Peaceful Beginnings

I'm going to be very vulnerable here. 8 years ago, my nervous system was a wreck. I was constantly in my sympathetic nervous system and I didn't like how I felt or acted. I remember crying out on my front steps to the universe "PLEASE !!! PLEASE help me with my anger. (what I didn't realise was i was asking the wrong question; my anger was gifting me a message of unmet needs that I needed to listen too.)About 2 weeks later I was introduced to Kimberley Crisp and shortly after I was on Pennie Brownlee's Dance with me in the Heart. And my life began to change. I will be forever grateful for those two ladies

At that time, I was working at an amazing centre where everyone was stressed. Children and adults, and this was the start of my observations into the culture of team work and hygenic practice. Something Kimberley Crisp really helped me to get my ideas as I bounced my observations off her and Liane. It wasn't the people, they were amazing it was the STRESSED environment that made it unhygenic. I suppose we all hold some toxicity when we are stressed and unhealed from childhood wounds.

I lapped up everything that Pennie and Kimberley were teaching from their love of the Pikler approach. I became one of Pennie's Parent/infant and Parent/Toddler facilitators. And this was the first time I left teaching to work with parents. I thought I had more to offer here.

When I had lapped up everything I could from these amazing ladies I started my Pikler journey. In one year I travelled to Sydney, LA in USA and Budapest. I had never heard such a respectful way of BEing with children. Completing their week long basic courses: Respectful Care, Freedom of movement and freedom to play. Each time I came back from a course I felt a layer of skin had been taking off my eyes that had previously clouded my vision. The children and parents that I was supporting were still the same but what I saw had far more depth. These courses were mindblowing for what I was learning and how I could support my parents.

It was during these early years of facilitating parent/ toddler classes that I started to see something change in my Play Room that I couldn't place my finger on. I could see that the toddler years was having an impact on my parents that I was accompanying. Parents that had been confident in conscious parenting were now looking for more authoritarian techniques rather than the partnership relationship I was teaching. I could feel there was something that I was missing and so I went in search of something that would support parents to still be in relationship with their child. And I found CIRCLE OF SECURITY and it has been a game changer for me and something that I would guide all parents and teachers to complete.

I then returned to teaching now as a leader and manager. And my observations continued to look at how did staff teams work. What happened when everyone was regulated and what changed as stress arose in the environment. It was the greatest teaching ground to learn about people and their interactions with each other and then with children. My theories kept expanding and I am so grateful to Kimberley Crisp of all the hours she listened to me as I was formularizing my ideas. So much was grounded in Pikler but then so much was outside this realm as I started to understand more and more about attachment theory, brain and nervous system development and Self-Regulation. And I can assure you it is all there hidden in plain sight in teamwork too

Then COVID hit and the world changed and I took my classes with the Pikler Institute online. (and if I'm honest its probably how I am still able to do them because this time saved me so much money). In these years I learnt Observation, Peace within me (The Pikler Institutes social competence course) and Dialogue with the Infant and toddler, where I found out what you do in the first year of life the child brings into the social and play environments when they are older.

The world opened up and back I went to Budpest and realised how much I had missed being in this environment with many other highly researched based practitioners from around the world. This was my final elective course about supporting caregivers and the first time I could observe the techniques I had spent years learning about. I started to see that what I had been observing in staff teams was hidden into the foundations of what I was learning this year.

2023 back home to New Zealand and once again I could see that my studies weren't quite reaching the needs of some parents. I was back working as a manager in ECE. I could feel there was something that wasn't quite working for some parents with CIRCLE OF SECURITY. And that's when I starting to see the links with the nervous system and Self-Reg. I created my own unique courses and started to see huge changes for parents that had struggled before. Still in 2023 I was contacted by a parent I had worked with. She wanted me to look into InterPlay by Donna Berry as she thought it would be a missing puzzle piece of what I was doing. And she was right. I am currently still studying to become a Senior InterPlay facilitator but want to create a space for supporting trauma through play.

Gosh 2023 was a busy year. With now relationship knowledge, brain development knowledge, attachment theory and nervous system and Self-Reg knowledge. I wrote my first parent infant programme and added to my Self-regulation prgramme being guided by what I was learning from the adults working with me. And you get to experience it here on this new updated of an already popular course.