Dynamic Parenting

Duration:

15 hours

Team leaders:

Saša Vlahinić, Mihovil Mašović

Dynamic parenting

Short description

All parents love their children and most of us would agree that loving children is indispensable and crucial quality of parenting. However, all of us while raising children, from the day they are born, meet with different challanges. It is pretty certain that the challenges will be part of parenting in the years to come as well. Is our love enough, or do we need something else to be the parents we wish to be?

More detailed description

Could practising attitudes such as: non-judgmental, being too patient, too accepting, … help us in any way in our role of parents or will such attitudes transform us into the overly indulgent new age parents with wild and not properly raised children?

If the greatest scientiests of all times, spiritual teachers, writers and all sacred texts agree that there is no good and happy life without living in accordance with human values, is it possible and are we allowed to put the human values aside, and give priority to education and development of knowledge and skills for everyday life?

Dynamic Parenting will try to find answers to these and many other similar questions in all of us. Our work will follow the structure and content of the same course on the Institute for Human Values website (iohv.org), which at the moment, could be taken only in English language. European Institute for Human Values is working on the translation of this course into Croatian; it is our wish to enable online attendance of the course in Croation language, too, soonest possible.

Topics which will be done:

Seven pillars of Mindfulness
Listening with full attention
Non-judgmental acceptance of ourselves and the child
Self Awareness
Self Regulation
Compassion for ourselves and the child
Five human Values
Foundation of the parents and children well being
Child’s genuine nature
Games and creation with children
Key principles of parenting

Benefits

The purpose of this course is creation and development of harmony in the family, just as the wise men and spiritual teachers have repeated for thousands of years:

„If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations. If there is order in the nations, there will be peace in the world.“

Team leaders

Saša Vlahinić is a parent who was attracted by the warmth, love and wisdom of the authors of this course, Ron and Suwanti Farmer; he applied for the Dynamic Parenting course and passed it in online form, and he also took part in the Zoom workshop of the Australian Academy for Human Excellence. It is his wish that all of us, through our joint work in online meetings, come to cognizance, insights and deeper understanding of the key principles of parenting, and finally become Mindful parents.

After his formal education (BA in sociology and philosophy) the team leader, Mihovil Mašović, during last 10 years, has completely devoted himself to the practice of self-awareness and to therapy work; after finishing the course for a Mindfulness instructor, he was inspired to organize a Mindfulness course. In European Institute for Human Values his focus is on Mindful Teaching and work with children; he is also involved in humanitarian efforts.

“The world tells our children that happiness is to be found in sensual pleasure, beauty, popularity, wealth, power or unending good health. They need to learn what Aristotle taught ages ago: A fulfilling life is a life of virtue. You can’t be happy unless you’re good.”

“Childhood is an important stage in life, not a preparation for a future life, but a genuine, bright, unique, unrepeatable stage in life. And how that childhood is spent, who leads children by the hand during their early years, what enters their hearts and minds from the surrounding world determines what sort of people today’s infants will become.”

Vasyl Sukhomlynsky (1918 – 1970)

“… the scientific research demonstrates: on one hand, the child is naturally altruistic from the earliest age; on the other, the child learns to moderate altruism only after having internalised the social norms… If we recognise that children are born with a natural propensity for empathy and altruism, their education will serve to accompany and facilitate the development of that predisposition.”

Matthieu Ricard (2013)

In: Altruism

“Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other and then for ourselves.”

Helen Keller

“In a very real sense, infants and children know a great deal more concerning many aspects of growing than adults; adults, therefore, have more to learn from them about such matters than the latter have to learn from adults.”

Michael Mendizza and Joseph Chilton Pearce

In: Magical Parent Magical Child

“Treat your children like your neighbour’s ornaments – you borrow them, they are delicate and precious, but ultimately they are borrowed. You take care of them better than you would have taken care of your own ornaments. Once you are done with them, you try to give them back in a better condition than what you received them in.”

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Kahlil Gibran, the famous Lebanese-American writer, poet, visual artist and philosopher emphatically pronounced the below words of wisdom for parents:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you, and though they are with you,
yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves also the bow that is stable.”

Literature recommendation

Dr Ron and Suwanti Farmer: Mindful Parenting for a Meaningful Life: A Workbook for Parents

Dates

September 2023, online meetings once a month. Neither formal nor informal knowledge of techniques, skills or theories is needed/necessary.

If you want to support our vision and work on nurturing human values, you can do that with donations. Thank you.

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