WOULD YOU LOVE FOR YOUR BABY OR CHILD TO

sleep restfully and restoratively?

wake up less at night?

be securely attached?

feel a deep sense of relaxation?

WOULD YOU LOVE TO

have more restful sleep?

feel even more connected with your little one?

implement a parenting paradigm based on both attachment theory and trauma healing?

listen lovingly to your baby or child's feelings so they can release stress and heal from trauma and feel more deeply relaxed?

really understand your baby or child's innate relaxation response so you can help them sleep more peacefully?

AWARE PARENTING CAN HELP YOU HAVE BOTH SLEEP AND CONNECTION!

and I'm here to help!

If you're not getting enough sleep and you're feeling exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed or powerless (or any other feeling!) I'm sending you so much love and compassion.

I wonder if you feel some relief, hearing that it really is possible to have both sleep and secure attachment for your baby or child?

There really is a third approach to sleep for babies and children.

You don't need to put up with years of frequent night-waking, thinking that it's the only option if you aren't going to sacrifice secure attachment.

Nor do you need to resort to leaving your baby to 'self-soothe,' to giving them a dummy or pacifier to go to sleep, or to using 'controlled crying' or 'cry-it-out', thinking that those are the only options available to you if you want more sleep (and if you have done any of those, you can help them heal from the experiences with Aware Parenting).

You don't need to abandon your own need for sleep, or your little one's need for closeness and attuned responding.

Aware Parenting values the needs of both parents, and babies and children.

No one needs to lose out.

Aware Parenting is a philosophy of parenting that was created by Aletha Solter, PhD. It's a form of attachment-style parenting and so understands the attachment needs of babies and children. It also supports parents to protect children from stress and trauma wherever possible. It shows how unhealed stress and trauma affect behaviour (including sleep).

Aware Parenting understands how babies and children innately strive to heal from stress and trauma through inbuilt healing responses. One of the most significant times they try to use these responses is when they're tired. With inherent wisdom, their bodies aim to release stress and trauma before sleeping, so they can feel more deeply relaxed, and thus have more restorative sleep.

Learning to practice Aware Parenting is a huge journey, given that most of the beliefs and practices are completely different to most other approaches, to core cultural beliefs, and to our own experiences growing up.

That's why I've created this course, to help this journey be clearer and easier for you, if Aware Parenting resonates for you.

Would you like to know what three things babies and children need to sleep peacefully?

Would you like to understand how true relaxation is different from dissociation, and why that's vitally important with sleep?

Do you want to understand what's really going on when babies and children are tired but don't go to sleep, and what you can do when that's happening so that they can go to sleep?

Would you love deeply understand the innate relaxation and healing response so that you can cooperate with it when your baby or child is naturally trying to feel more relaxed before sleep?

Would you love to know tangible ways to respond to your child when they get playful before bed, or if your baby or child seems to 'fight sleep'?

Do you want to understand how unhealed stress and trauma affect sleep, and how you can help your litlte one to heal from stress and trauma and sleep more restfully?

Are you interested in being able to understand what is really going on for your baby or child if they're taking a long time to go to sleep, are antsy and agitated in the evening, are wriggling in bed, are waking up more and more frequently as the night goes on, are waking up crying, or are having nightmares?

Would you like to be able to know how to observe your baby or child and what to look out for, so you can tell what they are needing and feeling, and whether they are dissociating or are truly relaxed?

In this culture, most of us are taught to help our babies and children mildly dissociate from the feelings that naturally bubble up before bed. The result is often that they are restless whilst sleeping and can wake up during light sleep because the feelings are still sitting in their body, creating agitation. Those feelings are trying to be expressed and released. The more accumulated feelings there are, such as if they have experienced birth trauma or during times of stress or developmental leaps, the more restlessness and waking that happens.

With Aware Parenting, we're working with a baby or child's innate healing and relaxation response, following their lead, and being with them whilst they laugh and play or cry and rage, so that they can heal from stress and trauma and move into a state of homeostasis, a deep experience of relaxation, which is very different to the more superficial and short-lasting experience of using mild dissociation to help them sleep.

