Foundations in Parenting

This parenting community is for you if:

1. You’re the parent or primary caregiver of a child with challenging behaviors.
2. You’re looking to grow in your knowledge of child development, sensory sensitivities, and the neuroscience of the brain-body connections, proven to develop healthy humans.
3. You are searching for a support that does not just address your child’s challenges but sees YOU and your needs in this two-sided equation.
4. Parents who strive to be flexible, adaptable, brave, resourceful, curious, and inclusive to those around them. 
5. You’re ready for personal growth as an individual and as a parent. You’re open to reflection, introspection, and shifting your perspective.
6. You want to ensure your whole child is being nurtured, including their emotional mental well being.

This parenting community is NOT for you if:

1. You are not the parent or primary caregiver.
2. You’re looking for a “quick fix” for your child or for yourself.
3. You’re seeking a platform to vent your frustrations without any interest in investing your time and energy in making positive changes within yourself or within your relationship with your child.
4. You are not open to viewing your child’s challenging behaviors as a symptom of being human, rather than intentional and willful defiance.
5. You are looking for a place to ask members about their child’s experience with medications or various treatments. This is outside the scope of this parenting community.

Sounds perfect! So... what's included?

Playful Wisdom's Foundations course is about learning the foundational knowledge of neuroscience, sensory systems, and play

needed to be a phenomenal and humble parent.

To live authentically, willing to show mistakes, build on your strengths, and role model what being human is all about.

Foundations Sessions Include:

1. Whole Child Wellness & Why Play is Essential in Parenting

In session one we focus on Whole Child Wellness which focuses on the integration of mind, body, and spirit. We discuss how to support your child in terms of body health and safety, mind, family systems and supports, social-emotional development, and family life cycle. 

2. Body Before Brain-- Sensory Systems & the 4 Foundational Senses 

In session two we focus on understanding the need for co-regulation as the stepping stone to self-regulation. A disconnected body from the brain results in dysfunctional psychological, emotional, and social development. We learn about the body's foundation senses that work towards keeping us secure and feeling safe from birth. 

3. Body Before Brain - 4 Functional Senses

In session three we focus on the functional four sensory systems that when working properly a human is able to function successfully. We learn the ways to incorporate sensory play into our daily activities to encourage healthy brain-body integration.

4. Knowing the Brain is Key! 

In session four we focus on the importance of knowing the brain development of children and how it provides parents the opportunity to attune to their child effectively forming a healthy attachment. Neuroscience research is helping to define parenting in the 21st century. This knowledge will help to decrease stress, improve relationships, build up a parent's toolbox & bring happiness back to the family.

5. Our History is Passed On-Intergenerational Impacts on Parenting

In session five we focus on how intergenerational trauma and stressors are passed through genetically and in family dynamics. We review how trauma and stress management can improve our ability to parent. There are big and small stressors in life understanding how to heal or prevent a lasting impact on a child's development so they can develop resilience to stress. We react and respond to different stressors from our own experiences & interpersonal relationships, parents learn how to manage this stress successfully.

6. Parenting Styles & Attachment 

In session six we focus on how relationship and connection equal healthy attachment, attunement, and co-regulation. Parenting doesn't come from a manual we often parent like or opposite to what we experienced from our parents. Parents learn to address and make a plan for their successful parenting style.

7. Shame Resilience & Guilt in Parenting

In session seven we focus on Shame, Guilt, and Resilience. Parents learn from Dr. Brenè Brown's research about the impact of and value of developing shame resilience and parenting authentically to live wholehearted while parenting. We strive to take the shame out of parenting allowing for our parenting to be encouragement-based and playful.

8. Connection Before Correction 

In session eight we focus on learning Connection Before Correction and Relationship Before Learning. Our brains simply cannot learn if we are not in a relationship and feeling connected. Parents learn the strategies that build and empower a child's confidence that ensures their ability to learn now and as they grow. Communication strategies to develop and improve connection while strengthening our relationships with everyone in the family.

9. Say Yes, to Failure & Repair 

In session nine we focus on encouragement versus praise and the high priority needed to promote failure and to always repair. Much of learning as a human is from mistakes and failures and children need to experience many in life to develop healthy bodies and brains. Parents learn how to support failure and how to repair the emotions and relationship in a connected relational manner that keeps the connection growing.

10. Showing Up & Being With- Bring it all together

In session ten, the final lesson of the course, we will bring it all together and focus on what you have gained as a result of being a part of the Playful Wisdom Parenting community. As well as what we have to offer next on your parenting journey.