Elizabeth Lesser

How Difficult Times Help Us Heal

Elizabeth Lesser is the author of The Seeker’s Guide, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: A Love Story. She is the cofounder of the Omega Institute, recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in health, wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. Founded in 1977, the institute welcomes more than 30,000 participants each year to its campus in Rhinebeck, New York. Prior to her work at Omega, she was a midwife and childbirth educator. She attended Barnard College and San Francisco State University, and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.

Summary:
Elizabeth Lesser talks about how parenting is like the Phoenix Process, a process of being open to struggle in order to give birth to a new version of ourselves. She reminds us to let go of the stories we’ve made up about other people and to let go of the shame we feel about ourselves. Elizabeth shares what it means to be an emotional first responder and gives us practical tools to meet our deepest needs to connect, to truly see others and be seen by others.

Links:

• Website
• Book “Marrow: A Love Story”
• Omega Institute
• TED Talk “Say your truths and seek them in others”
• TED Talk “Take “the Other” to lunch”
• Educators Conference

Michelle Gale

Mindful Parenting in a Messy World

Michelle Gale loves working with parents who are interested in parenting from a whole new paradigm…the one where we look to ourselves for all the trouble we find “out there”. She spends her days writing, coaching executives and parents, and speaking locally. She is currently an advisor to the Mindful Schools, Wisdom 2.0, Tilt365, and on the board of the Holistic Life Foundation. She is a Strategic Partner with The Trium Group and on Faculty with Wisdom Labs. Prior to her work in mindfulness, she was the Head of Learning and Leadership Development at Twitter and other technology start-ups.
Michelle is the author of the forthcoming book Mindful Parenting in a Messy World and the creator of a podcast of the same name. She lives and works in beautiful Marin County, California with her family, dogs and two sons.

Summary:
We all know that mindfulness in parenting is important, but Michelle Gale shares strategies that even the busiest, most distracted parent can use to put mindfulness into place in their family. She talks about how to be mindful even when your child is having a tantrum or a melt down, or when we are triggered. She also shares candidly about the importance of having compassion and gentleness for ourselves, and that kids don’t need “perfect parents”.

Links:

• Website
• Atlas of Emotions

Kate Northrup & Mike Watts

Working and Parenting: A Love Story

Kate Northrup is a author, mom and creative entrepreneur. In her twenties, she built a team of over 3,000 wellness entrepreneurs worldwide. Despite being successful in her business, she had to change her perspective on self-love and value to dig herself out of debt. Now with her husband and business partner, Mike, she works with women in a community called The Freedom Family to help them build a profitable business, grow personally and have fun. Kate is also the author of Money: A Love Story.

Mike Watts is an entrepreneur, speaker, husband, and father. Before radically reinventing his own life, he worked for Philip Morris. Today, he shows business owners how to expand their choices, do less and create the financial lives they want.

Summary:
Kate Northrup and Mike Watts share personally how they’ve learned to be parents and grow a successful business without sacrificing what they value in life. In this wide ranging conversation, they share mindful tools–like using your intuition and understanding your story–to very practical tools, such as having a shared family calendar. Kate and Mike are dedicated to inspiring others to live passionately, as individuals, and in work, life, and family.

Links:

• Mike Watts
• Kate Northrup
• Sustainable Success Workshop

Dr. Laura Markham

Helping Children Calm and Be Friends for Life

Dr. Laura Markham is the author of the books Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids and Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings and the founding editor of AhaParenting. Her free weekly newsletters reach over 100,000 parents. Dr. Laura says that earning her PhD in clinical psychology at Columbia University and being a mother of two convinced her that parents need more support. Her aspiration is to change the world, one child at a time, by supporting parents.

Summary:
In our wide ranging conversation with Dr. Laura Markham she talks about how to help children calm, build self discipline, and how to support sibling relationships. She shares brain research showing why it’s important to help kids soothe, why fighting is essential for teaching relationship skills, and how parenting develops the brain. She demonstrated how to set limits lovingly, how to intervene in a conflict between children, and how to build emotional intelligence.

