Improving relationships with our children (and our parents!) is a frequent focus of learning for participants in all our Nonviolent Communication workshops. From time to time we offer workshops specifically on Parenting From Your Heart: Connecting with Children Through Compassion. These workshop are appropriate for parents, relatives, childcare workers and anyone who relates to children.
During these workshops, we learn how to:
- Listen to the feelings our children as well as our own.
- Tune into the needs behind anyone's feelings or behavior, child or adult.
- Transform"NO!" and anger into opportunities to nurture trust, empathy, and peacemaking skills.
- Avoid "power struggles" and increase your awareness and compassion about your own reactions to your child or the children in your daycare or classroom.
- Learn communication skills that can reduce conflict and support effective collaboration among children, among caretakers, and between children and caretakers.
- Establish a quality of connection that will sustain your family through life's challenges.
Parenting From Your Heart workshops are based on the work of Marshall Rosenberg, Inbal Kashtan, and the Center for Nonviolent Communication (for more information visit the web site www.cnvc.org). We refer to three books in particular: Rosenberg's "Nonviolent Communication, A Language of Compassion" and “Raising Children Compassionately”, and Inbal Kashtan's "Parenting From the Heart: Sharing the Gifts of Compassion, Connection and Choice."