How was your Christmas? I’m not sure that a drama-free Christmas is possible for families raising children with significant early trauma....

A reminder that children who are grieving continue to grieve over Christmas. Adults too. In our home, Christmas needs to be a quiet and...

NVR as a parenting approach was developed in the 1990s to help parents take a firm stance around harmful behaviours - like drugs,...

In an NVR group for kinship/connected carers we talked about the importance of venting. Sometimes we don’t want advice - we just want to...

The stories we tell ourselves matter. Whether emotions shape our narrative or our narrative shapes our emotions is up for debate. But one...

Let’s face it - expressions of anger in our children can be overwhelming. The shouting, stomping, crashing and banging. The “I hate you...

Disenfranchised grief in adoption (and other similar family set ups) is a topic close to my heart - grief that society (and often family)...

Today started with a school meeting. Usually, families are referred to NVR to learn different ways to parent in very difficult...

I'm delivering an NVR group at the moment and this morning we were thinking about increasing our presence (in their minds and hearts)...

Yesterday I had the honour and the privilege of spending the day with a group of kinship carers - thinking together about the difficult...

Some children need ‘Superparents’ - the premise of Amber Elliot’s book for therapeutic parents. But striving to be the perfect parent for...

Deciding where to set our expectations for our children can be tricky when there's trauma, disabilities, and other things going on like...

Learning to feel safe after a lifetime of being on guard is going to take time. In adoption, fostering, or kinship care - “a lifetime of...

Carl Jung said everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves. It’s true. Sometimes things...

Those of us parenting children who’ve experienced relational trauma can sometimes struggle to decide how to respond to behaviours that...

I love this quote by Karyn Purvis - an expert in developmental trauma, attachment difficulties, and therapeutic approaches. She was one...

Today I did something I've been meaning to do for a while. I set up a Facebook group for parents who've completed an NVR parent group...

Children’s brains are wired differently to adult brains. The bits of the brain that help us manage our emotions and impulses, reflect on...

This right here is the key to therapeutic parenting - saying yes to the feelings (or ideas, or thoughts, or wishes, or drives) while also...

A level results in our house today. I’m in awe of those that did well and in awe of those that didn’t do so well. It’s difficult for...