What is Conscious Parenting? Find out with Happy Child, Happy Home

If you’ve visited the Floris Twitter page recently, you might have seen that we’ve been talking about Conscious Parenting, an idea from our new parenting book Happy Child, Happy Home by Lou Harvey-Zahra. Lou has over 20 years’ experience in different kindergarten, primary, special needs and Steiner-Waldorf school settings, and Conscious Parenting is an approach she developed while leading playgroups and running parenting workshops.

In her own words, in this exclusive extract from Happy Child, Happy Home, Lou introduces Conscious Parenting for all our Floris readers and explains what it could add to your family life.

What is ‘Conscious Parenting’? Conscious Parenting describes the approach of parents who try to stay open-minded and present with their child’s needs and behaviours. Conscious Parenting is the care of children that emerges when we see the world from a child’s perspective and understand the important stage of childhood. Children are not little adults; they have their own world, their own way of looking at life. Conscious Parenting asks: What is important in that world? What do I need to provide to truly nurture childhood and create a happy home? Many answers to these questions are found in this book, which is full of suggestions I have practised and insights I have applied in my personal and professional life with children.

In Happy Child, Happy Home, I explore the ways that connection, creativity and communication in family life lay the foundation for a happy childhood and a happy home. I call these keys to happiness ‘the three ‘C’s’. It is these three ‘C’s working together that leads to the big ‘C’: consciousness. It is through practising connection, creativity and communication at home that we arrive at conscious parenting.

No microchip is downloaded the moment we become parents. We do not know how to deal with challenging discipline issues, provide positive play spaces or create Christmas craft! Happy Child, Happy Home is a parenting guide to take along on the journey. It will support you as you develop the ideas and awareness that foster happy and healthy children and make a house a home. The book aims to cover a very broad range of topics in one easy read. It is for parents to pick up when they seek inspiration, support, information or guidance.

Family life can be seen as an ‘emotional bank account’: large withdrawals will happen from time to time. Challenges are inevitable as we go through the years, so we need to put in positive deposits on a daily basis. Investments from stable, happy and connected times see us through patches of disconnection or anger. Happy Child, Happy Home is full of practical ideas that can function as deposits in the family’s emotional bank account, and stop you from going into the red!

Did you enjoy Lou’s extract? Why not try the first chapter of Happy Child, Happy Home here for FREE? Just click on ‘See Inside’.

More about Happy Child, Happy Home

This practical and inspiring book introduces ‘conscious parenting’ as a new way of helping any family home become more harmonious. It addresses issues such as rhythm and routine, children’s play, storytelling and crafts, as well as delving beneath the surface to discuss children’s twelve senses, and four temperaments. There is a sure-to-be popular section on creative discipline, plus tips from Dad and wonderful suggestions for making ordinary family moments extraordinary.

Discover an accessible, readable book which parents will appreciate for its down-to-earth, realistic approach and insightful counsel.

Available now from florisbooks.co.uk, and as an eBook.