Tender Shoot™ explained
Point of difference
Yes! it's true. Your baby does come with an instruction
manual, but it is written in a whole new language.
Tender Shoot™
is a
school
for learning to understand and read your baby's manual. The approach is personal, all about the relationship. It presents your baby's viewpoint, and supports you to respond from yours. As such, it holds the secret to confidence in the parent-child relationship; beginning with your first baby, and in time, to confidence with your first toddler, and first teen.
A simple guide to complex work
As your baby develops, the five universal needs, or principles, remain constant. They are
timeless. How to apply these principles and decide actions, must change as your baby changes, but the five principles themselves do not. If your baby could talk, these principles are how they would
ask you to love them
from babyhood to adulthood. This is
their simple guide to support your complex work of raising them.
Why
Here's why. Raising a child is too important to leave learning about it to chance. Doctors went to medical school, lawyers went to law school. Now parents can go to parent school to resource themselves for a lifetime as parents.
Traditionally, the wisdom of parenting was passed within families. In modern times, however, the internet gives us access to all the world's information on how to be a parent. This makes impossible demands on your attention and assessment as to what is 'best', 'right', 'safe', 'usual'. As well, it can confuse, overwhelm and undermine your confidence as new parents and grandparents, and erode the timeless wisdom that your baby is asking for.
Tender Shoot™ takes you on a shortcut through all that information, with a sharp focus on what is essential, universal, timeless.
What
Your baby needs you calm and confident. Their security, and trust in you, depends on it. The goal of Tender Shoot™ is confident parents, who understand their changing child, respond with respect, and are guided by universal principles of care.
Who
For now, Tender Shoot™ is for you if you are a mother or father in later pregnancy, expecting your first baby, and would like:
- a tender and confident start to your relationship with your baby
- skills for the everyday care activities of handling and dressing, carrying and comforting, feeding and sleeping and more
- skills for the everyday emotional care of your baby such as building in them trust, belonging and a sense that they matter
- to have developmentally-appropriate expectations for your baby
In time, Tender Shoot™ is also for any parent who is expecting their first toddler or teen. Like babyhood, the toddler and teen periods are also stages of rapid development for a child and may overwhelm both child and parent where parents are unprepared.
Where and when
Here and now! We are currently moving our much loved, Christchurch, face to face, group classes, limited-access version of the parent school of 2008-2015, to this all-of-New Zealand, extended access, more sustainable on-line version.
Our focus shifted after the earthquakes of 2011, and all the complications involved, but that precious parent feedback, and all that fun was just too good to leave behind. So Tender Shoot™ is back! We will develop it over time, as a school, with lessons, learning and sharing, that you can access, starting with this web page.
How
Courses will be kept simple, be structured around the principles of your baby's instruction manual, and include 'First Baby', 'First Toddler', First Teen" courses, require enrollment, be certificated on completion of assignments. (This is not antenatal education.)
