the world. In today's episode, Marion and I talk about how to support our babies to release and heal their feelings right from birth onwards. We discuss how to build strong connected relationships with our children with Aware Parenting. We share about how to use attachment play with our children of all ages. We share about what we have loved about parenting and what we have found challenging. We talk about the need for us to get support in order to support our children and how to trust ourselves and free ourselves from judgement and comparison. Enjoy sitting back and listening while Marion shares her immense knowledge of and passion for Aware Parenting. To find out more about Marion Rose, please visit her website www.marionrose.net or follow her on Facebook at Marion Rose, Ph.D. or Instagram _marion_rose_