Well, we have finally got around to starting a new parents workbook. We have set ourselves the rather ambitious target of getting a first draft ready for the Conscious Parenting Workshop this Thursday!
Bill has been writing the introduction today and we thought we would share the first part on the blog......
"Conscious Parenting
This workbook invites you to take a new look at your child.
At a practical level the information provided will give you an insight into how your child experiences their world. The resulting understanding will provide you with a greater awareness of the issues your child faces and in many cases we present useful tools to help you create an environment most conducive to your child’s development.
At a more profound level the information provided could well change the way you experience your world. We believe that the current generation of youngsters are offering us an opportunity to move beyond our current framework of limiting structures and patterns into a world of possibility. To access that world of possibility we need to develop a greater connection with present time. If you fully embrace the message contained within this workbook you will come to realise that the most powerful effect you can have on your child is by becoming fully aware of your own experience of the world.
Ghandi said “ be the change you would like to see in the world.” If we want our children to demonstrate a state of emotional well-being we must be in that state ourselves.
This workbook does not attempt to tell you how to parent. In fact it is often our attempts to be “good” parents which gets in the way of our authentic human responses to our children. We would rather you first get in touch with your feelings and instincts and then trust them, blocking out those chattering residents in your head telling you how you are falling short or failing as parents.
We do not claim to be experts. Just parents. Parents who were told their children were failing. Parents whose children dragged them out of complacency into an exciting world of possibility. We believe that if you have are reading this workbook you are at the beginning of an exciting journey. A cliche perhaps, but there is something really exciting happening with our children and they are asking us to wake up and join in. They will create something new and exciting with or without us, they would just like us to join in!"
What is going on with our children?
Hypersensitivity
As the list of labels grow, so do the numbers of children on those lists. A collection of symptoms or behaviours which fall outside normal expectations are grouped together to form a diagnosis. Parents relieved to have their concerns recognised are soon disappointed as the choices presented to them seem limited and convey little real understanding of the child behind the label. Medication and a little extra support in the classroom seem to miss the point.
It is a gross simplification to ascribe the many differences our children present to one factor, but the children, and in many cases adults, we have helped have one common characteristic. They are all hypersensitive in one or more senses. The world they experience is too loud, too bright, too abrasive, in fact too everything!
Acute sensory sensitivity in itself is not necessarily a problem. In fact those sensitivities are more often than not our gifts. Hypersensitivity becomes a problem when it moves a child into stress through their sensory experience. Simply stated, many of the issues and challenges which we find confusing in our children are just expressions of fight/flight or survival behaviour induced by stress.
The behaviours are often confusing because the source of stress is seldom obvious and one of the aims of this workbook is to help you better understand how your child experiences their world. Once you understand their perceptions you will come to realise that their behaviours are not only perfectly logical but also pretty much how you would respond to the same experience. The fact is we have never encountered a knowingly naughty or stupid child, just individuals who are having a different experience to us.
One final point about hypersensitivity is that it extends beyond five senses. This is perhaps the most important thing to understand about this current generation of children. They are acutely aware of their energetic environment and will be very attuned to how their environment feels. Their environment includes the feelings of those around them, particularly those very close to them emotionally. These children quite literally feel their way through life and are more likely to be aware of our true emotional state than we are. Words are frequently secondary and confusing to these children as they feel rather than think their way through life."
Monday, 28 March 2011
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Google Adwords and Horse Boy Event
Bill has been continuing to work on The Zone Golf Pendant site today. If you Google Zone Golf Pendant, Brain Integration and Golf Pendants our site comes up on the front page. On top of that he has started a Google Adwords Pay Per Click Campaign. The Zone Golf Pendant ad comes up if you Google The Yips, Better Golf, Slice and Improve your Golf. A really good start - especially given the level of competition.
Next stop - PR
Meanwhile I have been getting to grips with The Horse Boy event. Following Bill's experience with the Zone Pendant I have decided to set up a separate web site for the event www.anewlookatautism.com. This will give us the opportunity to build the energy separately for the event and run another Google adwords campaign. I am also going to use the same PR material from the Chris Cardell Entrepreneurs Summit to promote the event.
Next stop - PR
Meanwhile I have been getting to grips with The Horse Boy event. Following Bill's experience with the Zone Pendant I have decided to set up a separate web site for the event www.anewlookatautism.com. This will give us the opportunity to build the energy separately for the event and run another Google adwords campaign. I am also going to use the same PR material from the Chris Cardell Entrepreneurs Summit to promote the event.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Introducing The Zone Golf Pendant
Well we did it just! Friday 6pm and web site published. Ready for business. Have a look at www.thezonegolfpendant.com.
Interestingly it followed the same format as when I used the programme to create Cornucopia. Day one - the idea, day two - creating the space, day three - making the product, day four - the web site. This makes me even more confident that we can make this into a four day Business Start-up Workshop for anyone wanting to create a new business.
