a parent's greatest gift

As a pediatrician and life coach, parents often ask me, “How can I help my child grow into her full potential?” They wonder if their kids should listen to Baby Einstein, enroll in swim lessons, or gulp a daily dose of wheat grass. The options for nurturing a young child’s developing brain can seem overwhelming — leaving well-meaning parents feeling confused, pressured, and anxious.

It’s true that healthy nutrition and activities do support a child’s development. But the most crucial nourishment for our children is attuned and responsive caregivers who help them develop a healthy attachment and maintain contact with their innate basic trust and inherent value.

This knowledge, however, can present a puzzling question for many parents: How do we help our children connect with these fundamental qualities of being when we often don’t feel them strongly in ourselves?

The answer is simple: by re-engaging our own growth process. The best way to help our children become fully themselves is to take this timely opportunity to become more fully ourselves, too.

Research shows that without parenting education and self-reflection we tend to pass on our unconscious patterns of thinking, feeling, relating, and behaving to our children. Like sponges, children absorb what is closest to them. If we as parents don’t continue our process of maturation, our children will undoubtedly face these same distortions in cognitive and emotional processing and the subsequent difficulties that they cause. Fortunately, many fields of study are pointing to a way forward: the practice and process of integration that is a fundamental part of our parenting classes.

Essential Parenting is a practice-oriented parent education program that optimizes the developmental potential of both children and their parents. Based on a variety of teachings including Daniel Siegel’s Interpersonal Neurobiology, Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, and the Diamond Approach created by Hameed Ali, Essential Parenting’s unique parenting classes are designed to help you align with your children as they are in the present moment. In each parenting class, we combine cutting-edge developments in Interpersonal Neurobiology with spiritual practices like mindfulness meditation, somatic practices, and inquiry. Essential Parenting classes will empower you to return to your naturally wise and loving heart. In doing so, we support our children in becoming more fully themselves while also creating a ripple effect of wholeness, confidence, and well-being in our communities and on our planet.