Supporting Ourselves

Screens and Teens with Aware Parenting

How do I get my teen off their screens? So many parents now are finding it incredibly stressful to navigate screens with their teenagers. It is such a universal challenge to see teenagers wanting to be on their phones all day, hiding in their rooms playing computer games, endlessly scrolling TikTok. Aware Parenting is so […]

Understanding Attachment Play

What is Attachment Play? Attachment Play is a set of 9 different ways of playing together with our children developed by the founder of Aware Parenting, Dr Aletha Solter. The theoretical basis is Attachment Theory and there is now a lot of research showing the importance of healthy parent child attachment. It is based on […]

Attachment Play with Teenagers

How can we connect with our teenagers? People often ask how to build stronger connection with their teens and being playful and having fun together is a wonderful place to start. There is a myth in our culture that teenagers want to separate from their parents in order to individuate and work out who they […]

How Do You Meet your Child's Needs, and Your's Too?

It is so important in Aware Parenting to be meeting needs because we understand that meeting needs means children and parents feel more relaxed in their bodies and have fewer accumulated feelings. It is so central for everyone's wellbeing. Unmet needs are often the cause of unenjoyable or challenging behaviour but our culture does not […]

The Journey of Emotional Healing

Inspired by Aware Parenting. Clients often ask me what does it mean to be doing our own healing work and how does it help our children? So this is what healing means to me and some of the ways that Aware Parenting has supported my own journey of emotional healing. When we have stressful, overwhelming […]

Supporting our Children to Heal with the Balance of Attention

A central aspect of supporting healing with aware parenting is offering our children the balance of attention. This means that we are offering emotional safety AND a reminder from the past to reconnect with the feelings from the past stressful experiences, all whilst they experience a deep sense of emotional safety in the present. As Marion Rose […]

Aware Parenting in a Nutshell

Aware Parenting is a philosophy and approach to parenting that emphasises understanding and responding to children's needs with compassion and awareness. It was created by the developmental psychologist and author Dr Aletha Solter. Some of the main aspects of Aware Parenting include: Attachment and Connection: Aware Parenting emphasises the importance of secure attachment and building […]

Helping Children to Stop Thumb-Sucking

It is really common for children to suck their thumbs and for parents to find it frustrating to know how to support them when we want them to stop. In authoritarian parenting styles, children might be punished or shamed into stopping. In more permissive parenting styles, children might just be left to suck their thumb […]

The 4 Basic Assumptions of Aware Parenting

What does science tell us about children? Dr. Aletha Solter first outlined the 4 assumptions of Aware Parenting in her book The Aware Baby. These assumptions are so helpful for parents to counter some of the misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions about children in the wider culture and to support parents to become really clear about […]

How our Childhood Affects our Parenting

What we can do when we are activated by our children's behaviour. How do our childhood experiences impact us as adults? Unless you grew up in a family where your feelings were welcomed, where you got to express your needs and know that they would be consistently met, where you felt unconditionally loved regardless of […]

Dealing with our Children's Challenging Behaviour

The most unenjoyable moments in parenthood are often when our children are behaving in challenging ways. We may feel powerless, frustrated, angry and stuck when our children are uncooperative, emotional, demanding or aggressive. Old styles of parenting in our culture tell us that difficult behaviour is because children don't know how to behave properly and that […]

Parenting Together in Partnership

Conflict and struggles between parents are part of almost every Aware Parenting consultation I offer. Whatever the unique circumstances of a family, it is inevitable that there will be times of disagreement and disaccord. Clients often want guidance and support on how to get onto the the same page in parenting with their partner or co-parent and […]

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