WELCOME
Whether you're a parent or professional, and whatever brought you here, welcome. I'm Elaine Nicholls, an adoptive parent and advanced NVR practitioner. There's more information about me, and my journey with NVR, on the 'about me' page.
At this point, it's probably worth a mention that: I offer one to one parenting support as well as parenting groups; I deliver training to parents and professionals; and I can support schools/colleges to think about behaviour support plans for individual learners. Please know that when I use the word parent I'm thinking about anybody raising children whether that be biological parents, step parents, foster carers. adoptive parents, special guardians, or kinship carers.
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So what is NVR? NVR stands for non-violent resistance. It's a parenting approach designed in the 1990s to help parents and carers struggling to connect with their teenage children and struggling to keep them out of trouble. Things have moved on since then and although NVR is still used to support struggling parents, it's increasingly used by parents who just don't believe in traditional 'do as you're told' approaches and prefer a more collaborative approach to raising children. It's also increasingly being used to support children in schools and colleges and I've seen first hand the difference it can make to relationships, learning, and behaviour. NVR isn't a menu of responses - there's no 'off the shelf' set consequence for a given behaviour (in fact NVR is pragmatically cautious about the use of consequences and never ever advocates punishment of any kind). NVR is a set of core values and guiding principles supported by a handful of core strategies. It's about being good enough parents supporting children and young people to be good enough too.
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Many NVR practitioners draw upon a range of compatible tools and knowledge to enhance their NVR practice - making NVR a trauma-informed, developmentally-sensitive, shame-reducing, gracious, compassionate, and collaborative way of supporting both children and their families.
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Most NVR practitioners develop their own unique take on certain aspects, and use language that best suits them and the families they work with. Here's my NVR map, developed through work with lots of individual families and groups, and from our personal family experience. Sometimes the focus us on one or two elements, sometimes on most, and sometimes we work through all of the elements in turn. It depends on each unique set of circumstance.
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Click on any of the elements if you want to know more, or click on any of the links here - parental presence, developmentally sensitive parenting, regulation and coregulation, belonging and feeling valued, values, boundaries and expectations, collaborative conversations, safety of self and others, gentle resistance, paceful protests, looking after yourself, and building community support.
There's no approach that's going to erase trauma, wipe out mental health difficulties, or rewire neuro-divergent brains (whether those things be parent specific, child specific, or both) but I can tell you, from personal and professional experience, that NVR can help parents and carers (also teachers) to:
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really think about what we need to function at our best - to try to look after ourselves better and to be more gracious and compassionate to ourselves where we actually just can't right now
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feel calmer on the inside and the outside - there's a lot of evidence* that nervous systems align and in my experience that often means that the window of tolerance of parents/carers often shrinks to match the tiny windows of our children
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develop genuine close trusting relationships where children feel valued and respected - which can mean thinking about expectations that might've been set too low - we want all of our children to do as well as they can
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develop a more empathic and compassionate stance - which sometimes means stepping up with clearer boundaries and sometimes means letting more things go
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regularly consider, without shame or blame or defensiveness, how we may be reinforcing stuck patterns of family (or school) behaviour - and committing to change
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take responsibility for parenting (and teaching) mistakes - showing ourselves compassion and doing what we can to make genuine repair
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hold appropriately high learning and behaviour expectations for any given child - which usually takes teamwork - us, our children, and school/college
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be able to hold respectful collaborative conversations about problem attitudes and behaviours - it's a skill being able to calmly and respectfully state when we're not going to tolerate something any more
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hold children to account with compassion and grace - always with compassion and grace
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support children to continuously make realistic steps in their development - none of us want to be the reason our children don't reach their potential
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make confident and informed parenting choices in complicated circumstances
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and lastly, balance the needs of different children in the family (or classroom).
I appreciate that's a bit of a claim to be making and I'm not suggesting that one or two sessions, or a full course, of NVR will achieve all of that. We're all at different starting points and our circumstances are unique. But in every family or school I've worked with, there's been at least one penny dropping realisation that's brought about some meaningful change. And for those who continue on the NVR path, the changes just keep coming. Life is still hard, of course it is, but it counts for a lot going to bed each night feeling okay about the part we played in the events of the day. And that, in a nutshell, is what NVR has done for me as a parent, and what I've seen it do for many others.
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NVR has a long history supporting families where there are stuck patterns of violence and aggression, coercion and control, risky or harmful behaviours, on the part of young people - and that's how NVR is perhaps best known. More recently NVR has also been used to support families where children have developmental trauma, mental health problems, and other additional needs like autism, ADHD and FASD. When we have children who need a lot of adult support, it can be really tricky making sure we don't give so much support that we actually hold our children back - reinforcing self-narratives of being incapable of doing difficult things, incapable of problem solving, incapable of setting boundaries and negotiating.
NVR is attachment friendly. We talk about parents being the firm anchor keeping our children from getting pulled away in the choppy waters of life. In all the relationships that our children have with others, we want them to see us as their safe place, their source of wisdom and guidance. Using the anchor metaphor we want to allow just the right amount of slack that allows our children to explore the world - pull them in too tight and the boat capsizes, leave too much room and we can lose that connection. One of the wonderful things about NVR, that differs from other therapeutic parenting approaches, is that the focus is not only on what the boat needs to remain steady and safe, but what the anchor needs.
Where almost all therapeutic approaches are child-centred, NVR is different. We as adults centre ourselves, take control of ourselves, and make wise choices about what our children need, from us and from others, from a place of nurture and a place of leadership.
Take a look around some of the other pages but if you think a call or virtual meet would be useful then email me at elainenicholls.nvr@gmail.com or text me on 07954 338227. Whether you're a parent or a professional, I'd love to hear from you.