The higher percentage of a baby or child's feelings we're able to listen to, the more deeply relaxed they'll feel, and the more restfully they'll sleep. The more relaxed they feel, the less you'll need to tiptoe around a sleeping baby, or be scared of moving them, or be concerned that your older child will be woken up by their younger sibling.

Deeply relaxed sleep is a profoundly satisfying experience.

If you want to find out more about Aware Parenting and sleep to see if this approach deeply resonates with you, I invite you to listen to the sleep series on The Aware Parenting Podcast, which starts at episode 125.

I CREATED

THE SOUND SLEEP AND SECURE ATTACHMENT WITH AWARE PARENTING COURSE 2.0

FOR YOU!

With three main points of focus:

Understanding Aware Parenting and sleep:

Understand how sleep challenges are a reflection of your little one's needs and feelings and how sleep is the ultimate emotional and physical barometer;

Learn why they're not actually fighting sleep and don't need to be taught to sleep;

Know the three things that babies and children need to sleep peacefully.

Learn why we don't have terms such as 'wake windows', 'overtired', 'cluster feeding', 'self-settling' or 'sleep regression' in Aware Parenting and how we interpret what's going on when other paradigms are using those terms.

~

Tangible practices:

How to observe your little one so you can understand their feelings and needs and cooperate with their relaxation response;

How you can work out what's getting in the way of their restful sleep and make effective changes based on that understanding;

How you can practice attachment play to support easier sleep;

How you can listen to their crying and raging to help them heal from stress and trauma and feel more relaxed to sleep.

~

Your own journey:

Seeing how your own feelings and needs affect your spaciousness to be present with them and their feelings and needs;

Learning to listen to yourself and trust your own observations and intuitions;

Healing your past trauma and changing your cultural conditioning about sleep;

Dropping the guilt, self-judgment and comparison.

THE COURSE MODULES:

WHAT EXACTLY DOES IT INCLUDE?

All of the following:

THE SOUND SLEEP AND SECURE ATTACHMENT WITH AWARE PARENTING COURSE IS ALL ABOUT YOU BEING COMPASSIONATE WITH YOURSELF AND BEING A RESEARCHER

Whatever you've done in the past with your baby or child, I'll be inviting you to put down any guilt sticks. It's never too late to start practicing Aware Parenting or to deepen your practice.

TESTIMONIALS FROM THE 1.0 VERSION OF THE COURSE:

HELLO! MY NAME IS

MARION ROSE

and I love Aware Parenting!

I've been learning about babies and children for 37 years now (as of 2024), and am as passionate about it as ever!

I first learnt to clearly observe babies and children when I was doing my psychology degree, and then when I was doing my Ph.D. at Cambridge University in 1992.

I visited mothers and babies and and videoed them feeding and playing.

When I got back to the Winnicott Research Unit, I spent hours watching each video millisecond by millisecond.

Later, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Exeter University, I did lots more observing babies to find out how much babies understand.

I also trained and worked as a psychotherapist for many years, where I learnt about and how what happens to babies and children affects them in later life.

When I became a parent in 2002, I wanted to practice Aware Parenting.

Yet, desipite years of training in observing babies, despite knowing how to listen to the feelings of adults as a psychotherapist, and despite 10 years of weekly psychotherapy, rebirthing and other healing of my own infancy and childhood,

I still found it hard to listen to my daughter's feelings at first.

Over time, I became more comfortable with listening to her feelings.

I realised that I was using what I had learnt in all those years observing babies.

So, when I held her in my arms in the evening, after she had recently been fed, and listened to her cry in my loving arms, I would then observe her after the cry.

She would gaze into my eyes with complete presence.

Her muscles would be relaxed.

Her body would mould into mine.

She would smile more.

She would be calm as she slept.

She would sleep for longer periods.

I compared this to how she was if I had kept trying to distract her from her feelings all evening. On those occasions, she would avoid eye contact. Her muscles would be tense. She would be agitated. She would push away from contact. She wouldn't smile much. She would be more restless in her sleep, and she wouldn't sleep for as long.

