What Is Authentically Peaceful Parenting?

Authentically Peaceful Parenting combines Peaceful Parenting with mindfulness, compassion, and nervous system understanding and support. Because contrary to what you’ve been told, knowing better does NOT mean you do better. Doing better consistently requires “sitting in the suck” so that you can empty your own emotional backpack and grow your capacity to be with challenging situations and emotions. When you do this, you can embrace the contradictions of life and stop limiting yourself to the narrow range of feelings and experiences that you think you are supposed to have.

You see, what you say and do to your kids is only about 20% of parenting and how you impact your kids. The other 80% is all about who you are. Or rather who shows up. Because beneath the layers, we are all exactly who we need to be. Who our children need us to be. But some of the layers are…not. And until those layers are gone, we can’t connect with our true essence and our favorite parenting selves. In order to get there, we need to know how to work with our nervous system and stress response, treat ourselves more compassionately, and practice being less reactive. Then we can layer on all the “tips and tricks” from Peaceful Parenting and Mindful Parenting (tweaked based on what we know about the nervous system) in a way that makes them feel easeful, and which fundamentally honors us as well as our children.

How My Coaching Helps You Become An Authentically Peaceful Parent

At the start of every session (most of which occur via Zoom, though we can make in-person arrangements if you are in Seattle) begins with (what I hope is!) a warm welcome and reminder that all parts of you are welcome here. From there, we will start talking about what has been going on, what has been weighing on your heart, and how things are going for you as they relate to the goals we set when we start working together.

Sessions are just for the adults of the families (though I always enjoy saying hi to the kids and you might meet mine too) and I recommend comfortable clothes so that you can really feel what is happening in your body and have the space to move energy. I also recommend bringing paper and a writing utensil as we’ll sometimes do fun activities like embodied writing and non-dominant hand drawing. But if you use those things to take notes, I will call you out on it. Because notetaking is a “good student” behavior that takes you out of the present moment and actually makes it harder for you to learn the thing that you wrote down. Instead, just let my words sink in and marinate in your body, after which they might work their way up through your subconscious and back into your mind. If there is something you need to remember, I’ll email it to you. (In fact, I email all coachees after each session with a reminder of the most important points, realizations, and invitations from our session.) At the end of the session, I will ask you to share the one thing that you most want to remember after our session and extend an invitation (a homework assignment, if you will) to you to revisit between sessions. These invitations may be tips and tricks to try or they might be things to do to support your own nervous system. It just depends on what happens in session. Then we’ll close it out with a round of lovingkindness meditation, in which we direct lovingkindness to ourselves or our kids.