Links:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest

Dr. Elaine Fogel Schneider

7 Strategies for Raising Calm, Inspired & Successful Children

Dr. Elaine Fogel Schneider is an award-winning therapist and a leading authority on touch and infant massage, and communication. She has worked in early intervention, child development, communication, infant massage training and parenting for over thirty-five years. With a doctorate in Psychology and two Master of Arts degrees, she approaches her work with children and families holistically. She is the Amazon Best-Selling Author of 7 Strategies for Raising Calm, Inspired, & Successful Children; she also authored Massaging Your Baby and Baby Massage Basics. Dr. Elaine has written for dozens of periodicals including Parents, Zero to Three, Child, Infants and Young Children, and Young Exceptional Children.

Dr. Elaine founded TouchTime International, to serve children and families, around the world, so that babies can become truly loved, respected and appreciated, while parents gain confidence, learn to read their baby's’ cues, foster secure attachment, and improve physical and social-emotional well-being.

Summary:
Dr Elaine Schneider shares about the importance of touch and massage for babies, toddlers, kids with special needs, and even teens. Research shows the health and emotional benefits of touch are not just for the child receiving the massage, but also for the giver as well. She encourages parents to find the right time for massage, get permission from the child before touching her, to attune with the child, and to breathe to release any of our own tensions before we touch our child. The stories Dr. Elaine shares are inspirational and informative.

Links:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Book – 7 Strategies for Raising Calm, Inspired, & Successful Children
• Book – Massaging Your Baby
• App – Baby Massage Basics

Daniel Rechtschaffen

Teaching Mindfulness to Children

“Daniel Rechtschaffen, MA, LMFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist, is the author of The Way of Mindful Education and The Mindful Education Workbook. He is the founding director of Mindful Education, a mindfulness and social emotional learning platform for educators.
He organizes the annual Mindfulness in Education Conference and Teacher Training at the Omega Institute. Daniel offers keynote speeches and mindfulness trainings at conferences, communities, and businesses, such as University of Wisconsin Madison, Google, Esalen Institute, and schools around the globe.
Daniel Rechtschaffen teaches mindfulness through music, sports, storytelling, games and other creative and engaging ways. He is inspired to utilize mindfulness to help us become more conscious, compassionate, and committed to taking care of this miraculous world we live in.”

Summary:
Daniel Rechtschaffen encourages parents and teachers to begin with themselves first before trying to use mindfulness with kids. He explains how mindfulness with children helps them to calm, learn, focus, manage stress, handle difficult emotions, and be kind. Daniel talks about how to set an intention. He reveals the 5 Realms of Mindful Literacy: Physical, Mental, Emotional, Social, and Global. And he shares important considerations for using mindfulness with kids who have experienced trauma.

Links:

• Website
• Mindful Education
• Educators Conference
• 25% off Daniel's books here – And use code HFAM17 for 25% off and free shipping for all Norton Professional books

Scott Noelle

The Parenting PATH: Partnership, Authenticity, Trust & Heart

Scott is a coach, mentor, writer, and speaker. His passion is helping people develop their parenting, relationship, and self-empowerment skills, so they can raise confident, connected, and creative children.
He collaborated with the late Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept, and currently collaborates with Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn. His background as a voice teacher helping adult singers overcome inner and outer obstacles to creative expression laid much of the foundation for his work as a parenting and life coach beginning in 2003.
Scott created The Daily Groove, a free short daily email, when he realized that parents need reminders to change their way of thinking about children and parenting.
He lives in Portland with his wife and two children.

Summary:
Scott Noelle talks about his PATH parenting philosophy–partnership, authenticity, trust, and heart. His work reminds us that when we let go of attempting to control our children, we can embrace authentic power and true connection in our parenting relationship, rather than the pseudo-power that comes from fear, intimidation, manipulation, or threats. When we have partnership in parenting we create, win-win-win situations, in which the child and parent both benefit, as well as the parent-child relationship!

Links:

• Subscribe to The Daily Groove and get a daily dose of brief, inspiring tips for empowered parenting
• Accelerate your growth as a parent through private sessions with Scott Noelle by telephone or Skype
• Learn about the Alliance for Self-Directed Education and join the movement to unleash children's natural learning capacities

Julian Ivey-Caldwell

Dads Creating Connection in Families

Julian Ivey-Caldwell is the creator of getconnectdad.com whose goal is to connect more fathers to their kids. Julian works a day job and, because he travels a lot, he is intensely focused on trying to find better ways for fathers (and mothers) who work long hours, different hours, or unusual hours to be engaged in their families.

