featured – Listening for Good

Listening Tools for Parents Workshop, June 16

Please join me for a listening partnership workshop.

A listening partnership is a tool for creating safety and support for yourself as a parent and person. This simple tool provides a path to more self-compassion.

Imagine a completely safe space where you can process your frustrations, pent up anger or tears and other uncomfortable feelings that come with parenting, free of judgement. A listening partnership provides that for you, and allows you to return to your parenting with fresh insight and energy.

Your patience for your children grows, and your ability to connect with your children deepens.

In this workshop, you will learn how to create a listening partnership. We’ll cover:

Why you can’t help but lose it with your kids sometimes, and how you can get yourself back on track.
How emotional hurts get passed down in families and how you can help yourself and other parents finally change family patterns.
Detailed guidance on how you can offload tension caused by grief, anger, guilt, frustration, fear, exhaustion, and much more.

Please join us, Saturday, June 16, at 3 PM. $40 per person.

Click here to sign up

Fellowship Hall of St Luke United Methodist Church, 1306 West Lynn Street, Austin, TX 78703

Please contact Laura Minnigerode with questions- I’d love to talk with you about the workshop or any topics related : 512-350-2815

StayL

Learning with Nature

“Nature, which excites all of the senses, remains the richest source of loose parts.”- Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods

Loose parts is a term that refers to the materials children use to build, invent and play. I love this photograph of my son, who is a born scientist, feeling sand run through his fingers. We had just arrived at the beach, and although he played a lot in Texas rivers and streams, this was his first time to feel beach sand. This material soon transformed from sensory experience to construction fodder.

There is a load of evidence that the material found in nature leads to more creative play, longer play sessions, problem solving and more complex language and thinking. And just being outside provides added support for this expansiveness.

Austin Forest School grew out of this research, and the research about need for children to move more, and to take risks in a structured environment. Claire Warden, of Auchlone Nature Kindergarten, one of my new favorite of mentors, talks about ‘pushing the boundaries of exploration’, and it says well what we do at Austin Forest School.

What To Do When Your Baby Cries

Aletha Solter, PhD is the author of The Aware Baby and Tears and Tantrums

Infants are extremely vulnerable, and have a considerable amount of emotional pain resulting from an accumulation of stressful experiences. Distress can be caused by a traumatic birth or difficulties after birth. Babies experience confusion as they attempt to understand the world and they are easily frightened and over-stimulated. In addition, they feel frustrated as they attempt to learn new skills and communicate. All of these result in emotional pain that is stored in the body.

Fortunately, babies come equipped with a repair kit, and can overcome the effects of stress through the natural healing mechanism of crying. Research has shown that people of all ages benefit from a good cry, and tears help to restore the body’s chemical balance following stress. An infant who has been isolated in an incubator without much human contact for several days may need to cry and rage for many hours, over a period of months, in order to release the emotional pain caused by such a terrifying and confusing experience. …..

Crying in these examples is not the hurt; it is the process of becoming unhurt.

What can parents do? First of all, it is important to check for immediate needs and discomforts, such as hunger and coldness. But if your baby is still fussy after you have filled her basic needs, it is quite appropriate simply to hold her lovingly and allow her to continue crying. Babies need closeness and attention when they are crying. No baby should ever be left to cry along. Even though you may feel ineffective when holding your crying baby, in reality you are providing her with much needed emotional support while she is releasing stress in this manner. Your baby is not rejecting you when she is crying. She Is simply feeling safe enough to show you her feelings.

Please note that this is not a cry it out approach. There is a huge difference between leaving a baby to cry alone and holding a crying baby lovingly in your arms while providing comfort and reassurance.

The other part of this: get support!! I think it is really important for parents to get support as they use this approach. Many strong feelings come up as you listen to your crying baby, and it is important to take these feelings to another adult who can be present for you to process them.

The Power of a Listener

I had a really stressful professional presentation to give. I managed to get ideas together and to write down a few very important thoughts, but I was not really thinking very clearly. Fear and stuck feelings were getting in the way. This is the story of one messy project and how a listening partnership helped clean it up.

I had only a few minutes that day with my listening partner. I sat huddled in my car, waiting outside my daughter’s high school before I would take her to another activity. It seemed every other parent in the known universe was also in the car during this time, evidenced by the line of cars piling up all around mine. I was in a peaceful bubble with a listening partner on the line with me. As I talked and she listened, across many state lines, I could feel her presence. I started to talk about my worries about the worst thing that could happen with this talk the next morning. Safely floating above this sea of cars gave me a powerful sense. It whispering to me You are not alone. It felt huge and earth shifting.

As I reflected more on this, I realized that I was carrying some really painful memories from older times when I needed someone to be there. The listening partnership time where I got to talk about my fear with someone who was really there and really listening helped me to wipe the cobwebs from that time. I could feel it still, mucking up the works. Clearing it out helped me in the short term, and was also the beginning of some larger healing.

In the small piece of listening time I spent that afternoon, I was able to receive a big gift: support to think clearly. Please join me for a free Listening Partnership training to get started using this powerful tool.

Why you can’t help but lose it with your kids sometimes, and how you can get yourself back on track.

How emotional hurts get passed down in families and how you can help yourself and other parents finally change family patterns.

Detailed guidance on how you can offload tension caused by grief, anger, guilt, frustration, fear, exhaustion, and much more.