You really CAN stop tantrums before they start

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Hey there and welcome, I’m so happy you’ve found me!  I wanted to take some time to tell you a little bit about who I am and what this site is about so I figured I’d just share the long version since this is in print and you get to decide when to look away.

I have always known I wanted to be a teacher and a mom.  As a young child, I adored my own mother who was so caring and available for emotional connection and security that of course I wanted to grow up and be just like her.  I also loved to set up a “class” of stuffed animals on a quilt under the cherry tree in my backyard and read to them and teach them things.  I learn by teaching.

As a child I loved the ocean.  I poured through books about the sea, pausing over photographs of it’s amazing creatures.  I developed a particular fascination with dolphins.  I marveled at their intelligence and imagined that they had a language that I would one day decipher.

When I was twelve I helped my stepmom care for my infant brother one summer and I absorbed all I could from her.  She is an awesome social worker and a wonderful mother.  As I watched my baby brother grow and develop I simultaneously developed an interest in psychology and ended up doing a science project on the “Draw a person” test.

When I got to college my psychology classes were the easiest for me, I just loved what I was learning about the mind and the brain.  I LOVED my elective art classes and spent hours in the studio.  But my true passion was to learn everything I could about the way the brain develops in infancy and early childhood.  I was so fortunate to get to work in Rene Baillargeon’s laboratory in several different jobs.  It was fascinating work that I’ll share with you another time.  For now I’ll just say I was in psychology research heaven for the first years of my undergrad education.

But after doing my own unique research project I realized that the lab was much too solitary for me.  I wanted to make a more direct difference in people’s lives.  I am so grateful for researchers and loved working with them, but that life is not for me.

So, after college I got a job as a preschool teacher at a local Montessori school.  Wow, I was suddenly plunged into a whole new world that I never knew existed, but was a perfect complement to what I had just learned in school about how and when our brains best function.

So when I experienced the Montessori classroom I was astounded at the thoughtfulness and foresight evident in every material, even in the way the materials are displayed and used.  It was a beautifully working community of mixed ages of children with a head teacher and an assistant teacher.  The children were peaceful, engaged in learning, but available to help a friend who had spilled something nearby.  The more I learned about Maria Montessori and her methods, the more I liked, so for the next few years I worked in several classrooms at two Montessori schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Meanwhile, I met an amazing group of friends committed to deep connection and we collectively continued our personal growth journeys together.  Not since childhood had I felt so seen, understood, and unconditionally loved.  My friends and I went on to create the Authentic Man Program and the Authentic Woman Experience and most recently Authentic World.

At one point I decided that the economics of running a school required that schools offer so many hours of childcare that a child could be away from his parents from 7am to 6pm Monday through Friday.  I decided that no three year old child of mine would be required to be away from her parents for that much of her awake time.  I wanted to take a closer look at the life of a new mom and bring all of my skills to a few people more aligned with my values.  I became a nanny.

As a nanny, the moms I worked for kept asking me questions about how they could be more connected with and compassionate toward their young children.  They wanted to know how to stay calm and creative in the face of chaos or conflict.

They would say things like, “Shelly, you’re so good with them! I find myself trying to copy the way you talk with my kids because I really appreciate how you’re able to balance being in charge with care and compassion for my little ones.” At other times I would hear things like, “I don’t know how you can be so patient with them but it seems like they cooperate with you so easily. How do you do it?”

At first I didn’t have many answers for those moms because I thought it was just a matter of experience with kids or an innate talent I had stumbled upon, but as I began to talk with them further I realized that I was using connection based parenting approaches.  Later I realized that those approaches can be broken down into teachable steps!

So, I started AwakeParent.com as a way to share the knowledge I’ve gleaned from my years as a nanny and teacher as well as my B.S in developmental psychology.

Oh, and I also got an M.A. in humanities and leadership and wrote my thesis on connection based parenting approaches.  Funny enough, as I was writing my thesis, I met my husband, fell in love, and moved to Oregon to be with him.  Now we have a beautiful daughter and I am SO grateful for all of my previous training.

I’ve also worked as a life, relationship, and parenting coach for the past 5 years.  I became a certified coach through Authentic World and after teaching classes both in person and over the phone, facilitating workshops with the Authentic Man Program and the Authentic Woman Experience, and all the other stuff I’ve already mentioned, I’ve realized that conscious parenting is my greatest passion and I’m so happy to be connecting with like minded parents here and everywhere in my life.

Besides spending every waking second I can with my amazing daughter, writing my blog articles and doing one on one phone coaching are some of the things that bring me the most joy and fulfillment. I love to hear about the challenges my clients are facing and it’s so much fun to see the changes individuals and families can make after working with me.  It feels so good to be contributing and making a positive impact in peoples lives in this way.

For me, conscious parenting is all about seeing the needs underneath the behaviors of children and offering them ways to meet their needs that will work for everyone in the family. I hope that you’ll spend some time here reading articles on the Blog page and leaving comments there so that I can get to know you better.

I am honored that you’ve chosen to visit my website and I want to help you both in big and small ways to be the best parent you can be. But I already know that you’re a great parent, simply because you’ve found your way here.   I hope that together we can make all of our conscious parenting journeys even easier and more joyful.
Warm hugs, Shelly

The next step is to learn more about Shelly’s Parent Coaching Program or to check out the Blog page