We will now look at optimising our site for Google, a google adwords campaign and building a PR campaign - again using material we picked up at the Chris Cardell Entrepreneur's Summit. We can then wrap this into a further two or three day Business Builder Workshop.
Interestingly it followed the same format as when I used the programme to create Cornucopia. Day one - the idea, day two - creating the space, day three - making the product, day four - the web site. This makes me even more confident that we can make this into a four day Business Start-up Workshop for anyone wanting to create a new business.
We will now look at optimising our site for Google, a google adwords campaign and building a PR campaign - again using material we picked up at the Chris Cardell Entrepreneur's Summit. We can then wrap this into a further two or three day Business Builder Workshop.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Day three
Well day three of our four day challenge and we have hit the buffers.... By the end of yesterday we had revised the name of the pendant to the zone pendant. We think we will go for www.thezonependant.com. as the web site name.
We have been struggling to come up with an identity that would work across the golf market and the exam stress market. The Zone Pendant seems perfect. After our Edutherapy years one thing we know a great deal about is brain integration and we will be able to put information about how brain integration is affected by stress and also how it impacts our performance.
Interestingly today it feels as though we have been taken off on a tangent but writing now I think the work we have done today has been creating the product. We have been looking at how to programme the pendants and how to package them. Half way through the afternoon my son phoned to say I had to watch a video on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wx0GfbC0BA. Feel we should be doing this for all our projects.
So tomorrow we have to set up the web site. Fingers crossed.
We have been struggling to come up with an identity that would work across the golf market and the exam stress market. The Zone Pendant seems perfect. After our Edutherapy years one thing we know a great deal about is brain integration and we will be able to put information about how brain integration is affected by stress and also how it impacts our performance.
Interestingly today it feels as though we have been taken off on a tangent but writing now I think the work we have done today has been creating the product. We have been looking at how to programme the pendants and how to package them. Half way through the afternoon my son phoned to say I had to watch a video on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wx0GfbC0BA. Feel we should be doing this for all our projects.
So tomorrow we have to set up the web site. Fingers crossed.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Gimmie
Its been some time since we posted on the blog ......school holidays and too many ideas are the main excuses. Anyway Bill and I have set ourselves a new challenge for this week and we are going public to force us to deliver!
We recently went to an Entrepreneurs Summit organised by Chris Cardell. It was quite an experience. In fact Bill described it to a recent visitor to acreativespace as the most spiritual experience he has had for a long time! We came away fired up and full of ideas....almost too full and it feels as though we have had indigestion for the last five weeks. The problem has been where to start....
Quite honestly we have been floundering around for the last few weeks. Bill was away and then I was away and when we both got back we found ourselves sinking under a mountain of material we had subscribed to in our enthusiasm at the Summit.
Gradually the fog has been clearing and yesterday we returned to the BIG IDEA we arrived at during the Summit. A de-stress pendant. Bill woke up with the idea on the morning of the final day of the Summit.
We have had a number of people mention the Q-Link pendant to us over the past few months. As a golfer, Bill was already aware of this product as it is worn by a number of professional golfers. He realised that with the creative space programme we can run an individually tailored de-stress programme into an e-pendant. It becomes a simple product. A user can then chose to top-up the pendant at a later date if they chose.
As I said we then went down with a major case of indigestion/ovewhelm! But over the last week we have been coming across more and more examples of products similar to the Q-Link. Daily we were finding ourselves on a web site for the Q-Link or the quantum pendant and then David Beckham turned up wearing a Power Balance Band...... ok we get the message. Time to launch our de-stress pendant.
Earlier in the year I set myself the challenge of creating a new business in four days using the creative space programme. It felt like it was time to repeat the challenge. So we are going to create the new de-stress pendant business in four days. Not only will this focus our energy but at the end of the process we will be launching a new intensive four day programme for anyone wanting to create a new business.
Follow our blog to find out how we get on!
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
A brilliant generation
A brilliant generation
Our children are the most tested in the world. Society has become obsessed with measurement. We have arrived at the stage where we are no longer willing to make a decision without the supporting evidence, even when it comes to our children.
In fact we are at a new level of risk aversion where we are no longer willing to trust the means of measurement itself. We often read that employers are dissatisfied with the quality of students they employ and Dr. Richard Pike, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, recently described GCSEs as ‘meaninglessly easy’.
Despite these assertions the current generation of children and young adults continue to outsmart the system. They are absorbing, enhancing, employing and developing an era of technological change that is beyond the scope of any historical comparison.
It is interesting that so many children diagnosed (a medical term for measured) as having learning difficulties are more than comfortable in the new technological arena. They communicate and think in a way which is markedly different from previous generations, yet we insist on educating them with methods and content from an era which is dead.
Our educational system was designed in an industrial age. Taught in a linear manner, the objective is to process as many as possible to a standardised format as cheaply as possible. The fact is that we no longer live in an industrial society. Our children and young adults have grown up in a digital age. Their thinking is by necessity, and some would argue by design, non-linear. With the current speed of change, much of our curriculum, science in particular, could well be described as a history lesson.
