Synopses & Reviews
Can one live peacefully and in the moment in the midst of homework meltdowns, sibling squabbles, and digital media battles? Marriage and family therapist Susan Stiffelman does more than say yes,” she shows how. In
Parenting with Presence, she helps parents identify the triggers that take them out of rational thought and into bribes or threats, and recognize when their own marriage, health, or job issues are hurting their relationship with their kids. She then shows how to nurture or perhaps initiate the kind of connection that leads kids to
want to talk to parents. While Stiffelman is a lifelong innovator she taught herself Hindi at sixteen, began mediating decades before it was commonplace, and has traveled around the world with her son her techniques are decidedly down to earth and her tone the one of someone who understands the walk she talks.
Review
Praise for Susan Stiffelmans
Parenting without Power Struggles:
Should be required reading for all parents.” Harville Hendrix, Ph.D, author of Giving the Love That Heals
Review
Shows parents how they can transform parenting into a spiritual practice.”
Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now
Clear, wise, soulful, and poetic.”
Alanis Morissette
I trust Susan Stiffelman with my heart, my family, and my community because she understands that parenting is not just a job but a spiritual practice. Susan comes alongside parents both as an expert and as a guide, a counselor, a friend, a healer.”
Glennon Doyle Melton, author of Carry On, Warrior and founder of Momastery.com
An empathic tenderness runs through this wise and down-to-earth guide to parenting with greater awareness. You can feel the love that Susan Stiffelman has for the families she works with in her therapy practice and her confidence in all of us to grow into the challenges and gifts of being a parent.”
Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn, authors of Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting
With her mix of practical tools and personal stories, Susan Stiffelman shows how to create close, loving family relationships and captures just how transformational and fulfilling parenthood can be.”
Arianna Huffington, author of Thrive
This book brings new awareness about a parenting process that increases the health of our culture itself. Recommended to all parents and parents-to-be.”
Harville Hendrix, PhD, and Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD, authors of Giving the Love That Heals: A Guide for Parents
Synopsis
Our children can be our greatest teachers. Parenting expert Susan Stiffelman writes that the very behaviors that push our buttons refusing to cooperate or ignoring our requests can help us build awareness and shed old patterns, allowing us to raise our children with greater ease and enjoyment. Filled with practical advice, powerful exercises, and fascinating stories from her clinical work, Parenting with Presence teaches us how to become the parents we most want to be while raising confident, caring children.
About the Author
Susan Stiffelman is a licensed Marriage and Family therapist, credentialed teacher, and educational therapist in Malibu, California. Through her presence as the Huffington Post's weekly parenting advice columnist (Parent Coach), her private psychotherapy practice, her international public presentations, her phone coaching, webinars, magazine and newspaper articles, interviews and active website, Susan has become a source of advice and support for hundreds of thousands of parents longing to raise joyful and resilient kids in a fast-paced world.
Initially a teacher, Susan discovered early in her career that childrens natural curiosity and passion for learning were often diminished when their school years began. As a result, she homeschooled her own son, Ari, until he was 11 years old, and again during his 9th grade year when they traveled around the world. (Her son recently graduated from college with a major in International Studies and is now the Youth Coordinator for Marianne Williamson's congressional campaign.)
Susan developed a reputation for working privately with creative children who were very bright but often floundering academically because of learning style problemsnot infrequently the offspring of leading talent in the creative music and film industry in Los Angeles. Her practice evolved to address the emotional aspects that either contribute to or result from learning problems, and she works with a high percentage of children and adults with the ADD label, depression, and anxiety.
She also works extensively with parents who are in need of restoring a fractured connection to their children or teens. While many therapists focus on techniques for getting kids to cooperate, Susans focus is on working with parents to restore right relationship” and reestablish their role as the calm and confident guardian in their childs life. Parents who utilize her approach report profound and often immediate improvement in their relationship with their child and his/her willingness to cooperate and connect.
Susan is a visionary and innovator who brings creativity and resourcefulness to whatever she does. At the age of sixteen, she taught herself the Hindi language, calling people named Singh” out of the telephone book to improve her conversational skills. She started a lifelong meditation practice as a teenager living in the middle of Kansas, long before it was in vogue. Several years ago she bravely took her then-fifteen-year-old son on a nearly three-month trip around the world, volunteering in Tanzania, visiting baby chimps at a Jane Goodall sanctuary in Africa, and zip-lining across rivers in New Zealand.
Eckhart Tolle is a sought-after speaker and teacher, and the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Power of Now and A New Earth. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.