12 week Starter Class (Totnes)

Join me to connect with other parents like you, work on the specific challenges you face in your family, gain guidance and support. You’ll be part of a fortnightly class in Totnes, with a support call on the alternate weeks and access to all our online starter class video segments. This is the course from our amazing Founder Patty Wipfler, which you get to keep for 6 months and is a great way to consolidate your learning and share with your partner. Learning the approach in this intensive format will allow you to integrate this practice deeply into your family.

 During this 12 week course you will discover how to…

• Set up support for yourself that allows you to make changes in the automatic parenting responses you wish you didn’t have

• Listen to your child so that the feel connected and valued

• Understand your child’s emotions and what they are really asking for; crying, tantrums and how you can respond to them

• Set clear, effective limits with warmth

• Heal your child’s fears

• Help an angry child become playful and compassionate

• Work on any issues around sleep/food/separation/school/siblings/aggression and more

Course content:

Week 1 – Understanding children’s emotions, what is really going on? Receiving support for the emotional work of parenting using Listening Partnerships

Week 2 – Remote class on Zoom. Learn how to foster unconditional positive regard and receive support for issues in your family.

Week 3 –The science behind connection. How to really listen to children so they can feel it, using the tool we call Staylistening. How to cope with crying and tantrums. What to say when children are upset.

Week 4 – Remote class on Zoom. Learn how to identify upset feelings as the listener and receive support for issues in your family.

Week 5 – How our own experiences impact on our parenting. How to increase your child’s sweetness and co-operation and feel like a really good parent, using what we call Special Time.

Week 6 – Remote class on Zoom. Learn how to support emotional release and receive support for issues in your family.

Week 7 – Building co-operation and ease in the family: how to set limits to stop difficult behaviour such as hitting, throwing, snatching and assert an expectation such as getting dressed, doing homework, sitting in the car, brushing teeth etc. Learn our radical approach to setting limits that is both warm, kind, respectful AND entirely effective every time.

Week 8 – Remote class on Zoom. Learn how to use the right words to help others feel their feelings more fully and receive support for issues in your family.

Week 9 – Increasing joy and play: Accessing our playfulness and diverting conflict using play. Helping our children work on separation, sleep, picky eating, aggression or co-operation using games.

Week 10 – Remote class on Zoom. Learn how NOT to listen and receive support for issues in your family.

Week 11 – Building our resilience as parents: How to build this approach into your life for maximum effect. What to do when you are losing it.

Week 12 – Remote class on Zoom. Learn how to access your own feelings and receive support for issues in your family.

Support groups are limited to 6 places to allow for individual attention for your issues. Contact me at romakitty@gmail.com to book. Cost £320 (£255 concessions, £500 couples) including manual, booklets and the whole course online. You can leave a £50 deposit and pay weekly installments or monthly at the mid May/June/July.

Course dates – Mondays (9.30-11.30am on the 8th, 15th, June 5th, 19th, July 3rd, and 10th or 17th tbc).

Here’s what parents said about this course

Is the Parenting Starter Class right for me?

What will I get from taking this class?
You will by the end of the 6 week course have started to build a strong and potentially lifelong support network for parenting. You’ll know how to help your child when their behaviour goes off track and how to prevent them getting to that point so often. You’ll discover how to set effective, respectful limits and know when limits are needed or not. You’ll start to develop your resourcefulness and ability to divert situations playfully. You can rediscover how to play and have fun with your child and feel like a good parent. Overall, you’ll gain confidence in your parenting and a clear idea of how to navigate most situations.

What kind of issues will I be able to work on using the Hand in Hand approach?
This approach can be applied across the board for any ages and will improve difficult/defiant behaviour, sibling relationships, sleep, picky eating, challenges with separation, aggression, conflicts about getting dressed or chores or whatever. It will improve your child’s capacity to take bold steps in the world and also their intelligence.

I’m not sure I have enough parenting challenges to warrant taking a class.
This approach will give you a way of being that enhances every relationship in your life. It’s hard to imagine what more connection, fun and ease can look like before you’ve experienced it. We take for granted that parenting involves struggle and that we need to do it by ourselves and yet here is a way to make life easier, more connected, more supported, more joyful and PLAYFUL!

I can’t afford the fee!
Do get in touch with me if you are worried about affording it. I can accept payment in installments and sometimes have offers. The course includes materials and you will get to keep the manual and booklets. You can share the online course with your spouse and you’ll have that content for 6 months. This is a really good value course.

I’m struggling to find time to fit this in
We all juggle so much and it’s hard to carve out extra child free time. You’ll know whether it’s the right time for you, but you can consider this course as a source of support that fills you up so that you can approach the rest of the week from a stronger foundation. It can certainly be classed as self care and the time you save by eliminating conflict and struggles will open up a new sense of spaciousness in your life.