Elaine Halligan

Parenting Facilitator

Caller feedback

"Thank you so much for your advice yesterday, it was very useful. We would like to give you some early feedback. Before picking up the children from school, yesterday afternoon, we made sure we had a pasta jar ready and once we fetched them from school, we started to practise the describing praise. When we got home, we explained about our meeting with you and we all went to buy notebooks. Mathis calls it his "Brilliant Book" and Theo calls it the "football book". Jasmine had not understood it was for mum and dad to write in it about her and got upset! :-) They were all very excited about filling the jar little by little. The real test for me was this morning because I was on my own with the children. To my surprise, we got through the morning without any punching, kicking, shouting. There was a little squabble between Mathis and Theo once, but we did not dwell on it and they quickly moved on to doing and saying good things. Breakfast went really well and the children talked nicely to one another, it was so much more relaxed and pleasant for everyone. Between yesterday afternoon/evening and this morning they filled their jar and tonight they will get to choose to do something special. Thank you for your help, it has been very useful."
Michele Brissac

"Also, a heartfelt thanks for your calm and effective advice you gave me on the phone the other week when I was struggling with an unhappy Darcey and the changes in her new life! Thank you - we have a golden book in place and I'm making more time for her - it's working! Reconnecting with the manual is my new golden rule for myself! Catherine, mother of 1 girl"
Catherine

"What an excellent service! I got to speak to Elaine immediately – she was enormously helpful and it was so handy being able to access advice so quickly. Would definitely use the service again. Many thanks"
Rachel C

"My phone session with Elaine was very helpful. We talked through some issues, she prompted me to think about certain areas in a new way, and suggested some specific strategies that I could try. Many thanks. "
Joanna

""Thank you for helping me be so much more patient with my children. I thought you might like this story...My son is 8 and has never been an enthusiastic reader to say the least! Lately he has been absolutely outright refusing to read to me and never reads to himself. He says 'I HATE reading and I'm a rubbish reader'. I have been using all my powers to avoid any kind of battles or threats but have been talking to him about how our brains respond when we tell them we are rubbish at things or that we can't do them and how they need nurturing like a flower. I said that if we don't feed or water plants they wilt and our brains do the same. I've also been talking about the muscle the brain is and that every time we read or do maths or challenge our brains, the muscle develops a bit more - even doing things and getting them wrong still makes the muscle grow. He loves cricket, and I equated it to a bowler developing his bowling arm. Tonight we played a reading game that he did willingly. I read a word of the story and then so did he. It was fun but a bit slow so I suggested we go to two words each and then a paragraph. After a short while I continued to read the story to him myself as I didn't want to push it. Then I told him that his brain will be a little bit stronger from what he'd read." "
Lindsay

""My son Fred can be quite a challenge at times. He is capable of huge rages, rudeness, he can refuse outright to do things, get very physical... He is also absolutely adorable. He has such soul, compassion, sensitivity, energy and enthusiasm. Anyway, on Tuesday evening we were all in our living room. Nick was on the computer and the girls were leaning on the coffee table drawing. I saw he was busy writing something and he was clutching two of his treasured sports trophies. He suddenly said he needed everyones attention and started to get a bit cross that his siblings didn't look up immediately. He managed to stay calm and then he said 'Nick, hold these' handing him the trophies. 'Sophie, Annabel I need your attention' Then he read out 'Sophie, this is an award because you have been trying so hard with your writing and you can write your name so well now' and he gave her a trophy 'Annabel, this is an award because you were very brave upstairs when you hit your head and didn't make too much fuss'. - Trophy awarded. This is a boy who used to hate his sisters, he would punch them and say 'shut up you stupid little baby' when they cried. Thank you for helping me be more understanding and patient and for bringing out the best in my children" "
Caroline

"My husband and I have witnessed our recently turned 8 year old grow up this summer. Obviously a lot of that is down to the physical stage she is at, and entering into a new key stage at school. But more than that, she has emotionally grown up and that I am convinced is down to the level of understanding that I have gained from The Parent Practice. She is my oldest child, the training ground, as my mother once said, "we should all be allowed to give back our first child on the grounds of training practice". I have often felt completely overwhelmed and at a loss as what to do with the behaviour of my first child, and this summer holiday I really felt I had a connection with her and knew how to handle her emotional mood swings and behaviour traits. That understanding and positive thinking comes from the tools that I have learnt at the Parent Practice. It's only taken me 2 years of listening to these guru's, but the penny is finally beginning to drop! "
Lisa

"Doing a course with The Parent Practice is the single best thing that I have done for my children, and my children would agree! It has also become the total highlight of my week..."
Emma

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