About Me

Heart-led parenting is parenting by using our own hearts as our primary guide. The wisdom in each of our hearts is what can lead us to be the kind of parents we want to be and our kids want us to be as well. Parenting in a heart-led way requires courage, patience, and trust because we’ve learned to distrust our hearts in favor of our heads.

While our heads are valuable partners to our hearts in parenting, they can only be so when they function properly. What we mean by that is that our heads—the thinking that goes on there, to be exact—often lead us astray. Why?

• Our thinking is often pure BS. Yes, much of what runs through our minds is actually not true (even if we’ve believed it to be true for a long time).
• Our thinking is frequently inauthentic. Much of what we believe we adopted unconsciously from our parents and other key people from our childhood.
• Our thinking is habitually fear-based. Fear is a great tool for outrunning attacking carnivores but it’s an ineffective and harmful way to parent.
• Our thinking generally lacks creativity. The thoughts we have are like scripts that we run automatically when parenting really calls for thoughtful, fresh choices.

So, heart-led parenting is allowing your heart to guide your actions and using “right thinking” (not that kind we described above) as well.

Who are we?

Our Heart-Led Family

First, let’s be clear about who we are not. We are not “the experts” who know how you should parent. We don’t have the answers or fixes for you and your family. We aren’t perfect parents ourselves (we’re not attempting this either).

We are, however, all of the following:

• Parents who strive to learn fully and fully incorporate the wisdom of our hearts and that of our children who are our best teachers.
• Parents who believe that most parents want to have loving, nurturing, honoring, and fun relationships with each other and the children they care for.
• Parents who have years of practice in becoming “right thinkers” because we’ve seen how badly our monkey minds can lead us astray.
• Parents who practice what we teach and share with others because we believe in it.
• Parents who want all children to grow into healthy, joyful, self-confident, and peaceful adults—for their own benefit as well as the positive future of our planet.

To learn more about Shonnie Lavender who is a Certified Simplicity Parenting Group Leader, visit her other site, ShonnieLavender.com.