Being allowed to guide a child or young person towards adulthood requires both art and skill. Your own attitude to life plays an important role, the tone in which you speak, the way you move and, above all, the baggage you bring with you from your own childhood and life. You can learn from every interaction with a child. In this sense, parenting is also always educating yourself.
For a while, educators thought that more of the good would also be better: the more obedient a child, the better; or conversely, the freer we let a child be, the better. Today, we know that even the 'good' behaviours like 'unconditional acceptance' can lead to big problems if they are applied unilaterally for too long. After all, a child needs guidance and boundaries in addition to acceptance.
The premise of the Double Healix approach, on which this course is based, is that good parenting is always about reconciling conflicting processes. This course is therefore called Double Healix Parenting Balances. The aim of the course is to introduce you to thinking and acting from the perspective of fields of tension and conflicting needs in the child.
In the course, we distinguish six areas of tension within which a parenting balance is sought. Essentially, it is about learning to balance and reconcile the most important areas of tension in all of humanity. The areas of tension are recognised worldwide in different types of research, such as in the cultural research by Fons Trompenaars and in the global personality research of the Hexaco model.
We have developed these six areas of tension in the Double Healix model for the benefit of pedagogy. The idea is that if educators offer a healthy balance, children and young people themselves will be better able to balance conflicting basic qualities.
The course consists of six chapters in total, each covering one Parenting Balance. We discuss the Parenting Balances through examples from feature films and documentaries. We will also offer reflection questions and exercises.
From this online course you will be able to take away:
- an even sharper sense of perception,
- appealing examples of how to find balance and sometimes how not to do it, perhaps,
- new concepts for balanced parenting,
- an occasion for a good conversation with fellow educators or colleagues and the exchange of experiences.
The course can be taken as a stand-alone training, but is also regularly used in youth welfare organisations in combination with live master classes led by our Double Healix trainers.
The course is designed to provide you as a parenting support worker, social worker, behavioural specialist, educator, family therapist, etc. with various theoretical and practical tools. Educators themselves can also benefit from this course, noting that we also discuss examples of major parenting challenges.
