Embracing the idea that our children deserve our honesty, vulnerability, and leadership, you'll discover a powerful framework for raising your family with integrity and confidence. Giving and receiving the trust, communication, cooperation, respect, and joy that every parent and child deserves, ultimately allows our children to become the leaders our future so desperately needs.A groundbreaking examination of parenting, written by the founder of the world's leading parent coaching institute.
I had a chance to learn more in this interview.
What is Peaceful Parenting?
The easiest way to explain peaceful parenting is to explain what it’s not. It can be best explained with what we call the 3 P’s:
It’s not Permissive
One of the largest misconceptions about peaceful parenting is that somehow Peaceful Parenting is “anything goes” parenting. As peaceful parents, we do not abdicate the responsibility of teaching our children the values and life-skills that will guide them through life. This looks drastically different from permissive parenting, where the parent lacks or doesn’t uphold boundaries, rules and limits.
Peaceful Parenting is about shared empowerment and rectifying power inbalances, whether it’s the parent overpowering (dominant, authoritarian parenting), or the parent being underpowered (permissive parenting). Peaceful parenting creates a space where the needs of the parent and child are valid, heard, and aimed to be understood, and collaborative solutions and agreements are created through communication. Which leads us to the second “P,” because in Peaceful Parenting, communication is the replacement for punishment.
It’s not Punitive
In Peaceful Parenting, we don’t resort to punishments, enforced consequences, threats, or even external tools of positive reinforcement like sticker charts or bribes to change our children’s behavior.
We know what you’re thinking: kids need consequences.
And you’re right, they do. But in Peaceful Parenting, we allow life’s consequences to help us teach our children accountability, autonomy, and responsibility. Instead of shaming them for their behavior we guide them to take responsibility for, and learn from their mistakes.
We don’t believe that it’s our role to prepare kids for the “real world” with ideas like “tough love.” Rather, our role is to be there for them when they experience the real world. We do this through teaching them logical consequences (if there’s a mess, we clean up the mess), over arbitrary consequences (if you don’t do your homework, you don’t get to see your friends).
Even though enforced consequences are a common practice in traditional parenting, they don’t teach children anything, other than that they should be compliant. Peaceful Parenting looks beyond the traditional strategies of parenting that use fear, control and manipulation to “get kids to behave,” to better prepare them for the ups and downs of life and to allow our kids to thrive as fulfilled and mature adults.
It’s not Perfect
When you hear the words “Peaceful Parenting”, you may imagine a parent who keeps their cool 100% of the time, never makes mistakes with their kids, and totally has it all together. This is NOT the case. We’re parents, not parenting robots.
One of our core beliefs at the Jai Institute for Parenting is that all behavior is an indication of a need, and whether that need has been met or unmet. Even though this relates to our kids, we’re no exception to this as adults. Being a parent comes with constant challenges and pressures, and we’re bound to have our own “tantrums” due to unmet needs within ourselves. Even though Peaceful Parenting isn’t perfect, it does give us the tools and framework to better navigate through tough moments and show up as best as possible no matter the circumstance.
Most importantly we model REPAIR. Meaning that when we mess up, we take responsibility and model conscientious forgiveness so that our kids can learn this too! All of us make mistakes. What matters is how we take responsibility for them!
How did peaceful parenting get started?
If you look at a lot of indigenous and non-western cultures, this is the way that parenting is held and has been held for a long time. Although this method of parenting looks similar to non-western approaches to parenting, Peaceful Parenting is beyond space and time. It isn’t owned by any culture or background, it’s the method of parenting that proves to be the most effective, based on scientific studies and our growing understanding of child and brain development.
In Western culture, we’re finally seeing the value in preserving children’s self-esteem, confidence, and autonomy through parenting in a way that doesn’t require inflicting pain (physical, emotional or relational) and unintentional harm.
We’re not bypassing our responsibilities when we’re peaceful, we’re simply using communication to teach, model, and guide our children, over more traditional punishments and consequences. Parenting peacefully requires us to not only trust the efficacy of the way we parent, but most importantly, it requires us to trust that our children will learn over time as we teach them consistently with patience, presence, and peace.
What are the benefits of peaceful parenting?
It Develops Deeper Trust and Connection
Peaceful parenting promotes an environment with trust, empathy, and an aim to understand the “why” behind behavior at any given moment. A family culture that prioritizes meeting needs and practices nonviolent communication, creates a stronger foundation for building intimate, long-lasting relationships between parent and child. Too many adults lack authentic connection with their parents because there is resentment from their childhoods. Peaceful Parenting preserves the relationship so that the parenting relationship remains strong. This means we have to focus on building a foundation of trust and connection.
