Learn how to help your child stop hitting without ever needing to resort to harshness or disconnection. Instead, create safety and support them to heal from the stress or trauma that is the true cause of their hitting.

Most parenting approaches tell you that hitting means:

• Your child is being 'bad' and needs 'correction' (some religious models)
  
• Your child needs punishment to stop the behaviour (behaviourism)
  
• Your child just needs to learn that hitting hurts (some cognitive models)
  
• Your child needs to calm down (some physiological models)

Aware Parenting says something radically different:

A child who is hitting doesn’t feel safe.

They’re in fight or flight.

They need loving support – not punishment, shaming, or reasoning – to feel safe, so they can come back into homeostasis and their innate state of nonviolence.

Why I created this course

When my son was four years old, after his father and I separated, he started hitting and head butting me and his sister. It was one of the most excruciating times of my life.

My deeply present and previously nonviolent son was hidden under a sea of pain.

The usually devoted and loving connection between the two of them was nowhere to be seen.

However, I did eventually help him stop hitting, by deepening my Aware Parenting practice.

I was already an Aware Parenting instructor at that time, and the experience helped me to:

• Really and truly embody loving limits
  
• Help my son return to safety, so that my daughter was also safe
  
• Develop my practice of attachment play as a response to hitting
  
• Become an even more compassionate Aware Parenting instructor
  
• Take the next step in my own journey of healing and empowerment.
  

I'm passionate about helping parents so that their Aware Parenting learning journey with their hitting child is much quicker, and much less painful, than mine was.

In this course, I share everything I’ve learnt from my 23 years of Aware Parenting lived experience, particularly including the time when my son was hitting, and 20 years as an Aware Parenting instructor (as of 2025), where I've supported many parents with this issue, including:

The real cause of hitting

• Why children are not innately violent
• A hitting child is in the fight or flight response
• The two root causes of hitting: lack of safety in the moment, or accumulated feelings from past stress or trauma
• Why trying to "calm down" a child can lead to dissociation instead of healing
  

What isn't helpful

• Why shaming, punishing, or reasoning don’t work and can cause more harm (even with an "it's not okay to hit".
• Why "We don’t hit in this family" might make your child think they don’t belong
  

What you might do and say instead

• Exactly what you might say and do to stop hitting without any harshness
• How you can say no in a way that helps your child be less likely to hit again
  

How to embody loving limits

• What a loving limit actually is
• How you might offer a loving limit when your child is hitting
• Why loving limits are key to helping your child feel safe again
  

How to respond to hitting with attachment play

• Why power-reversal games help children feel safe
• How to help them release the feelings causing the hitting through play
  

How to prevent hitting

• The practical steps you can take to help your child never need to hit in the first place
• The role of safety, crying, raging, and laughter in preventing hitting
  

How to support yourself

• How to hold your big feelings with compassion, especially if you feel powerless, frustrated, or angry
• What I wish I’d done more of when my son was hitting
  

• Children are known as naturally nonviolent
• No child is punished, including when they're in fight or flight
• Parents keep children safe by helping them heal from the stress and trauma that causes hitting
• We heal the roots of violence, one family at a time
  

With Aware Parenting, we can raise a generation of children who feel safe, connected, and free.

Unlike traditional methods that rely on punishment or shame, or newer approaches that focus on calming a child down, Aware Parenting focuses on helping your child feel safe.

When children experience being safe because of our responses, they naturally move out of fight or flight mode, and into their innate relaxation response to heal from stress and trauma.

This includes either crying and raging or laughter and play with our loving support.

What Aware Parenting doesn’t involve:

• Punishment
• Shaming your child (even with an "it's not okay to hit")
• Coercion or control
• Guilt-inducing phrases like "you shouldn’t hit"
  

What Aware Parenting does include:

• Understanding the underlying reasons for hitting
• Compassionate responses that build safety
• Loving limits or attachment play to support emotional expression
• Emotional release to heal from stress and trauma
• Working with a child's innate wisdom to return to homeostasis and innate nonviolence
  

In invite you to join me in this transformative course, where you’ll discover how to help your hitting child return to their innate nonviolence without ever resorting to your own violence in words or actions.

Instead, return to loving them and the gentle and loving being that is hiding underneath the hitting.

By understanding the root causes of hitting and responding with compassion and clarity, you can shift your child’s behaviour while building a stronger, safer, and more connected relationship.

I invite you to enroll in the Help Your Child Stop Hitting Course today, if you're called and willing!

Big love,

Marion

xoxox