• Are you a parent, teacher or adult who cares about children and their well-being? 
• Do you long to have more tools to create the kind of relationships that nurture children’s mental health?
• Do you want to know how to shift misunderstandings, hurts and outbursts of anger into connection?

In this ten-week online course, you will get together with other parents, teachers, and adults who care to explore how Nonviolent Communication, seasoned with coaching and child development theory, can light up the challenges YOU face in your everyday life. You’ll learn practical ways of improving communication, reducing conflicts, and cultivating emotional resilience - yours and the kids - at home or in the classroom.
You will also explore how to use needs-based coaching insights and tools to move through those big, puzzling behaviors or understand why your child refuses to engage.

By the end of this course, you can expect to feel more confident in navigating challenges and better equipped to create a safe, supportive environment that encourages children's mental and emotional well-being.

This course is for you if you are a parent, teacher or adult who spends time with children and you care about warm, loving presence, a relationship of trust, about boundaries, and guidance. We will NOT meet you with a pointed finger and tell you what to do. On the contrary, expect these meetings to be a brain spa with nurturance for you in the caregiver's role, and that YOUR needs matter here.

We intend you to leave with an understanding of why your child is behaving in puzzling ways - and how to support them without getting stuck and fruitless demands and disappointment. 

You will learn how to ask so children answer - and know when to stay silent; and you will build your capacity to remain present with children’s big feelings - even when they seem overwhelming, and find ways to be a bit more playful, a bit lighter, inviting a bit more fun. 

We are committed to having you laugh every time we meet and to ripple the fun to your children.

In other words, you will:

• Learn the core principles of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and how to apply them in everyday situations with children.
• Gain practical coaching skills to strengthen your connection with children at home or in the classroom.
• Discover questions that cultivate deeper connections and help you engage authentically with children.
• Explore the nature of the nervous system and how it predicts interactions, and how this understanding can improve your exchanges.
• Practice various ways of listening that allow you to hear beyond children’s words and behaviors.
• Gain insights into your own reactions and behaviors, helping you become more self-aware and at choice in your interactions

Topics covered in the sessions include:

1. Coaching: Meeting the child at eye level.
2. Discovering their needs: Making sense of annoying and worrisome behaviors
3. Understanding feelings as messages we can decode 
4. The logic of the nervous system
5. Listening beyond words and behaviors
6. Deepening our understanding of feelings: The motivation they bring
7. Recognizing attachment styles - yours and your child’s
8. Inviting play
9. Consent and moving through “yes” and “no”
10. Repair and coming back to connection

Course structure

We meet for two hours every week for ten weeks. 
We will present theories and assumptions, applicable tools, and practice every week.
This rhythm enables you to apply the approaches at home or school, begin integrating your new skills - and observe the effects. There will be opportunities for asking questions and discussing implementation with the instructor and your peers.

We will provide handouts that support understanding and integrating the core concepts. We suggest you practice and do simple exercises with a peer every week to further your learning process. This is voluntary, and we will organize it for those who are interested.

Is this your training?

If you interact with children regularly and would love more respect, ease and collaboration, this is for you.

You may worry about what is happening inside a quiet child or struggle with a child’s aggressive or unresponsive behavior.  Or you may find it hard to set boundaries while respecting the child’s feelings and needs. Our aim is that you will gain confidence in handling these situations - and grow compassion for yourself in the very important, very challenging role it is to be a parent or teacher. Or someone who cares about children.

About the timing

Please notice that this training is perfect for people from Europe (morning hours), Asia (mid-day hours), Australia (afternoon hours), and New Zealand (early evening hours).

If you live in the Americas, you must be up while others are sleeping to attend the training. If you desire something similar in America-friendly timing, please write to us.

About the trainers

Anna Banas is a mum of three, a parenting and communication coach, lecturer, and a Nonviolent Communication trainer.

Her mission is to help parents create healthy relationships with their children and themselves and parent in a way that brings more joy and connection. She does that by offering coaching sessions, consultations and workshops for parents, teachers and caregivers.

Her unique skill combines child development science with nonviolent communication and coaching. She supports parents in finding practical approaches to intentionally connect with their children and move away from unhelpful beliefs, behaviors, and thoughts. Her work as a researcher and lecturer in Early Childhood Education and child development underpins all her consultations and training.

As she says: "Because regardless of what your child says, does or chooses not to do - parenting is about you!"

Pernille Plantener, a mother of adult children and grandmother to seven grandchildren aged 0-8, echoes Marshall Rosenberg's sentiment: "Get grandchildren. That's when you can make up for your shortcomings as a parent."

She has created a coaching program called Needs-Based Coaching, rooted in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), which she has taught to hundreds of NVC practitioners over the past decade. Pernille believes that NVC is less about specific language and more about understanding our innermost selves and connecting with others from a place of grounding within and curiosity toward them, regardless of how they express themselves. This approach is especially important in interactions with children.

Since 2013, Pernille has been studying Resonant Healing with CNVC trainer and neuroscience educator Sarah Peyton. The insights she has gained into the human brain, along with her own healing from developmental traumas, have equipped her to stay present and deeply connect in her conversations with children and adults.