Differentiation in the education system still occurs on the basis of being able to reproduce somebody else’s ideas in the pressured environment of an exam. Only those who succeed within that system are entitled to pursue the luxury of free thinking at a higher educational establishment. With grade inflation, the right to free thinking is becoming ever more exclusive as degree level education becomes similarly standardised.
Ironically those still suited to the type of linear thinking and box ticking which affords them the greatest opportunity, and resources, are most likely to have difficulty in adapting to a rapidly changing real world. I believe our children are smarter, more adaptable and certainly more aware than any previous generation. I do not include intelligent because our desire for measurement has so limited the understanding of a word that I feel it is now redundant.
The reason so many children are perceived as a disappointment or are failing in school is not because they are stupid, lazy or naughty. It is because we are teaching them the wrong things in the wrong way. Add to this the fact that the techniques of measurement we use are similarly useless and a clearer understanding of the nature of the problem emerges.
The new world needs new thinking and the new generation are providing it outside the boundaries of education. These brilliant minds will engage when we make it relevant and give them the space to create in. We may not trust our own ability to assess someone without a certificate but let’s allow the young to trust themselves. They may not leave education knowing the same things we were taught, but they will educate themselves in an awful lot more than we could ever have dreamed of.
Have you ever noticed that by the time you have mastered the internet your children are bored of it. Pleased with your first text message they are e-mailing. You master e-mail and they are on Face Book. You open your Face Book account and they are on twitter. We cant keep up and nor should we try Neither should we hold them back by teaching them what is relevant to us. It no longer serves them. Our job is to create the environment and resources to allow them to lead us forward.
Our children are the most tested in the world. Society has become obsessed with measurement. We have arrived at the stage where we are no longer willing to make a decision without the supporting evidence, even when it comes to our children.
In fact we are at a new level of risk aversion where we are no longer willing to trust the means of measurement itself. We often read that employers are dissatisfied with the quality of students they employ and Dr. Richard Pike, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, recently described GCSEs as ‘meaninglessly easy’.
Despite these assertions the current generation of children and young adults continue to outsmart the system. They are absorbing, enhancing, employing and developing an era of technological change that is beyond the scope of any historical comparison.
It is interesting that so many children diagnosed (a medical term for measured) as having learning difficulties are more than comfortable in the new technological arena. They communicate and think in a way which is markedly different from previous generations, yet we insist on educating them with methods and content from an era which is dead.
Our educational system was designed in an industrial age. Taught in a linear manner, the objective is to process as many as possible to a standardised format as cheaply as possible. The fact is that we no longer live in an industrial society. Our children and young adults have grown up in a digital age. Their thinking is by necessity, and some would argue by design, non-linear. With the current speed of change, much of our curriculum, science in particular, could well be described as a history lesson.
Differentiation in the education system still occurs on the basis of being able to reproduce somebody else’s ideas in the pressured environment of an exam. Only those who succeed within that system are entitled to pursue the luxury of free thinking at a higher educational establishment. With grade inflation, the right to free thinking is becoming ever more exclusive as degree level education becomes similarly standardised.
Ironically those still suited to the type of linear thinking and box ticking which affords them the greatest opportunity, and resources, are most likely to have difficulty in adapting to a rapidly changing real world. I believe our children are smarter, more adaptable and certainly more aware than any previous generation. I do not include intelligent because our desire for measurement has so limited the understanding of a word that I feel it is now redundant.
The reason so many children are perceived as a disappointment or are failing in school is not because they are stupid, lazy or naughty. It is because we are teaching them the wrong things in the wrong way. Add to this the fact that the techniques of measurement we use are similarly useless and a clearer understanding of the nature of the problem emerges.
The new world needs new thinking and the new generation are providing it outside the boundaries of education. These brilliant minds will engage when we make it relevant and give them the space to create in. We may not trust our own ability to assess someone without a certificate but let’s allow the young to trust themselves. They may not leave education knowing the same things we were taught, but they will educate themselves in an awful lot more than we could ever have dreamed of.
Have you ever noticed that by the time you have mastered the internet your children are bored of it. Pleased with your first text message they are e-mailing. You master e-mail and they are on Face Book. You open your Face Book account and they are on twitter. We cant keep up and nor should we try Neither should we hold them back by teaching them what is relevant to us. It no longer serves them. Our job is to create the environment and resources to allow them to lead us forward.
Monday, 26 July 2010
Introducing Cornucopia
Over the Easter break I set myself the challenge of creating a new business using the Creative Space Programme. The result is cornucopia.
Last year I did a course to learn how to make creams and gels as I had the idea we could imprint them with frequencies to support people on the Creative Space Programme. I hadn’t managed to progress the idea until Good Friday when a conversation with Charlotte brought the whole idea to life.
I decided to set myself a challenge. Could I make the gel and design a web site in just four days - without totally neglecting my family? Well I am glad to say the answer is yes. The web site is up and running and you can find out more at www.cornucopia.me.uk. The only thing I forgot to do was tell people about it!
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