We love this article from our Spring 2020 issue, by our resident parenting educator Anna Cole. Here, she discusses why parents may need a ‘parenting re-set’ when they have been rearing their children for a decade or more. Read on for her tips!
In this extract from our Spring 2019 issue, Hand in Hand Parenting expert and educator Anna Cole describes how old, seemingly insignificant memories – even ones stemming from their birth – can unconsciously affect our children, and how we as parents can help. To read the full article, just pick up a copy of the magazine in your local stockist or subscribe here.
On Wednesday November 7th, we are excited to be welcoming parenting experts and educators, Anna Cole and Tosha Schore, to Positive Nights. This event will take place from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. in the Bewley’s Café Theatre, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2. Doors will open at 7.00 p.m. Click here to book your tickets.
You’ve read the books. You know the theory, right? You know how you want your parenting life to look, but you just keep losing it with your kids when they wake at 5 a.m. every morning, ignore you when you ask them to brush their teeth, hit a sibling or call you names…
Join us for an intimate and welcoming evening where you’ll get to listen to Tosha Schore in conversation with Anna Cole, and take home some practical tools to make your parenting dreams a reality. Come ready to laugh, talk, practice and have some fun on this often bumpy, and less than perfect, journey of parenting. You know the what! Let Tosha and Anna show you the how!
About Tosha and Anna:
Tosha Schore, M.A, is a Hand-in-Hand Certified parent coach, the author of LISTEN: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges, and an international speaker. She is the mother of three boys, and an advocate for boys and their families worldwide. Tosha is committed to creating lasting change in families and in the world by supporting parents to care for themselves, connect with their children deeply, set limits lovingly, and play wildly.
Anna Cole, PhD, is a certified Hand in Hand parent educator, researcher and writer. She began her professional life as an academic researcher and lecturer. After the birth of her daughter in 2004 and her son in 2006 her academic interest in supporting marginalised communities in her anthropological work became a very real interest in figuring out why parenting was so emotionally hard, and yet was too often un-sung, under-appreciated and of such vital importance to shaping the next generation. She is committed to inter-generational family healing, one parent at a time. If you are a regular reader of our print magazine, you may recognise her as Positive Life’s resident Positive Parenting columnist!
Click here to book your tickets.
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
On Wednesday November 7th, we are excited to be welcoming parenting experts and educators, Anna Cole and Tosha Schore, to Positive Nights. This event will take place from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. in the Bewley’s Café Theatre, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2. Doors will open at 7.00 p.m. Click here to book your tickets.
You’ve read the books. You know the theory, right? You know how you want your parenting life to look, but you just keep losing it with your kids when they wake at 5 a.m. every morning, ignore you when you ask them to brush their teeth, hit a sibling or call you names…
Join us for an intimate and welcoming evening where you’ll get to listen to Tosha Schore in conversation with Anna Cole, and take home some practical tools to make your parenting dreams a reality. Come ready to laugh, talk, practice and have some fun on this often bumpy, and less than perfect, journey of parenting. You know the what! Let Tosha and Anna show you the how!
About Tosha and Anna:
Tosha Schore, M.A, is a Hand-in-Hand Certified parent coach, the author of LISTEN: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges, and an international speaker. She is the mother of three boys, and an advocate for boys and their families worldwide. Tosha is committed to creating lasting change in families and in the world by supporting parents to care for themselves, connect with their children deeply, set limits lovingly, and play wildly.
Anna Cole, PhD, is a certified Hand in Hand parent educator, researcher and writer. She began her professional life as an academic researcher and lecturer. After the birth of her daughter in 2004 and her son in 2006 her academic interest in supporting marginalised communities in her anthropological work became a very real interest in figuring out why parenting was so emotionally hard, and yet was too often un-sung, under-appreciated and of such vital importance to shaping the next generation. She is committed to inter-generational family healing, one parent at a time. If you are a regular reader of our print magazine, you may recognise her as Positive Life’s resident Positive Parenting columnist!
Click here to book your tickets.
In our Winter 2017/18 issue, our Positive Parenting writer, Anna Cole, shared her advice on how to be there for your child during those tricky preteen years. She brings all of her wisdom as a parent educator, researcher, writer, and a certified instructor with Hand in Hand Parenting to this moving article. To learn more about Anna’s work, visit Hand in Hand Parenting with Anna Cole or go to www.handinhandparenting.org.
By Anna Cole
As the trees lose their leaves once again and the ‘dark half of the year,’ as the ancient Celts called it, begins again, I’m reflecting on the long road of parenting. From the moment of conception to that busy, grumpy pre-teen standing in front of you looking for their school shoes, it can seem like a long, long road. ‘Parenting ends with the death of the parent,’ my mother used to say. This saying communicates something of the commitment, protectiveness, attention and ongoing love a parent feels for their infant, then toddler, child, preteen, teen, and finally young adult to full adult.
