Ahead of Anna Cole and Tosha Schore’s upcoming appearance at Positive Nights on Thursday November 7th, we are pleased to share Anna’s article from our Autumn 2018 issue. Consider it a brief taster of what she and Tosha will have to say on the night!
Healing the hidden triggers
Why children push your buttons, and what to do about it
By Anna Cole
Parenting isn’t easy! Some days start with one child sitting defiantly on the floor, refusing to put on their shoes, with another grumpy, prickly and ignoring the dishwasher she’s been asked to empty. We’re bristling before breakfast is over, and things go downhill from here. When we’re upset and stressed, the fun drains out of parenting, to say the least. Even our sense that our children are dear to us disappears. Every single one of us grapples with tough days as we do our best to be good parents.
Why do we struggle so hard in parenting? Because, let’s face it, despite reading about peaceful and positive parenting, we do struggle hard some days. In the heat of the moment, we act in ways that we are less than proud of. Unconsciously, our own memories of past hurts are wrenched back into the here and now.
This kind of triggering is ubiquitous for parents and stems from events or bad times at different ages and stages of our own childhoods which left us hurt. When we act in ways we wished we hadn’t, the quiet, and not so quiet, whispers of times gone by which have left a mark, a wound, and a rigidity in us, have an effect on the day-to-day of parenting. We plaster them over to get by, as likely no one could listen to them when we were young. We learn to ignore them and attempt to stride, positively, into each parenting day. But here’s the rub: the wonder and the intensity of parenting is that, as much as we’d like to avoid it, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ parenting has an uncanny, almost precision ability to bring up these hidden triggers – often and many times! After some years of working on my own hidden triggers around parenting I have learnt to think of them as mirrors of opportunity. They invite healing and growth, if we can get the support we need.
As the autumn nights draw in and we head towards the ‘dark half of the year’ as the ancient Celts called it, we’re offering you a remarkable and rare opportunity to come learn a practice for releasing your parenting triggers with a couple of ‘masters’ – well, ‘mistresses’ – of the art of healing our parenting triggers. For one night only, Anna Cole – that’s me – certified Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor, and Tosha Schore, parent educator extraordinaire and co-author of the successful book, Listen. Five Simple Tools to Meet your Everyday Parenting Challenges, will be in Dublin talking at Positive Nights.
Join us for a welcoming and intimate evening and take home practical tools which will transform your parenting days – and nights – and help make your peaceful parenting dreams a reality. Come ready to practice. We’ll share perspective and practical ideas based on more than a combined couple of decades of our own experience, along with our training in Hand in Hand Parenting. We guarantee that this will make things go more easily in your parenting journey.
You’ve read the books, you know the theory, right? You know how you want it to look but you just keep losing it with your kids when they wake at 5am every morning, or refuse to go to sleep overnight, or (insert here!)…
You know the what! Let us show you the how! Come ready to laugh, talk and have some fun on this often bumpy, and less than perfect, journey of parenting.
Anna and Tosha will be appearing at Positive Nights on Thursday November 7th, with a mini parenting workshop which – if you’re a parent or hope to be – you don’t want to miss. This special evening will take place in the Bewley’s Café Theatre, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2, from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. Click here to learn more and book your tickets.
For more, see: positivelife.ie/positivenights
Anna Cole, Ph.D., is a parent educator, researcher, writer and a certified instructor with Hand in Hand Parenting. She can be found on Facebook at:
Hand in Hand Parenting with Anna Cole