Summary:
Julian Ivey-Caldwell offers practical tools for connecting in meaningful ways with kids. His habits for spending time with kids, include telling stories, getting outside, being faithful, and saying “I love you”. These habits are powerful reminders for parents of children of all ages. He shares openly about the pain that disconnection creates in families. And he talks about the platform he created–My Dear Child–for parents and children to begin to heal, and possibly re-connect, when a family member has become estranged.

Links:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• My Dear Child Campaign

Jeanne-Marie Paynel

Fostering Independence, Curiosity & Gentleness

A parent of two children, Jeanne-Marie Paynel launched Voila Montessori in response to the demand from parents for advice and guidance for raising children in a gentle, peaceful, and supportive environment conducive to their full development–psychological, academic, artistic, spiritual, physical, cultural.

Her mission is to help parents appreciate the true importance of their role–not as servants or teachers, but as supporters and guides of their children's natural development.

Summary:
Jeanne-Marie Paynel provides examples of how we can respectfully engage with children in our home, showing how parenting can be grounded in principles of Montessori philosophy. Jeanne-Marie highlights ways in which we can engage children especially in the kitchen and doing tasks, as well as how to foster independence, curiosity, gentleness, and guidance.

Links:

• Website
• 21 Positive Discipline Tools
• Facebook
• Simple Activities Videos

Dr. Joseph Lee

How Parenting Impacts Children’s Brains in the Present and the Future

Dr. Joseph Lee is a psychiatrist with a practice in Southern California. Early in his practice he saw that his patients were clearly getting better, but didn’t seem to be quite “well.” His search to help people truly thrive, led him to a truth-based perspective that he’s been applying personally and professionally, built around developing self-worth, meaningful relationships, and lifelong optimal healthiness. Becoming a parent, made him more intentional about every aspect of his own life – trying to figure out the best way to raise his kids, while maintaining his own health and wellbeing. Dr. Lee presented at UXPA and the Headspace Headquarters on the role of Empathy on User Design and he teaches community mental healthiness classes.

Summary:
If you look at the human brain and examine how it develops in healthy (and unhealthy) ways, one thing becomes very clear… parenting matters a lot. Dr. Joseph Lee shows us how influential our parenting style is, with our children’s self worth, current and future relationships, learning, memory, recovering from mental illness, and other struggles. The science shows us that we don’t have to be perfect parents, but there are 4 things our children must experience to truly thrive.

Links:

• Website
• Additional reading on this topic
• Twitter

Jennifer Miller

Using Social Emotional Learning to Create a Partnership with Your Child’s School

For over twenty years, Jennifer Miller has worked with educators and families to help them become more effective with children through social and emotional learning. She is author and illustrator of the blog, Confident Parents, Confident Kids and writes for numerous publications. She's an expert contributor to NBC Universal's Parent Toolkit. She has contributed to two books, “Smart Parents, Parenting for Powerful Learning” and “Building Powerful Learning Environments from Schools to Communities.” She does coaching, webinars, curriculum development, consultation and workshops in Ohio and nationally. She has her master’s degree in Instructional Leadership with a focus on social and emotional development. She lives with her husband and nine-year-old son in Columbus, Ohio.

Summary:
Creating partnership with your child’s teachers is important–whether your kids are in school, after school activity, or summer camp–and Jennifer Miller shows us how to do it. She shares 3 practical tools to help create a partnership between parents and teachers. These 3 tools also help your children to develop their own social emotional skills. Jennifer shares with us how social emotional skills are essential for kids to succeed in life.

Links:

• Website
• “Smooth Morning Routine” video. It's short – 5 minutes long. It goes through all the steps of creating a smooth morning routine
• Download – Morning Routine Poster
• Download – How do you feel? Student Self-Evaluation

Kim Lyons

Using Free & Natural Materials to Play and Connect with Your Child

Kim Lyons has been working with children and families in educational settings and in private practice for over 25 years. As both an educator and a facilitator, she brings many diverse talents to her work, including early childhood development, doula support, yoga and bodywork. She has a masters degree in early childhood development, and she worked for a hospital based HIV and drug treatment program. She has taught preschool, infant massage classes, and she’s been a program coordinator for an early intervention center.