After ten years or so of walking this road, those of you who are parents of preteens may turn the corner from the early years of parenting and find that you no longer have a warm bundle of enthusiastic hugs and giggles flinging herself at you as you return home from work. You are no longer in such high demand to give piggy-back and horsey rides, and you are no longer hearing the squeals of delight evoked in children by such simple pleasures. This comes with a mix of relief and regret. Our children – as they grown into preteens – don’t need us so much any more, right?
Wrong! They need our love and they need to feel our good attention just as much now as they did when they clung to us, sobbing, on their first day at school. They need to feel our confidence in them, and our conviction that they can find their place in this perplexing and sometimes hostile world. So how do we, who have been on the parenting road now for a decade or more – unpaid, unacknowledged, often unsupported and likely quite exhausted – keep shining our light of love on our preteen? Don’t be deceived: the newfound independence you see in your preteen isn’t a sign that your ‘use by’ date as a parent will soon be up.
The single strongest indicator that an adolescent will reach adulthood without experiencing pregnancy or violence, becoming addicted to drugs or tobacco, or dropping out of school is parent-child connectedness. Together or apart, parents of preteens and teens play a vital role in anchoring their growing child in emotional soil that will help them thrive. Here’s something you can try in your homes with children of any age to stay connected amidst the rush of the everyday.
Special Time
Set aside time, each day if possible, and weekly at the absolute minimum, to clear your mind, turn off your phone, and stop working, checking emails or clearing up the house. Be fully, warmly delighted in your preteen. Use a timer and give the space you are creating a name: ‘Mum and Me Time’ or simply ‘Special Time.’ Follow your child’s lead with an open heart and an ‘anything goes’ attitude. You are still the adult and you still get to say a warm but clear ‘no’ if risks are introduced that would impact safety.
For that fifteen minutes, or half an hour or so, your preteen gets to feel you, fully there, warmly present with them and for them. You put your adult concerns to one side, and don’t bring any of your stuff about chores not yet done to your preteen. During ‘Special Time’, gently and warmly offer eye contact or a hand on the back and be there fully for your child. Your warm attention is a healing balm for your preteen’s nervous system, often ragged from a long day of peer group interactions and inevitable jostlings for position at school.
If you’ve never tried this before and your preteen resists your warm attention or pooh-poohs your ‘Special Time,’ try doing it unannounced. Imagine they’ve just got home from school, you are working from home, and you hear them come in. Get up from your laptop and put your phone down. Go and warmly greet them. Shine delighted-in-them attention their way. You can glance at a watch or a clock as you begin and silently commit to keeping your attention with your preteen for the next five to fifteen minutes.
You’ll be surprised at the results. At first you may get a teasing and an incredulous ‘what’s wrong with you?’ from your preteen. This is a measure of the distance between this warm, uncomplicated attention from you, and the other times when you were distracted or demanding something from them. Roll with it, respond playfully, and contact in your own body the ache of the preteen longing for the same kind of affectionate attention they received when they were a sweetly exuberant four-year-old.
Anna Cole, PhD, 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. www.handinhandparenting.org
This is an excerpt from our Summer 2017 issue. Read the rest of the article by subscribing soon so we can post you a copy or by picking up a magazine from one of our lovely stockists all over Ireland. Tell them we say hi!
By Anna Cole
It’s another summer edition of ‘Positive Life’, and for those of us who are parents, the summer will bring long school holidays and a break from the busy school routine. Ahh, peace at last … until suddenly, out of nowhere, your children are fighting over a cheap bucket and spade, your younger child has just hit your older one, and you are tearing your hair out! Sound familiar? What’s happening for children emotionally when they can’t get along with each other?
At Hand in Hand Parenting, we have observed that when all is well, kids play well together. They can co-operate, empathise, and be spontaneous and creative about how to include others in their play. A couple of days ago, I watched my young son spontaneously include his tired and grumpy pre-teen sister in a family activity by playfully approaching her like a baby cat, eventually curling up on her lap, which helped her to loosen up, get a bit silly, and get involved. I’ve seen him find ways to include his tired Mum in play too. Yesterday he invented the ‘Max sneaks up without being seen’ game, so I could lean tiredly against the kitchen counter and he could turn out some lights and sneak up on me. It loosened me up, we both had some fun, and he headed to bed connected and co-operative.
This is an excerpt from our Summer 2017 issue. Read the rest of the article by subscribing soon so we can post you a copy or by picking up a magazine from one of our lovely stockists all over Ireland. Tell them we say hi!