Our regular parenting correspondent, Anna Cole, wrote a thoughtful piece on the deeper motivation behind children’s honesty (or lack thereof) for our Autumn issue. Read it below!
parents and children
Happy Valentine’s Day: Celebrating Love
Happy Valentine’s Day, Positive Lifers. Whether you are coupled up, single, or spending the day basked in the warmth of family and friends, we hope this day serves as a powerful reminder: You Are Loved. To celebrate this day, we decided to search our archives for some our most popular love-focused articles over the past few years, honouring the beauty of human and Divine love, in all of its forms. Enjoy!
Our parenting expert Anna Cole had some beautiful words of wisdom for new parents in the Autumn 2020 issue. Today, we wanted to share a sneak peek of her article. To read the full article, grab your copy of the Autumn 2020 issue, or subscribe here to receive one direct to your door.
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!
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.
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.
Sneak Peek – Tackling Parental Guilt: Regain your parenting mojo after hard times
In this sneak peek of the Positive Parenting article from our Spring issue, Anna Cole compassionately addresses the issue of parental guilt: an all-too-common emotion to those who always strive to do their best for the children in their care. You can read the full article by picking up a copy of the Spring issue, or subscribing to have it delivered straight to your door.
By Anna Cole
‘Guilty feet have got no rhythm.’
The longer I work with parents, and the longer I am a parent, the more I realise that we all feel truck-loads of guilt. We instinctively don’t want our children to get hurt. Ever. We ardently wish we could make a perfect life for them. But, unfortunately, we don’t have the power to protect our children from all the hurts we wish we could: the loss of a beloved family member that knocked you, and them, for six; the move you did for work and the dislocation on your child’s schooling; or perhaps you stayed put, but the class bully picked on your child; maybe you got sick and haven’t been able to be there as much as you’d like; perhaps violence or impoverishment in your neighbourhood has affected your child, or perhaps, like many of us, you’ve been through separation or divorce and worry about the impact of that on your child. You will be able to add to this list, I am sure.
So here’s the headline: it’s not possible to make our child’s life perfect. And the good news is: it’s also not necessary. Children come with a simple, elegant way of recovering from hurt, which I will discuss in our next issue. Right now I want to focus on what we as parents can do to help ourselves so we can best help our kids.
The first thing you need to know is that you have done your best. It’s not your fault things got hard, but it is your responsibility to do something about it. Take your regret to your Listening Partner (for more information on Listening Partnerships and how to find one, see the link in ‘resources’ below). In your Listening Partnership you can cry, tremble, shout and rage about the things you regret. Shed those tears. They are the rain that falls and makes the flowers so sweet in the spring. Share the dark thoughts you have, then leave them behind, and when you start feeling bad again, go back and have another Listening Partnership. You have the right to be pleased with yourself, and that’s what your child wants for you. They don’t want you feeling awful. They want you to play. They want you to be there with them, present and relaxed.
You can read Anna’s full article in our Spring 2018 issue, available at your nearest stockist, or via subscription.