She is the author of Homemade Play and currently teaches Tum e Time: Creative Ways To Play With Your Baby classes in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Summary:
Kim Lyons shares how parents can use low/no cost materials, common household objects, and things from nature (leaves, grass, fruit) as toys for their babies and toddlers. She shares a wealth of simple activities for parents to create a relationship with their children, develop movement and sensory skills, encourage curiosity, calming, connection, and language. She encourages parents to let their children engage with nature, get messy, and explore their surroundings. Ultimately when parents can understand the world from the perspective of their child they can also be a bridge, helping their child understand the world!

Links:

• Website
• Facebook
• Tum e Time

Theo Koffler

Soft Skills To Help Parents/Teens Navigate Life

Theo Koffler is an award-winning social entrepreneur and founder of Mindfulness Without Borders, which advances mindfulness-based social and emotional competencies in educational, healthcare and corporate settings around the world. Author, public speaker, philanthropist and Instructor at The University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Education, she passionately advocates for ‘whole-student” education, with a special focus in conflict and post-conflict countries. Most recently, Theo launched RETHINK Digital Kit a digital educational resource with over 100 activities to help strengthen mental health in youth.

Summary:
Theo Koffler shares the story of how many years ago, a personal health crisis she experienced while she was living in Jerusalem, led her to bring mindfulness practice to several countries in Africa. Later, she created an evidence-based mindfulness program that is used in 14 countries around the world. Theo talks about creating mindfulness activities to reach different types of learners, including children with special needs, and children who have experienced trauma and violence. She shares that all over the world, while mindfulness might not change children’s circumstances, it can change how they relate to those circumstances and bring hope.

Links:

• Website
• RETHiNK Digital Kit
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Caterpillar Video
• Donate to the Shine-The-Light-On Scholarship Fund
• Download – 5 Free Mindfulness Activities
• Downloadable coupon for 25% any products – May 9-30th
• Email – info@mwithoutborders.org

Dr. Arina Bokas

Building Powerful Learning Environments

Dr. Arina Bokas, is an educator, parent, and leader. She is the author of Amazon's #1 release Building Powerful Learning Environments: From School to Community. Her work is focused on elevating family engagement in family-community-school partnerships to create coherent, positive learning eco-systems.

Arina is the Editor and a Vice President of Kids’ Standard Magazine and a faculty member in the department of English at Mott Community College. She is a frequent contributor to ASCD inService and Getting Smart. Her articles have appeared in Education Week, Huffington Post, Teaching English in a Two-Year College, and other publications.

Summary:
Dr. Arina Bokas talks about how to address false beliefs that erode trust between schools, parents and communities. In her experience as an educator and a parent, she’s seen how miscommunication can happen on both sides, between schools and families. She talks about how to parents and teachers can be involved in creating partnership, and how we can develop empathy in ourselves and our children in the process. Arina talks about how parents can be active in their own child’s learning, and social emotional skill development.

Links:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter

Cecilia & Jason Hilkey

Plays Well With Others: Compassionate Communication for Kids

Cecilia Hilkey, MA and Jason Hilkey have worked professionally with children and families for 20 years. They’ve taught parents and educators to use compassionate methods to talk to kids, worked with children with special needs, and even taught together in the same preschool classroom.

They founded Happily Family to respond to the needs of parents and teachers who wanted access to current research about the brain, and more communication tools to use with the kids in their lives. Their popular blog, classes and conferences touch the lives of tens of thousands of people each week.

Cecilia and Jason have been featured in local and national media including Kiplinger’s magazine and elephant journal. They regularly present at schools and conferences including CAEYC. They have received grants from the Maternal Child and Health Bureau, California First 5, and the Awesome Foundation”

Summary:
Cecilia and Jason Hilkey believe that our natural language is compassion and connection, rather than competition. They describe how to gracefully handle a tantrum in a public place, how to get out the door in the morning, what to do when people are judging your parenting, and how to stay centered during a parenting challenge. They share how Happily Family was inspired by their time teaching together in the same preschool classroom and how they developed their cooperative, science-based approach of working with kids.

Links:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram