Newsflash! Building healthy, respectful relationships with our children means grasping a single critical factor that is hiding in plain sight: it is not the child’s flowering intellect that is at the forefront of brain development. In fact, it is the child’s ancient survival brain that wants to run the show. And that character cannot be reasoned with!

The key is to see that there is not one child to parent, but two: the True Child, and the child’s defence system, the Guard Dog. Each has a contrasting set of behaviours, and each requires a radically different parental response.

There has long been a cry for a more humanistic model of parenting that allows a child to be a child. This might sound obvious and easy, but if a child is enslaved to their defence system, with its myriad reactive behaviours, they will never be free to be a child, no matter what approach is applied.

Parent educator and mentor Mary Willow has created a breakthrough method that has helped hundreds. She has now turned her work into an easy-to-follow book for parents, teachers and caregivers everywhere who are struggling to reconnect with their kids.