Workshop 1: Expectations of Being a Child

Nature? Nurture? Culture? How to understand my role as a child and as a parent. Our parenting styles are unique and highly personal and at the same time influenced by a complex matrix of psychological, social, political, environmental and economic factors; cultural norms and differences, history, intergenerational biography, habits, temperaments and personal characteristics.

Workshop 2: Boundaries, Barriers and Discipline

Why do we discipline our children? Does discipline contribute towards nurturing a child’s character and personality? In this workshop we will explore the role of discipline and safety, boundaries, barriers and defences in our parent-child relationships. How did we learn them? How do we impart them to our children, why are they important and why do we find discipline so challenging? 

Workshop 3: The Effect of Parental Guilt and the Legacy of Family Secrets on Family Dynamics.

Parental guilt is born out of many things. Sometimes we regret things we say and do, or neglect to do for our children. In retrospect we wish we responded differently, but it’s hard to capitulate! What are your family legacies? There are memories we store which are fun to recall, there are secrets that can create strain and miscommunication within families and there are some legacies we don’t quite understand and may not even realise exist yet they are passed on from one generation to another.

Workshop 4: Sibling Relationships within the Family of Origin and their impact beyond the family

“The family is the first society that a child encounters, and relating to other members of the family is the initial political life. Family loyalty is the basis for learning how to interact with other people generally.” (Confucian maxim)

In this workshop we will uncover the profound effect our siblings have on our lives and consider how we, as relatives, want to help promote healthy sibling dynamics. Our siblings are the people who witness our growth and development into adults and will probably know us for longer than anyone else in our lifetime.  The way we relate to them produces a pattern for the way we relate to people outside the family.

We are incubated in the same womb as our full siblings, we have the DNA of both our parents yet we are different, we are similar, but unique. We love each other we expect to be able to trust each other, we look out for each other, we share the joys, sorrows and responsibilities of family life together…and we are rivalrous, jealous, and envy each other’s position in the family.

In composite families the dynamic is often reconfigured as we make room for other sisters and brothers. Only children discover their “siblings” through their friendship networks. Sibling relationships provide the possibility of exploring how we want to relate to the world and influence the way we want to nurture our own children. They allow us to explore the archetypes, while the relationships change during the maturation process into adulthood.

******