Focusing skills for parents


Being a parent has and still is one the most challenging situations. It almost constantly pushes against my capacity to come from a place of listening and empathy. It pushes all my buttons and has brought up many unresolved issues…. and it has been a gift. My son teaches me when I am not being empathic or congruent, and there has been deep healing woven throughout the struggles. Now it feels like the time to share some of what the practice of Focusing has offered me in these parenting years.

In collaboration with my friend and colleague Kirsty Pakes, we are offering a six week course in January 2021. The details are below. Check out the recording from our free seminar


How to lose it less with your kids!
Free seminar

Free online seminar
11th March 2021 11-12 pm GMT

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Do you find that despite your best intentions, you can end up losing it with your children and saying and doing things you regret?

Would you like to feel less reactive and more able to meet parenting challenges with compassion and wisdom?
If these apply to you, you are definitely not alone! These are common parenting experiences. But the good news is that there are ways of working through these reactions and reducing the likelihood of them happening again. Focusing is a great approach for this!

On this free 60 minute seminar we will explore how Focusing can help us to find deeper connection with ourselves and with our children. We will explore central themes around:

  • Identifying and disentangling triggers.
  • The core need for empathic connection - both within and without.
  • Tools from connected parenting approaches that fit with Focusing.

Open to anyone - whether you know Focusing or not. Aimed at parents new and old, caregivers and anyone working with children.

How to lose it less with your kids!
Focusing skills for more empathic parenting

Online courses starts on
22nd April 2021 11-1.15 pm GMT (Six Thursday mornings)

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Do you find that despite your best intentions, you can end up losing it with your children and saying and doing things you regret?

Do you sometimes not recognise yourself in those moments when you shout and aggression and harshness has taken over?

Do you feel guilty after losing it with your child and resolve not to do it again, but then it happens again….and again?

Would you like to feel less reactive and more able to meet parenting challenges with compassion and wisdom?
If any of these apply to you, you are definitely not alone! These are common parenting experiences.

But the good news is that there are ways of working through these reactions and reducing the likelihood of them happening again. Focusing is a great approach for this!

In this 6 week course, we will explore the many ways in which Focusing can help with these overwhelming reactions to our children. We will also draw upon insights from psychology, neuroscience and conscious parenting approaches, particularly Hand in Hand Parenting by Connection.

The course will include:

  • How Focusing can help us to disentangle intense reactions to our children.
  • How Focusing can help us to see what is really going on in our reactions and how to listen to those parts of us that get triggered.
  • How those triggered parts of us can be connected to unhealed past and often childhood experiences.
  • Focusing as a process of ‘inner parenting’
  • How Focusing can help us identify our needs and resources as a parent
  • Some explanation of tools from Hand in Hand Parenting by Connection that can help you to build connection with your child, listen to difficult feelings and set limits to difficult behaviour.


OPEN to all - if you know focusing or not. We will introduce focusing tools and practices for anyone whom is new to it.
Facilitators:

Kirsty Pakes
is parent of two primary-school aged children, a clinical psychologist specialising in child mental health, a Focusing practitioner, Focusing-Oriented Therapist and a certified Hand in Hand Parenting by Connection Instructor. She is passionate about the connection between our inner ‘parenting’ of ourselves and our ‘parts’ and our parenting of our children. Both Focusing and Hand in Hand Parenting by Connection have been transformative in her life and are now an integral part of it!

Peter Gill is an experienced Focusing teacher and mentor, a Somatic experiencing practitioner and a group facilitator in both grief work and nature connection. He cares deeply about the power of listening and welcoming all of our experience - within and in others, especially our children. He is a dad to a 9 year old boy, and has drawn on tools from Hand in Hand parenting and similar approaches.

Costs: £120 Concessions available

Pay with paypal


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