Happy New Year from one courageous parent to another. This year, I’ve seen so much quiet courage - tough decisions that needed to be...

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind” – Brene Brown This quote comes to mind often, because it’s so true - for our young people but also for...

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...

As we get ready for the magic of Christmas, here’s a helpful list for mums and dads - a reminder that the joyful season isn’t always so...

I saw this on Bluesky and was very moved. It's hard living with children who were hurt in the most awful ways and still respond from that...

I love Suzanne Zeedyk's analogy of tigers and teddy bears to explain attachment. Unique and highly personal neural pathways significantly...

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

One of my favourite quotes is from one of Dan Siegel’s earlier books - parenting from the inside out. He explains that it isn’t what...

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 have great respect for Brene Brown & love her perspective here. She’s all about family values - taking children on a loving journey...

Emotion coaching has come up a few times this week in work with parents. When the first emotion we see and feel from our children is...

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...