“Core Concepts of Creative Edge Focusing (TM) approach to parenting: 

• In order to raise children for today’s world, parents must “mentor” their children for independent and flexible problem solving and decision making.  Children need guides, mentors : Yoda of Star Wars, not authoritarian police man.

• Children have natural access to the “intuitive sensing” central to Intuitive Focusing . This inner guide leads to independent decision making, having a “conscience,” and having a satisfying life which fulfills one’s unique “blueprint,” specific talents and aspirations.

• Positive Parenting helps children maintain and develop this “inner guide.” Using Focused Listening,  parents learn to help children find their own solutions to problems.

• Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse are the enemy of developing this inner sensing, this conscience and guide for independent decision making.  They exactly teach children to dissociate from their bodies, from their “felt experiencing” or “intuitive feel.”

• Educating parents for child rearing is not enough; parents must heal their own “Inner Children” before they can radically alter their behavior toward their children. The PRISMS/S Problem Solving Process, with Core Skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening,  is needed for change at the level of Paradigms, cognitive/emotional/behavioral “schemata” that determine behavior, emotions, and thinking. The kaleidoscope has to turn….

• Parents can learn to use Focused Listening and Intuitive Focusing in their own relationship. The Creative Edge Pyramid includes applications of PRISMS/S at many levels. Parents can help each other with Inner Child healing through Focusing Partnership turns. They can also use Interpersonal Focusing to resolve conflicts between themselves in terms of parenting styles

• Parenting support groups are absolutely essential. Parents sharing with other parents can help them weather crises in their marriages or single parenthood. The essence of support groups is (a) you are not alone. You are not the only one experiencing these things (b) you are all experts. Using the resources among you, you can solve problems, move mountains. Focusing Groups and Focusing Communities provide self-help, peer counseling models for support groups.

Four Applications of Listening/Focusing to Parenting

The Core Skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening  can be applied to parenting in four different ways, two primarily for your children, and two primarily for yourselves as parents. I call this Inner/Outer Parenting…….”

Read more, with links to self-help skills mentioned above, and download articles on

“Parents As Mirrors: Preventing Narcissism,”

“Setting Limits While Allowing Choices” 

“Positive Parenting: Listening to Your Self, Listening to Your Partner, Listening to Your Child”

at Creative Edge Focusing, Interest Area: Positive Parenting, http://www.cefocusing.com/isthisyou/3a1d.php

Three other interesting sites about Positive Parenting:

Jane Nelson (author of Positive Discipline, my favorite book on parenting)’s site, www.positivediscipline.com

The Parent To Parent Training Program at CHADD (national organization for Children and Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder, www.chadd.org

Resources and training from the Positive Parenting program, www.positiveparenting.com

Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director

Creative Edge Focusing (TM)

www.cefocusing.com