Kauai cliffs nourished by land and sea. Photo: P. D. Corning
Powerful Mothering uses three Super Tools to begin to help you know moment-by-moment what is most important.
Knowing what is most important helps you focus on what matters and where your care will have the most impact. This helps you to keep and expand your power.
When you know which choice is the “next good thing”, suddenly you know exactly what to nourish in this moment. Then decisions become power points where you can increase your confidence, influence and power in your home rather than something you agonize over.
It is the small decisions, made moment-by-moment that piece-by-piece create what you want and help you to feed and nourish your child.
Nurture, Tend, Defend
The three Super Tools of Powerful Mothering that help you know what is most important in any moment are NURTURE, TEND and DEFEND.
NURTURE:
Teaches you to recognize and focus upon what matters so you nourish that as your first priority. Nurture shows you how to recognize what needs to be fed, how to nourish yourself and your children, and how to strengthen the web which cradles your family and keeps it whole. Relationship is the web that holds you and your child together in tenderness and it is this web which lets you communicate with your child with the best impact.
TEND:
Repairing the relational web daily.
Photo: P. D. Corning
Teaches you how to strengthen and repair yourself, your family and the relationship web on a daily basis.
This tool helps you clearly see what needs support, structure, safety or guidance in your child or family. It focuses on showing you how to fix any part of your parenting relationship or child’s self that have been harmed, torn or broken.
This keeps the web strong, helps your child to feel held securely and safe in care and love. In turn this builds trust and positive expectancy in your child which enable them to face the world with confidence, curiosity and openness. A safe child is a learning child.
Be an unyielding wall that protects your family.
Photo: P. D. Corning
DEFEND:
Teaches you how to hold and enforce boundaries that are strong enough to protect the tender vulnerability of your child.
The good that comes from Powerful Mothering requires protecting children at vulnerable stages and preventing damage to a child’s tendrils of new growth.
If new aspects of the self are cut down in the vulnerable emerging stage they struggle to return and grow anew. Defend ensures that your child’s new growth is strengthened and can consolidate in safety.
Defend is how you ensure that your child’s ongoing capacity for new growth is shielded and strengthened. The Defend tool focuses on teaching you to provide the necessary conditions for this to occur.
In each section of this site you will learn how to nourish, strengthen and protect new growth in yourself and your children. Powerful Mothering teaches you how to do this step-by-step. There will be new resources added regularly: audios, videos and other tools to help you along the way.
It is the gentle steps in everyday life that will rebuild your safety and expand it, not being pushed or forced, or panicking because you think you can’t do enough.
You can relax. You never have to do more than enough.
Powerful Mother Training will help you to nourish what matters, tend to what needs strengthening or repair, and defend what is vulnerable or growing in yourself and your children. Good things will then blossom…it is inevitable.
All you have to do is the tiniest next step in your learning and look forward to beautiful things blooming ahead!
With care, Dr. T