My favorite parenting mantra: “Is this an emergency?” (courtesy of the brilliant Lisa Howe at Becoming Peaceful). When you are in the middle of your child’s temper tantrum while ten minutes late and the other child spills food all over the car, it certainly feels like an urgent crisis. However, 99% of the time, the answer to that question is no, it’s not an emergency. There is time to stop, breathe, and parent.
Congratulations on your courageous journey to become the best parent that you can be!
My name is Kristen, and I am a certified Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) instructor based in Raleigh, North Carolina. I am a firm believer that the best tool that we have to make the world a better place is how we choose to parent our children.
People ask me how to describe P.E.T., and I think the most appropriate tag line is respectful communication and mutual problem solving. When children feel heard, they feel safe to share their feelings and discuss their problems, paving the road for a loving and meaningful relationship. Mutual conflict resolution imparts them with a great sense of responsibility and independence, creating people who are confident in thinking for themselves.
My passion for respectful and peaceful parenting started when preparing for the birth of our daughter. My husband and I had read all the books and did all the research, and we thought we had this whole parenting thing down. Then we were presented with a tiny human who had her own ideas about how things were going to go. So we were forced to really dive in deep. We eventually found our way into a P.E.T. workshop, and it was the most valuable thing that we ever did. Reading the books gave us a solid foundation of the principles, but the interactive class really helped us to understand how to put those ideas into practice. Even the most strong-willed of children can be reached, I can attest to that.
I started my mom-life as a full time working mother while my husband stayed at home with our kids. Somewhere along the road, we realized that this set up was not working out well for anyone. Not only did I want more time with my children, I wanted more time (any time, really) to dedicate to things that I was passionate about. Having a full time job left little time for doing anything other than cramming in all the quality time possible with the kids on the nights and weekends. We were in the middle of attending our own P.E.T. course when we made the bold (I say bold so as not to say scary) decision that I should quit my job and be the one to stay at home. So here I am, immersing myself in that which I love most: my children, and learning and sharing how to do what is best for them. Come sign up for my P.E.T. workshop, and let’s go on this amazing journey together!
photo by Robin Baker