About The Peaceful Parent Institute

Genevieve Simperingham founded the Peaceful Parent Institute in New Zealand in 2004, and since that time peaceful parenting has been adopted by parents and professionals around the globe who resonate with this much more respectful and even therapeutic model of parenting.

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The vision of the Peaceful Parent Institute (PPI) is to empower parents and teachers with the skills and awareness they need to create more harmony, happiness and peace in their families or schools.  The peaceful parenting approaches that are taught by Genevieve, and Certified Peaceful Parenting Instructors and mentors trained by Genevieve and PPI, equip parents with the tools to transition to a non-punitive connection and attachment based parenting or teaching approach.

It’s based on the recognition that to bring about long lasting positive change, parents and teachers need to gain a better understanding of what the child needs in their mental and emotional growth and development.  Most of us have been conditioned to view and judge the behaviour, yet relationships are strengthened when the parent/ teacher can view challenging behaviours to be symptomatic of underlying feelings and emotional needs.  This wider and deeper view tends to lead to a greater motivation by the adult to learn the communication approaches which result in the adult-child relationship not just being maintained, but indeed strengthened as the challenges, the big and the small, are faced and resolved.

Whatever the challenges being faced, the necessary positive change needs to happen also at the emotional level, which is why peaceful parenting puts equal focus on helping parents and teachers develop the self-awareness and emotional self-regulation skills needed for them to respond calmly and model the behaviours children are developing.

In supporting parents and teachers in their learning, growth and change, whether through live events or the eCourses, Genevieve shares her in-depth experience and study of the many and varied tools for self-growth, self-healing, mindfulness and meditative practices.

Genevieve is an International speaker, group facilitator, a qualified psychosynthesis counsellor, certified parenting instructor and educator and a writer. She is on the committee for and is a presenter at the annual Natural Phenomena Nature Education Conference.

She is a contributor of feature articles for the The Natural Parent Magazine (published in New Zealand, but available worldwide) and Kindred magazine. Over the last twenty five years Genevieve has presented hundreds of workshops and courses from evening seminars to five day residential retreats in parenting, relationships, self-healing, meditation and personal development.

Genevieve has experience in helping thousands of parents, teachers and professionals over the last twenty five years.   She also draws on her in-depth and ongoing study of many leading experts in the fields of early childhood development, personal development, attachment and neuroscience.

Genevieve always likes to acknowledge the many influences who she has learned a great deal from.  A big influence on her personal and professional journey has been Dr Aletha Solter, having read Aletha’s first book The Aware Baby when pregnant with her first child in 1996.  She was previously a Certified Aware Parenting instructor for about 12 years, having initially attended workshops with Dr. Aletha Solter PhD in Sydney.  Dr Solter is a psychologist and author of 6 ground-breaking parenting books. Dr. Solter is the founder of the Aware Parenting Institute, who have instructors in several countries around the globe. Genevieve is also a Heart to Heart Parenting Facilitator, trained by Robin Grille to teach his Heart to Heart parenting program. Robin Grille, is a psychologist and psychotherapist based in Sydney, Australia and is the author of “Parenting for a Peaceful World” and “Heart to Heart Parenting” (both available here).  Genevieve has also attended an intensive week of public and professional workshops with developmental psychologist and author Gordon Neufeld.  Here’s a post written for the Natural Parent Magazine summarising some of the learnings and perspectives post attending those courses.

She also trained as a Beyond Consequences Instructor, sharing the work of Heather Forbes, psychologist, author and founder of Beyond Consequences Institute, whose books are particularly supportive to parents whose children exhibit extreme behavioural difficulties relating to a trauma history.  Heather is a psychologist and mother of two adopted children, who have been her greatest teachers.

Genevieve brings to her work the culmination of many years of various trainings in the fields of counselling, non-punitive parenting models, emotional healing, personal growth, family systems, mindfulness, meditation, nonviolent communication. energy healing and medicine wheel work.

She has worked one on one with clients and couples over the last twenty years, facilitating healing and growth in private practice and facilitating learning and growth through group education and facilitation. Genevieve shares many examples from her personal experience as a parent (with the permission of her children now 20 and 26).  Genevieve and Dan often also share snippets of their journey of growth, learning and change as a couple practicing peaceful parenting since becoming parents in 1997.

There is also, behind the scenes, a group of dedicated parents and professional who are endlessly committed to supporting the work of the Peaceful Parent Institute, who help promote the groups and support parents who are new to the model.  Tabitha Jonson has been working for the Peaceful Parent Institute for many years and Meg Rodney has been a faithful admin in our facebook Q&A group and been one of our Peaceful Parenting mentors in our Village forum and eCourses since it’s inception.

Genevieve Simperingham is an Irish woman, living in New Zealand since 2000.

“I’m passionate about supporting parents and helping them learn how to stay emotionally connected with their children through the inevitable conflicts and differences of wants, needs and opinions that are normal in close relationships. We share with parents that conflicts offer an opportunity for growth, learning and deeper understanding of each other and ourselves as parents. The skills that we teach allow the bond to ever deepen between the parent and their child, as well as between the parents as they work through challenges and enjoy and celebrate each other’s unique qualities.”

Among Genevieve’s areas of expertise is equipping adults with skills to continually improve and heal their relationship with their self, to continue to evolve their own emotional development, as this relationship with self forms the foundation and blueprint for all other close relationships, including the parent child relationship. She helps adults and youth face and recover from arrested emotional and social development relating to early childhood (including recovery from all forms of abuse and trauma). Genevieve also helps mothers resolve trauma relating to pre-natal and birth traumas.

“My 26 year old son and 21 year old daughter are both very happy about the work that we do with parents because they know that it helps parents and it helps children and that’s all good. Our own children are our biggest teachers. We don’t always hit the spot in balancing all the needs within the family, but we’re all very committed to listening to and respecting each person’s perspective and repairing any misunderstandings or hurts that arise. We, as a family believe in creating plenty of time and space for all the voices and all the emotions. We are very proud to be doing the best we can to end unhealthy cycles of dysfunctional relating that are sadly still more the norm in our society.

“From the outset of becoming a parent, my aim was to always support and guide, rather than repress, my children’s emotions and also to keep a strong focus on clean and clear boundaries within our family. I was already immersed in a world of helping adults re-parent themselves in healthier and kinder ways, yet in becoming a parent, I began to face the most real challenge of all, which is to maintain emotional openness, honesty and integrity within the family.”

Helping others to heal and learn the communication, conflict resolution and relationship skills that foster a healthy family system is my path and my passion. Because of all I’ve overcome myself, I have an unwavering belief in the human’s capacity to survive, overcome and heal even deeply engraved wounds and addictions. And yet the more that can be resolved within the parent, hence the parent child relationship while our children are still young the better.”

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