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Here's the long version of who I am--if it gets too detailed, just go back to the top of the page for the bullet-pointed version.
It's been a long journey to get to Jewish parent coaching. From the time I was 7 years old, I wanted to be a teacher. I remember sitting in my 2nd grade class thinking, "This is not how to teach children. Remember this, so you will do it differently." As I waited to be old enough to become a teacher, I helped kids however I could. I babysat, I volunteered in schools and in abused children's centers, I was a counselor at a summer camp and, eventually, the assistant director. And finally, I became a teacher, with degrees and licenses in Educational Psychology, Special Education, Elementary Education, and School administration. I taught all ages from preschool through high school, general and special education. I mentored teachers, coached them, and trained them. Then I adopted my children. And I figured parenting would be a piece of cake, I had worked with hundreds of kids, in classes as large as 58 first graders (that's New York City, for you). I knew kids, what makes them tick, and how to work with them--how hard could this be? And then I met my daughters. One of them was afraid of everything. One example was when she watched a Curious George episode where George gets stuck in an elevator. That was the end of her ever using elevators. Or there was the time when I had to leave work because she was too afraid to be near our dog who had just gotten a haircut. My other daughter proved everything I knew about kids to be wrong. The standard rewards had no effect on her, she loved disappearing in crowded places, and she showed no fear of anything. She had tantrums like I had never seen before and a spirit that was both wonderful and exasperating. My standard bag of tricks was clearly not going to work with her. School was not a good match for either of our daughters as we found out that one had a reading disability that was not being addressed, and the other had a severe auditory processing disorder, as well as severe executive management dysfunction, which we had been interpreting as stubbornness. Oops. Okay, really big oops. My partner and I agreed that we should take the kids out of school and I began to homeschool them, both in order to meet their learning needs, and to build up their self-confidence. As I began to work with them all day, everyday, I got the gift of seeing the full range of their emotions, the good, the bad, and the really unexpected. I know I sound sarcastic here, but it really was a gift--it was the gift of seeing how their needs and their feelings were behind all of the big emotions and behaviors. I found that through gentleness, acceptance, and empathy, not rewards and consequences, I was able to connect with each of my daughters in a deeper, more individual, and much more meaningful way. This in turn built up their confidence and allowed them to be the free spirits they each are today. Soon after this, I became a certified parenting coach. I learned the tools that would have spared me a lot of trial and error, and I knew that I wanted to help other families to find the shortcuts to this deep and loving connection with their children. At the same time, my journey through Judaism was taking all sorts of turns and twists. As I took more and more classes, I increasingly noticed that middot (Jewish values) were guiding my parenting decisions, and I started seeing parenting advice in almost every Jewish text I studied. I began to incorporate Jewish values and traditions into my parent coaching and found that parents appreciated the opportunity to learn how to bring more spirituality (in fun ways), along with peaceful connection, to their families. |
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Connect more. Play more. Love more.
Make the connection to your child and to the way you want to parent. Contact me for a free exploration session. You and I will explore where you are with parenting and where you might like to go. Absolutely NO obligation. Just a chance for you to talk and find out what is possible for your family. Click here to schedule your exploration session. |
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