Aware Parenting Stories with Joss Goulden

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 support@awareparenting.com.au

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