MINDFUL PARENTING is a mindfulness-based, comprehensive parenting education program aimed at empowering and informing parents about pregnancy, childbirth, parenting and mindfulness-based ways to enrich family life. Mindfulness-Based Parenting (MBP) is part of a national movement to help parents identify their inherent skills that help them to connect with and attune to their babies, encourage healthy emotional, social and intellectual development in their children, and manage daily parenting and family life with joy and decreased stress. (See below for a description of MBP).
Prenatal (childbirth) preparation, both as group classes and/or private coaching, is available for women and their partners from the end of the sixth month; these classes provide the latest information and techniques for a healthy and fulfilling childbirth.
Pregnancy classes for women in their second to seventh month of pregnancy offer hints on nutrition, physical exercise, physical safety, psychological changes and emotional self-care. MBP training classes are held several times a year for parents and parents-to-be who wish to actively learn the increasingly popular and nationally recognized skills for effective and “less-stress” parenting. Parent discussion groups are held for parents of infants (up to a year and a half) and toddlers (from a year and a half to three) several times at month at Jillian’s Drawers in downtown Ithaca. Also available is one-on-one private coaching on specific parenting issues and concerns, at your home or my office. (Please click on childbirth classes or parenting classes on the right hand side of this page for an up-to-date schedule and costs)
WHAT IS MINDFULNESS-BASED PARENTING?
Mindful Parenting is about being truly present for and connecting with your child in ways that will encourage healthy emotional, social and intellectual development. Perhaps you have heard of the amazing work being done in medicine with mindfulness-based pain relief, or Jon Cabot-Zinn’s nationally known Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, or the work being done by psychologists and child developmentalists on the importance of mindful presence and “attunement” to the infant’s emotional state.
Advances in recent social neuroscience and the application of mindfulness to managing stress, anger, depression, and other difficult emotions have created means by which every one of us can lead a more skillful, happy, and compassionate life — and nowhere is this more dramatic than in the way we can more sensitively and kindly be present for one another in our relationships. No relationship requires more presence, care and attunement to the other than the parent-child relationship, because it has been shown to be the very foundation for healthy emotional and social growth.
Mindful Parenting is not about becoming a different person or making sudden, huge changes in your life; instead, it is about finding the mindfulness and good parenting skills already inherent in yourself and then strengthening those in ways that will increase your enjoyment of parenting, allow you to attune more closely to your child, decrease stress and frustration, and offer you more moments of being truly alive and happy.
The training series will teach the basic principles of MBP: the theory, practice and results of mindful parenting, how to institute the practice into your busy life with infants and children, techniques for mindfulness (meditation, yoga poses and chi gong for relaxation) and many fun and easy activities that will meet the developmental needs of your youngster.
