This programme has been lovingly designed to support parents who are feeling overwhelmed and are ready and motivated to bring about deep, long term change within themselves, their relationship with their children and in their family lives. It is intended to support people who are eager to devote significant time, energy and effort to bringing this about.

This programme is likely to be a good fit for you if:

• You are longing for a loving and easy connection with your children, but you are not sure about the best way to bring this into reality.

• ​​You are experiencing chaos and lack of order in your family life, you are ready to change, but you are unsure what is the first step. 

• You are curious and eager to learn about your child, yourself, and the science and art of connection.

• You have been actively seeking out support for some time now (through books, youtube, courses, therapy etc) but are confused about how to piece it all together to bring about meaningful change.

• You feel uncertain or confused about different parenting approaches you see around you, with people in your life giving you contradictory advice. You want to find a way that works well for you and your children.

• You are attracted to the principles of gentle-parenting approaches (e.g. peaceful parenting, simple parenting, conscious parenting, mindful parenting, attachment parenting or NVC parenting) but you want some support to apply and integrate the principles effectively into your daily life with your children.

• You want to be confident in your parenting, even in moments of conflict or when there is challenging behaviour.

• You find yourself using parenting strategies that don’t align with your values or your vision of what you want your life with your children to be like (e.g. shouting, hitting, guilt and shame tactics, rewards and punishments, overusing screens, bribes etc) but you are struggling to find other ways that work.

• In quiet moments, your mind may wander to anxiety about your children and what might become of them (e.g. If they are like this now, will they become delinquents?? Will they ever be able to cope in the real world?) or may become lost in guilt or shame (Why did I shout again? What is wrong with me?!)

If you recognise yourself in any of these statements, this course is likely to be a good fit for your goals and  aspirations.

Once you sign up, you’ll receive your welcome pack, a gentle self-connection guide, and reflection questions to help you settle in. Then, your journey unfolds across these key themes:

Module 1: Exploring your vision & setting intentions. We will welcome you, settle in, and explore what you need in order to get the most out of the programme, explore your vision for your family and your specific goals and intentions for our time together. We will introduce Compassionate Communication (or Nonviolent Communication) as the primary model we will use throughout the course as a way to support and strengthen the caring, peaceful relationship we wish to create with our children.

Module 2: Reconnecting & Understanding Behaviour. We will start off by exploring the importance of the relationship that we have with our children as a container for their growth and development, and the impact on them (and on us, via their ‘behaviour’) when there are challenges with the connection. We will examine what makes a child difficult (or easy) to parent, what is happening in their brain/nervous system during interpersonal challenges, and what is within our power to change. We will also look at systemic factors that impact the relationship context, including our own conditioning, trauma and socialisation and the impact of external factors. 

Module 3: Two ways of being in the world. This month, we look at how our beliefs and judgments about the world create a lens through which we see, understand and interpret our child. We explore two very different ways of being in and experiencing the world (represented in Compassionate Communication by the Jackal and the Giraffe) which correspond to two fundamentally different ways that our brains and nervous systems operate. We will examine the impact on our relationship with our child from these two different modes of being. We will explore how an understanding of our deep human needs can support a different way of being with our child and look at ways we can support flexibility and choice about shifting into a giraffe/needs-based consciousness in relationship with our child.

Module 4: Feelings, self regulation and co-regulation. This month, we look at the ways that we are separated from awareness of our own inner life: the vital emotional and bodily feelings that are the way our bodies communicate with us. We examine the importance of these body signals in bringing information into consciousness about what is important to us and how we might use this information to express ourselves, to self-regulate when we are triggered and to support our children to regulate themselves when they are activated (“co-regulation”).

Module 5: Clear Observations & The Power of Genuine Appreciation. This month we will explore the importance of separating our observations of our child from our evaluations/interpretations. We will look at the role of evaluations in conflict and how clear observations can support a more peaceful, harmonious and productive way of being with each other. We also look at the power of expressing appreciation and gratitude for our children, and how this can offer a more nurturing and life giving approach compared to praise and rewards.

Module 6: Empathy For Self & Others. In this session, we look at what happens within us when our children are doing and saying things that we find upsetting. How do we understand and interpret their actions? How does our interpretation impact our responses to them? How does our response further feed into their behaviour, and impact the relationship between us? We will explore ways to shift from rage, frustration and anger to curiosity and openness. We will also look at the importance of empathy to children’s development and learn some skills for offering empathy and understanding to our children even in the most challenging moments.

Module 7: Clear Requests & Authentic Self-Expression. Many of us find it very difficult to make genuine requests of our children, leaning instead into passivity and permissiveness, on the one hand, or demand, force and authoritarian commands on the other. In this session, we look at the power of requests as a way to offer our children an opportunity to enter into a relationship of cooperation, mutual care and generous giving from the heart with us. We uncover some of the blocks we have to make requests with our children, how we can get stuck in “demand energy” and the impact of this on our power to create a caring relationship context and having our needs met. We will practise making clear, doable requests that capture our deepest needs and longings and offer us a way to make concrete steps to bring more joy and fulfilment into our relationships.

Module 8: Integrating Your Journey & Looking Forward. In our final month, we will focus on integrating everything you’ve learned, reflecting on your progress, and celebrating your achievements. You’ll walk away with a toolkit of strategies, a new vision for your family, and a roadmap to guide you forward on this journey. 

It is our experience that everything you learn here will save you so much time and energy moving forward! It is an initial investment of time to bring huge rewards of freed up time and life energy down the track. 

Having said this…before you sign up, we’d like to just pause with you for a moment and check in.

