Parenting the Soul of Your Child is an approach to parenting that focuses more on the inner life of the child and less on external outcomes. Instead of aiming for obedience and compliance, we aim for teaching your child life-time gifts of self-insight and thinking well. Insight and thinking well are the guiding stars of rearing a child to be safe, moral, respectful, responsible, rational, reflective and resilient. These values shape our working with all conflict and behavioral issues.

The classes in Fall Session #1 make a case against a focus on “check the box” parenting (grades, friends, behavior, orderliness, video games, social media, irresponsibility, telling falsehoods, etc.). As is age appropriate, we should reason with a child before just ordering them around. We will discuss the specific issues mentioned above (and more), but from an inner life perspective, as all behavior is rooted in the inner life.

We will also discuss how to understand the particular personality of your child and the inner life and moral character toward which they should be striving.

First Class:  The concept “parenting the soul/inner life of the child” / What “parenting the soul” is not - “check the box parenting,” / The key to parenting the soul – more teaching insight, less demanding compliance / focus on safe, moral, respectful, insightful, rational, and responsible.

Second Class: Typical parental expectations and frustrations: “running inside the house,” not following rules, talking back, disrespect, defiance, disobedience, cleaning the room, dinner, chores, squabbling with siblings, odious friends and romantic interests, procrastination, lying, grades, school, college, general non-compliance – and parenting the soul responses / The basic good parenting techniques.

Third Class: Review of the above / Parent’s inner resistance to or forgetting the “Parenting the Soul” approach when it matters most / Life Coach vs. Authority Figure

Fourth Class: Why is my child like this? / Basic child and adolescent developmental psychology / Wisdom Work and Parenting the Soul – Reducing anger, criticism and complaining, advice giving, solving / Develop the Sounding Board approach

Fall Session II - November: 
Guiding Your Child Through Suffering

$100 for all four sessions, one person per screen
($80 for members of Ohr HaTorah Synagogue)

$160 for all four sessions, two people per screen
($120 for members of Ohr HaTorah Synagogue)

Once you make your payment, you'll receive an automatic confirmation email with a link to register on Zoom. You must register on Zoom to obtain the meeting ID & PW and the weekly class recordings. Save the email from Zoom (as you only receive it once) and use it every week to log-in.

(Students will be sent a link to a recording of each class. The link to the recording expires after seven days.
We will not be able to accommodate requests for retrieval of the recording after the expiry date.)