Aware Parenting Stories Aware Parenting Stories

In this episode I have a powerful and inspiring conversation with Dr Greer Kirshenbaum. Greer is an Author, Neuroscientist, Doula, Infant and Family Sleep Specialist and Mother. She trained at the University of Toronto, Columbia University, New York University and Yale University. Greer has combined her academic training with her experience as a doula and mother to lead The Nurture Revolution. A movement to nurture our babies’ brains to revolutionize mental health and impact larger systems in our world. Greer wants families, professionals, and workplaces to understand how early caregiving experience can boost mental wellness and diminish depression, anxiety, and addiction in adulthood by shaping babies’ brains through simple intuitive enriching experiences in pregnancy, birth and infancy. Her book is called The Nurture Revolution: Grow Your Baby’s Brain and Transform Their Mental Health Through the Art of Nurtured Parenting. She offers resources, workshops, and coaching. Her work aligns closely with many aspects of Aware Parenting.

Greer brings her neuroscience lens to share information about some of the physiological brain changes that mothers experience in early parenting and how they are perfectly designed to support and enable deep connection, bonding, protection and safety with our babies. She describes how supporting the emotional development of babies is the foundation of physical health and mental health for life. Greer shares why she changed her career from research science to science communication in order to share with parents that early maternal care has profound impacts on wellbeing and to counter the beliefs in our low-nurture culture that are harmful to babies, children and parents. She shares how we can support our children’s needs for connection, for emotional responsiveness and with sleep. We discuss how important it is for parents to be getting support.

To learn more about Greer, please follow her on Instagram at nurture_neuroscience_parenting and visit her website www.nurture-neuroscience.com

Ellie Gut-Silverman is an Aware Parenting Instructor who lives with her husband Gideon, their beautiful daughter Zeva, their Irish Wolfhound Alfie, three bulls and three goats just outside Bellingen in NSW. She is an aware parenting instructor, dedicated to supporting families throughout pregnancy and in early parenthood, and is passionate about supporting others on their paths of reparenting, repatterning, and healing so that they can live and parent with more presence, compassion, ease and joy.

In this conversation, Ellie shares how she discovered aware parenting and started listening to feelings and what she has learnt to support herself to listen. We talk about learning to trust our children, through the on-going practice of listening to some of the many feelings our children have. Ellie shares how interconnected we are with our children and how important it is for us to offer ourselves these same practices of loving listening and meeting our needs in order to be able to support our children. She shares how aware parenting practices have supported a deepening in her relationship with her daughter, herself and her husband, and how she supports her daughter to be more willingly cooperative using attachment play.

To learn more about Ellie, please visit www.awarevillage.com.au, and follow her on Instragram at aware_village.

Belynda Smith is mother to two beautiful boys are now in their tweens/teens, a single mum living in Perth WA. She has been a Certified Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor (since 2017) and built on this solid foundation with a Certification as a Level 1 Aware Parenting Instructor in 2023. She is passionate about parenting with connection, supporting parents in the many roles she has, sharing particularly about the importance of listening for us all and reading, connection and books.

In this episode Belynda shares her journey with Aware Parenting. She describes how receiving listening for herself transformed her early parenting journey from struggle and overwhelm to being able to be the parent she wanted to be. She shares how aware parenting has given her a nuanced understanding of each of her children’s unique needs and what lies underneath behaviour in the difficult moments. We talk about all the ways getting regular, consistent listening for ourselves, ideally in multiple different spaces, supports us in ways that make aware parenting possible. We describe our current set ups for listening and we reassure listeners that having struggles is a normal part of being human and needing support is a natural need for us all. Belynda also shares her love of books and why books bring so much value and joy to her life.

If you would like to learn more about Belynda please visit her website https://belyndasmith.com.au/ and follow her on Facebook: ParentingwithBelyndaSmith and Instagram: @belyndasmithparenting Her podcast is called Tales from the Toolbox Podcast

Welcome back to a new episode where I talk with one of my best friends, Helen Marshall. Helen is an inspiring speaker on real food, value-based business in wellness, and creating a life you love. She is the founder of Primal Alternative, a company that empowers people to run their own home-based baking business through the Primalista Licence. She has over 30 years of experience in the health and wellness industry. Based in Albany WA with her husband and 2 children, Helen enjoys Body Balance, meditation, walks in nature, and champagne in the spa.

In this episode Helen shares her motherhood story and how she came to practising Aware Parenting when her children were teenagers. She shares some of the ways that she incorporates Aware parenting into her family, how she has learnt to listen to feelings and offer special time. She shares how she has learnt to meet her own needs and take care of herself. She shares how she set up her business Primal Alternative to help over 290 Primalistas in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and the UK create successful grain-free food businesses from home.

To learn more about Primal Alternative, please visit www.primalalternative.com and follow her on Facebook and Instagram at Primal Alternative.

Welcome back to a new episode where I talk about healing from stress and trauma through loving listening. I talk about what trauma is, what some of the sources of stress are for children and how these experiences affect children. I share how our children’s bodies respond to stress and how the expression of feelings with loving support is a natural healing process. I talk about creating the necessary sense of emotional safety for healing to occur and what is not supportive for our children in this process. I share some very helpful quotes and descriptions from Dr Aletha Solter’s book Healing your Traumatized Child. I also share lots of tips and advice about how to listen to our children in a way that supports healing and how to get that for ourselves too and how to explore and process what comes up for us when listening to feelings.

If you want support to listen to your children and help them to heal from stress and trauma or if you want support to explore and release your own feelings, I am here for you.

Welcome back to a new episode where I have the pleasure of talking with Marion Rose Ph.D. about her wonderful new book I’m Here and I’m Listening. Marion is the best-selling author of The Emotional Life of Babies and is the co-author of Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children with Lael Stone. She has been practicing Aware Parenting since 2002 and is the mother of two young adults. She has been an Aware Parenting instructor since 2005 and is a Level Two instructor and the Regional Coordinator for Australia and New Zealand. She hosts The Aware Parenting Podcast and The Psychospiritual Podcast, and co-hosts The Aware Parenting and Natural Learning Podcast with me! I love this book so much and highly recommend it for all parents.

In this episode we have a beautiful conversation about some of the key themes of her new, best-selling book. Marion shares her wisdom about connection and relationships with our children, doing our own re-parenting work, trusting children’s innate wisdom, loving limits, supporting our children to heal and much more. It is such a powerful conversation.

If you want to learn more about Marion’s book, please visit www.amazon.com in your country. She shares more about her work on social media, and on her website www.marionrose.net. If you want to learn more about my Aware Partnering in Parenthood Course, the link is here https://awareparenting.com.au/my-courses/aware-partnering-in-parenthood/