Are you sure?

A crucial part of this programme is learning to care for your needs, and this means learning to slow down sometimes; to pause and take a breath, to tune into ourselves and our bodies, to check our calendars, ask our friends and partners, notice what we are saying “yes” to (and what we may therefore be saying “no” to).

Sometimes when we rush, we can end up committing to something that doesn’t serve us well; maybe something that we think we “should” do, or that we only have a “half yes” for.

We believe that staying within capacity is a radical, life-changing and world-changing move. When we move fast, we are more likely to move beyond our capacity and miss important needs.

In this programme, we will learn to move slowly together, to move at a pace that feels right and to check whether our needs are being met. So right from the start, at this critical point of launching off together, we want to honour your needs and your capacity.

So we invite you to pause and check.

We would love it if every parent had an opportunity to learn about connection and gain some skills to care more deeply for themselves and their children. We imagine the world would be a more peaceful and kinder place!

However, re-establishing connection with your child and yourself takes time, energy and commitment. It is our sincere wish that only those who have the capacity to engage in this programme sign up; we would love to support you to focus your precious life energy only on endeavours that will support and nurture you and your family.

This programme requires a willingness to self reflect, be open to new ideas and be willing to try new behaviours and patterns. It is not likely to be a good fit for you if:​

• You love the idea of this, but are just too busy to commit to around 3-4 hours each week. We believe that staying within our capacity is a radical and world-changing choice, and it is very important to us that any work we do together is entirely within your capacity. We want to support people to learn to trust their instincts about this. If this phase of life feels too full for you, and you sense this is not a realistic commitment, this programme is unlikely to work well for you and may add more pressure. Your reluctance to take on any more makes a lot of sense, and we really honour and appreciate your choice! 

• You have big changes or commitments in the next few months (e.g. moving house, changing jobs etc). If you think these changes will make it hard to find space and time to commit to this programme, perhaps this is not the right time for you. We hope you honour and take seriously any concerns you have about this, and choose to stay within your capacity. 

• You are experiencing significant life trauma or personal pain right now.In this case, you are likely to need more one-to-one support than the community format can offer, and our guided mentoring option might be a more supportive way for you to go through this programme. Please contact us if you would like to discuss our one-on-one support options.

• You desperately want fast results. Sometimes we can feel really desperate for instant changes as parents: maybe the school has told you that unless your child starts behaving differently they will take punitive action, maybe you are estranged from your child and you are desperate to have them back right now, or maybe your partner has given you a frightening ultimatum about your child’s behaviour or your approach to parenting.

  We really get the sense of urgency and the pain and frustration you are experiencing right now. And we also want to be transparent that it is our expectation that recreating this precious connection with ourselves and our children will not happen overnight. Deep and lasting change takes time, perseverance and practice; and ultimately a lifelong commitment beyond our time together to prioritise peace, presence and connection. There are many ways to force compliance with your child in the short term, but in our experience these short term methods are very costly to our relationships in the long run. 

The invitation in this programme is to slow down in order that we can eventually speed up…together. If you do not have the time, space or willingness in your life at this point to slowly, patiently rebuild this connection, our guess is that this course will be challenging and frustrating for you.

If, after reading this, you are still unsure whether this programme is right for you in this particular season of your life, you are very welcome to contact us for a chat. We are very open to helping you to discern whether it is likely to be the best step for you right now. If so, we are so excited for you to join us!

Life happens! If things get too intense, you can formally pause your journey and pick right back up within 4 months, or the next cohort offer, ensuring you never lose your progress or miss out on the support you’ve invested in.

We welcome a limited number of people into the programme at any given time, because we want to make sure we are able to care for and nurture each person to make the changes they want to make in their lives.

We have a (very simple!) application process we ask you to complete before entering the programme, involving a form to complete to let us know a bit about your situation and why you are drawn to the course. This process allows us to decide (together) whether this programme will be a good fit for you and will best meet your needs at this moment in time. 

We want to make sure:

• We are going to be able to give you the level of support you need (for some people, individual coaching, mediation or even support from other trainers we know might be a better fit).
• You are going to be able to give the time and energy to this programme (see “What is the time commitment” and “Am I too busy for this?”)
• You are motivated and want to do the course. We can offer support, resources, community, care and expertise, but ultimately the changes in your family life will come from you. It is important to us that we prioritise our care and energy to people who are really wanting to make change.

This application process is a chance for you and us to check whether this is likely to be a good fit. No one is turned away, but we might check in with you if we think that the programme might not be a good fit for you right now or if we think that there are other options that might better suit your needs. 

All three versions give you the same core programme: the modules, the video lessons, the framework. The difference is in the amount of individual support you get, and how you connect with community.

Online Cohort is the right fit for most people. You get the full programme alongside a group of other parents going through it at the same time.  Live practice sessions, an empathy buddy, and a community chat. If you want peer support and don’t want the depth of one-on-one attention, start here.

1:1 Coaching is for parents who want more individualised support. For example, if your situation feels particularly complex, you’re navigating something specific (like a recent diagnosis, school issues, or a family crisis), or you just learn better with direct, personal guidance than in a group setting. This runs alongside the online programme, with sessions scheduled around your family’s needs rather than a fixed group timetable.

In-Person Group gives you the same programme and community as the Online Cohort, but with face-to-face sessions in your local area instead of over Zoom. Choose this if you’d rather connect with other parents in person, and if we’re currently running a group near you (we’ll let you know when that’s the case).

If you’re still not sure, email us or book a call and we can talk it through together.