Welcome back to the Aware Parenting Stories podcast. In today's episode I’m thrilled to be joined once again by Dr. Aletha Solter, the founder of Aware Parenting, to talk about her inspiring and thought-provoking new book, Raising Joyful Lifelong Learners. Her latest book explores how we can best nurture children's intrinsic love of learning through connection, emotional safety, trust and play.

Dr Solter explores some of the main misunderstandings in our education systems about learning that are ineffective, stressful and harmful for children and shares how children learn, what motivates children to learn and how we can evaluate children's learning in ways that are not stressful for children. She shares some of the ways that school can be stressful and traumatic for children, and how stress and trauma affect children's behaviour and learning. We talk about the role of play in both learning and healing from stress and trauma and she shares ways to support children to heal. She shares why punishments and rewards have a detrimental impact on learning and what to do instead of praise and criticism. We discuss some of the ways that our own trauma is often triggered in parenting and how to support ourselves to heal so we are better able to support our children. She clarifies the aware parenting perspective on the term neurodiversity and explains some of the possible causes of behaviours that often lead to a diagnosis of ADHD. We talk about her 12 Principles of Learning and how we can trust our children in learning and support them to love learning throughout their life.

I highly recommend this book for parents, educators and anyone who cares about children and their future. I truly hope it helps inspire a shift in how we approach education and learning, so that parents, schools, education policy makers and those who choose to homeschool can all better meet the emotional and developmental needs of children, and truly support their natural joy, curiousity and love of learning.

To learn more about Aletha Solter and Aware Parenting, please visit www.awareparenting.com

If you would like support with this or any other aspect of Aware Parenting, I invite you to get in touch [email protected]