Aware Parenting Stories with Joss Goulden

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 – wholesomemum@proton.me

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