Ninja Parenting for Big Kids
Game-changing training for Parents of Tweens & Teens
for parents of 9-16-year-olds
6-week Course
with Roma Norriss,
Helena Mooney &Â Lizzie Dekkers
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How is it for you?
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Is your older child:
- oppositional
- constantly on screens
- withdrawn / hard-to-reach
- showing signs of anxiety but not confiding as to why
- not cooperative
- refusing to engage in family activities
Do you want to find ways to bring your older child back into the fold? To be able to have meaningful conversations with them and spend quality time together?
Would you love to feel like you are winning at this rather than defeated, despondent, exhausted, burned-out? Believe you are a good parent again? Know you’ve got this rather than being drained by a nagging worry you’re badly letting them down.
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Maybe you’re actually worried about your child
Are they doing scary things that you don’t feel like you have influence over (eating disorders, in with the wrong crowd, bullying, self-harm, toxic social media use)?
They might be lying or stealing or crucified with body shame - while you feel helpless to intervene…
Or there’s just a heavy sense that not meeting their potential, disengaging academically or with other interests?
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Tweens Parents tell me they are faced with back-talking, entitled, rude, lippy, demanding kids. They’re often seriously worried that their little darling is going to turn out to be a Really Terrible Human!
Teens Parents tell me they are faced with a more complex picture: kids demanding autonomy but not wanting to take responsibility for anything; being totally avoidant until they want something; thinking you don’t understand anything.Â
If your particular issue isn’t listed here, it’s likely this will still help. You're welcome to book in a call to tell me about your particular situation and I'll signpost you to what's most likely to resolve it.
What you'll get from this
- Use less of your energy to be MORE effective, which means your kids think you’re awesome and you feel pleased with your parenting
- Learn how to de-escalate an explosive teen (or make an anxious one more confident)
- Get really clear on when (and how) to set limits and when to let things go
- Understand what your kid is communicating through their behaviour so that you can respond to the underlying need… and as you’ll see - this changes everything!
- Recover your kid from screen addiction, social anxiety, self-harm and suicide, parental alienation, risk-taking behaviours: drugs, sex, vandalism, getting in with the wrong crowd etc.
- Respond gracefully to challenging/taboo topics when they arise with your teen
- Gain more cooperation with homework, chores and joining in with family activities
- Build resilience so that they can handle hostile school environments, frenemies and online culture and begin to challenge themselves academically, physically, socially or creatively.
Listen to the three of us on Screentime
Why connection is the key and how to empower teens to set their own limits.
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We will of course be offering some fresh ideas for how to respond differently to bigger kids for inspiration and how to read what they are really needing.
But mostly we’re gonna avoid sitting there and lecturing about how to parent. We’re not gonna tell you what to do.
Because you’ve been doing this for years and you already know this.
Instead the course will be highly interactive and will shine a light through experiential activities on ways you might be responding that aren’t sooo helpful and how your child might really be feeling. This will give you the insight you need to make changes in ways that make sense to you.
There will be plenty of time to ask questions and we’ll also be probing you to look at the emotional root causes of some of the dynamics in your family
Why this, why now?
When I qualified as a Hand In Hand Parenting Instructor, my kids were 4 and 7.
These tools totally rocked my world and everything started to fall into place in previously-unimaginable ways.
Fast-forward a couple of years and two things happened:
- I got very sick and taken largely out of their lives for a few years
- They became tweens and teens (now 12 and 15)
I went from being very confident with and close to my “little kids” - to being not-so-close to these very different creatures - who were suddenly extremely proficient at eroding my confidence with a glance.
Luckily, at that exact point as I was emerging from the worst of the debilitating illness, another Hand-In-Hand instructor announced that she’d like to get a group of instructors together to support each other with adolescents.
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That group became my lifeline for the past year and a half.
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A LIFELINE! I kid you not. (Pardon the pun)
It was eye-opening and massively relieving to discover that I wasn’t the only person struggling. Even these other capable instructors who had been parenting their younger children really effectively and knew this approach inside-out were also coming dramatically unstuck at this point.
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We listened to each other a lot. We also gave one person the chance to be coached by the others on a particular issue each week. With the support of this gorgeous group of wise, loving and determined parents, I’ve managed to really turn things around with my two.
Coming out of the woods, I started to wonder: if we, the instructors, are struggling when we understand these tools so well - how on earth is everyone else managing?
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 And then local parenting colleagues Helena Mooney and Lizzie Dekkers both approached me separately, asking me to run a course for this age-group because they both have tweens and teens. It suddenly seems obviously time to offer this out more widely... So we’ve joined forces, and are so thrilled to be able to share the insights with you!
BEFORE
"My 11-year-old was having difficulties with his mental health. He was self-harming, explosive, he had withdrawn into his phone and it was a battle every morning to get him into school. I was tearing my hair out and felt like such a failure. My relationship with his father was breaking down as a result of the stress... I couldn’t give my youngest the attention she needed because I was so overwhelmed."
AFTER
"I was immediately reassured by Roma’s warm and encouraging advice. I left the first session feeling like I was on cloud 9! It was the first time in months that I’d been able to feel any hope... Over time, she helped me see that things from my childhood were getting in the way of me helping my son. My son is now enjoying life and school. Our relationship is better than it has ever been."
More about this approach