It was only through observing the differences in her that met my need for reassurance that listening to her crying in my arms once all her needs were met was meeting deep needs for release and healing for her.

And what I love about Aware Parenting is that the proof really is in the pudding. We really can only get reassurance that listening to our baby or child's feelings is helping them feel more deeply relaxed by observing them.

I used these principles and practices when my daughter was 8 to 9 months old to help her sleep through the night.

And I saw, as she got older, how listening to her feelings helped her to sleep easily and peacefully, be present, make eye contact, cooperate, concentrate for long periods of time, and be present and gentle with other children and adults, animals, and belongings.

When my son was born four and a half years after my daughter, I had a whole lot more experience, knowledge and understanding of Aware Parenting.

I was an Aware Parenting Instructor by then, and had listened to my daughter's feelings for four years.

I had helped and supported other parents listen to their babies and children.

And I had clearly seen the difference when children were given the opportunity to express their uncomfortable feelings with loving support.

So, I was much clearer in my understanding of what to look for, and what to observe, when my son was a baby.

Even if we are listening to some feelings, whatever percentage of feelings we are not listening to, our babies and children need to do something with those pent-up feelings - usually in the form of mild dissocatiation.

The effects of these accumulated feelings and unexpressed stress and tension will show in behaviours such as taking a long time to go to sleep, being restless in their sleep, waking up frequently, waking up more and more often, and waking up early. And in the daytime, avoiding eye contact, not smiling much, not being willing to explore new things, not concentrating for long, agitation, pushing, and hitting.

So I knew that I wanted to listen to a higher percentage of my son's feelings than I had done with my daughter.

I was able to listen to more of my son's feelings. I'd learnt to observe and understand more.

That was a process that took years.

I've also been supporting parents with Aware Parenting and sleep since becoming an Aware Parenting instructor in 2005.

I love sharing what I've learnt in my own experience as both a mother and Aware Parenting instructor with you so it won't take you years to deeply understand your baby or child and how to help them release stress and heal from trauma, and feel deeply relaxed in their body!

I am passionate about compassion.

I help parents with whatever their own unique next steps are.

I don't have any 'shoulds' about Aware Parenting.

I will never tell you that you have to do something, or that you're doing something wrong. I don't believe in shoulding people, or judging people.

My passion is to help parents understand themselves and their feelings, thoughts, and needs more, so that you can understand your baby and child's feelings and needs more.

I will be inviting you over and over again to listen in to yourself and what resonates with you, and to be observing your baby or child. It's those two which will help you most profoundly with Aware Parenting and sleep.

I love to offer what I have learnt from my trainings before I became a parent, and in my parenting journey, to help you listen to yourself more, so that you can listen to your baby or child even more than you are already doing!

When I created this course in 2023, this was the distillation of:

21 years of practicing Aware Parenting;

18 years of being an Aware Parenting Instructor and Mentor;

17 years of creating Aware Parenting workshops;

9 years of creating online courses about Aware Parenting,

9 years of mentoring people to become Aware Parenting instructors;

8 years of offering my Aware Parenting Instructor Mentoring Course;

Several years of being a Level 2 Aware Parenting instructor;

Being the regional coordinator for Australia and New Zealand.

Are you longing to really understand what's affecting your baby or child's sleep and how to help them feel deeply relaxed in their body so that they can sleep peacefully and restoratively through helping them heal from stress and trauma? This course is here to help.

Dates and times of the the next live round

(all in Sydney time):

You can ask questions at any time during the live rounds and I will either respond in writing or make a FB live uniquely for you, which will then be available as a recording in the FB group and on the course site.

The Zoom calls will also be avaialable afterwards as recordings on the course site.

Live round for 2024:

4 weeks

Starts on 21.6.24

First Zoom: Sat 22nd June 2pm-5pm Sydney time

Second Zoom: Sat 29th June 2pm-4pm Sydney time.

Finishes 22.7.24