Aware Parenting Stories with Joss Goulden

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 maru.awareparenting@gmail.com

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 kate.baltrotsky@scu.edu.au 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.

Naomi Aldort, author of "Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves," shares her transformative approach to parenting focused on unconditional love and self-discovery. She introduces the SALVE formula for empathic listening and emotional support. Naomi emphasizes the importance of allowing children to experience disappointment to foster resilience and emotional intelligence. She critiques traditional praise methods and highlights the necessity of parental self-reflection to better understand children's needs, advocating for authentic relationships that nurture independence.

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.