I’m so incredibly grateful for Aware Parenting. I feel moved as I look at old photos and reflect back on 18 years of parenting (this picture is from 10 years ago).
When I came across Aware Parenting when I was pregnant with my daughter 18 years ago, I knew that this was the approach that I’d been looking for.
It fitted with everything I’d learnt in my previous 14 years of psychology, my Ph.D. on the mother-baby relationship, post-doctoral developmental psychology research, in training and working as a psychotherapist, and in all I knew about pre- and peri-natal psychology and secure attachment.
With those 14 years of background, I understood that the time in utero, during birth, and particularly the first 3 years of a child’s life were fundamentally important.
I’d also already seen plenty of clients in my psychotherapy practice who, in their 20’s – 50’s, were still healing from the effects of their feelings not being valued or heard.
As I embarked on motherhood, I knew that it was of my highest priorities to meet the needs of my baby, and to listen to her feelings.
With Aware Parenting, there was an added piece that I had never heard of in that 14 years prior immersion in developmental psychology and psychotherapy – that babies and children can express feelings from birth, and in that way, can heal from birth and pre-birth experiences, as well as daily stresses and any more traumatic experiences.
The thought that I could support my baby in these ways, to not only do whatever I could to meet her needs and prevent traumatic experiences, but knowing that she had an inbuilt way to heal if and when I wasn’t attuned, or there were daily stresses or bigger painful events, was the biggest lightbulb moment for me.
This was my top priority as a mother – to meet her needs and listen to her feelings.
And it has been one of the most profound journeys I can think of.
My focus was always on her long term emotional wellbeing. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that listening to her feelings profoundly affected her presence, awareness, and behaviour.
It was a huge learning curve, learning to understand her feelings and listen to them. And this was despite the fact that for my Ph.D., I spent hundreds of hours going through videos I’d taken of mothers and babies interacting, and observing and coding what I saw. I was highly trained in infant observation, and yet Aware Parenting was a whole new dimension of attunement and awareness.
However, understanding and listening to her feelings was the most important thing to me, so I kept on learning and understanding more and more about her feelings.
By the time my son was born, 4 and a half years later, I had listened to a lot of feelings. I was by then an Aware Parenting Instructor, and I knew so much more, and could see so much more clearly than I had been able to with her.
With both of them, I saw so clearly the effect of having their needs mostly met and their feelings mostly listened to, particularly during the first 8 years of being a mother.
They were generally very centred in their bodies. They were able to concentrate for hours. Their bodies were mostly very relaxed and free from tension. I could see how little physical armouring they had developed. Sleep was always really easy in our home, and they would often sleep until 8 or later. My daughter was incredibly gentle and loving with her brother. Neither of them were rough with each other or with animals. They were aware and gentle in their touch.
And it was always clear to their Dad and I when they did have uncomfortable feelings bubbling – they’d start avoiding eye contact, they’d be more restless, they’d take longer to go to sleep and move around in their sleep, they’d be less likely to cooperate. Accumulated feelings were very easy to see.
Things changed after those first 8 years, when their Dad and I separated and my son and I in particular had a lot of upset feelings – which really showed up in my lessened capacity to offer presence and listening, and in his behaviour. Although it was really hard, at least I knew exactly what was going on and what was needed!
For me, Aware Parenting is a profound way to support children to stay connected with their true, loving, connected, centred, presence. I don’t know any other approach that understands so clearly, in exact detail, how repression mechanisms come into place during infancy and childhood, and how we can support our children in having fewer of them.
Aware Parenting offers a third way with sleep – as we found in our family, there’s no need to choose between secure attachment and restful sleep. Aware Parenting offers both.
And if a child isn’t cooperating, or is moving into aggression, it offers a really clear route to supporting children to be much more willing to cooperate, and to return to their native gentleness.
For me, personally, I chose it for my children’s emotional wellbeing. I didn’t realise at the beginning that it would have a huge impact on their behaviour.
Parents come to Aware Parenting for many reasons.
For some, it’s because they know how painful it was for their feelings not to be valued and heard as children, and they want their children to know that all their feelings are welcome, and that they will be heard and loved however they feel;
For others, they want to limit the repression mechanisms their child develops;
For many, it’s because their toddler is waking up many times at night and they want to find a way that supports restful sleep without turning to Controlled Crying or CIO methods;
For others, they see their child hitting or biting, despite their gentle, attachment-focussed parenting, and want to support their child to be gentle without ever resorting to punishments or rewards;
Many come because they’ve done personal development or counselling or therapy, and understand the huge impact of our childhoods on our later life;
Some come because they hear of attachment play and love the idea of using play to elicit cooperation, heal fears, and reduce aggression.
After 18 years as a parent, I am still learning, and still doing my own inner reparenting.
After 15 years as an Aware Parenting instructor, one of the things I love doing most now is supporting other parents who want to become Aware Parenting Instructors, or who already are and are wanting support in their own journey.
If you’re new to Aware Parenting, I have lots of free and paid courses here on my website.
If you’re also passionate about Aware Parenting, and you want to become an Instructor, the doors for the 6th Aware Parenting Instructor Mentoring Course are closing in 3 days.
I celebrate all the parents in the world who are aiming to parent with more compassion, more awareness and more understanding. I believe that conscious and Aware Parenting are profoundly important at this time of human evolution, and are a powerful part of social change.
Much love,
Marion xoxox