It Reduces Stress (for you and your child!)
Creating more understanding and trust in the home reduces stress by removing any power struggles or misunderstandings. It is very stressful to see your child act out and think that it’s because they’re defiant or something is wrong with them. Peaceful parenting provides a shift in the way we view behavior, and gives context around developmentally normal behavior in children. When we know that it’s extremely difficult for a child to self-regulate due to what’s happening in their brain, we have much less fear about how “good” they are, and much more compassion, understanding, and yes, ease. And our kids feel our stress, so they’ll experience that new-found peace too.
It Teaches Them Healthy Relationship Patterns to Bring Into Adulthood
Across the board on studies and advancements in psychology, we see that one thing is true: a child’s first human relationships pave the way for the relationships they'll have for the rest of their lives. This means we have a huge responsibility to model healthy, fulfilling relationships to our kids, starting with the bond we form with them. When we practice building secure attachment, which is a core value in Peaceful Parenting, our children seek out healthier, securely-attached relationships that will support them rather than take away from them.
How can parents adjust to a new way of parenting?
We know that changing the way you parent can present certain challenges, either within yourself, or within your community. Even though shifting your parenting style to a more peaceful one can be a process that calls for A LOT of patience, the long-term impact and benefit it has is beyond worth it. Here are some actionable steps to get you started in the transition to practicing peaceful parenting:
- Get clear on your parenting intentions
This may look like listing out your main values, and thinking of ways to incorporate them into activities or boundaries that you practice with your kids. For example, if you have a value of connection and togetherness, a family boundary may be that no one uses screens at the dinner table.
Getting clear on your parenting intentions also looks like thinking about things you do or don’t want to practice moving forward in your parenting. If you want to let go of yelling and start practicing nonviolent communication, or steps away from your nightly habit of scrolling that could instead be used for quiet play or presence, these are intentions. This is all about building values-based boundaries for yourself and your family.
- Education is the greatest gift for both you and your family
We jump into parenting with the expectation that we’ll just figure it all out, but how much better would it be if we had the knowledge and tools so that we didn’t have to? There’s no amount of money we wouldn’t spend for our kids, but we often don’t think about how we can be investing in ourselves and our parenting and how THAT is one of the best gifts that we can give them. Investing in programs, and even coaching, is one of the greatest investments to reach your parenting goals, and also to have access to the accountability that will keep you on track. You can find a directory of our Certified Parenting Coaches at jaiinstituteforparenting.com!
- Surround yourself with support and a like-minded community
Community is vital, especially when it comes to parenting! Navigating anything new, like adjusting to a new parenting style, can leave you feeling like you’re the only one on that path. Surrounding yourself with like-minded parents who are also passionate about parenting their kids peacefully will give you the support and connection you need on your unique parenting journey.
When we train our Parenting Coach this is probably one of the biggest things we hear: “I no longer feel so alone in my commitment to parent differently than the way everyone else is parenting! PHEW!!”
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We have an awareness that some of the things we’ve mentioned about Peaceful Parenting sound DIFFERENT, and that’s why we wrote a book about it. If you have skepticism around this model of parenting, we invite you to consider how you felt when you were punished and treated as a child. You might get curious about how it felt to be yelled at in moments where you wish you could have just explained yourself, and also to consider how those kinds of moments have impacted your relationship with your parents both then and now.
There is value in following tradition, but in Peaceful Parenting, we’re choosing to leave behind the things that make children feel small and like they don’t deserve a space in this world to have a voice. We ask, “what if the ideas and truths we were raised with are actually not true?”
This said, no one ever wants to do wrong by their kids, and that’s why we’re here to shed a light on the best possible path towards supporting them to grow up to become the best version of themselves.
About Kiva:
Kiva Schuler is the founder of the Jai Institute for Parenting which has been training parenting coaches globally since 2011, and most importantly… Mom to Myles and Charlotte, who inspired her journey toward her life’s work, which is to change the world by changing how parents parent. Kiva’s passion for parenting stemmed from her own childhood experiences of neglect and trauma. Like many of her generation, she had a front-row seat to witness what she did not want for her children. In many ways, Jai is the fulfillment of a promise that she made to herself when she was 16 years old… that when she had children of her own, she would learn to parent them with compassion, consistency, and communication. Kiva is a serial entrepreneur and has been the marketer behind many transformational brands. Passionate about bringing authenticity and integrity to marketing and sales, she’s a sought-after mentor, speaker, and coach. Check out Kiva on:
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