Parenting & Constellations with Sara Poss and Betsy Gibson

What is unique about the Rooted Parenting course is that parents are part of a community where they feel safe to be open and supportive of each other at a deep level. The programme is designed in a way that parents do not just get tips and techniques but actually look at the strains in their families that might have an impact on their children. This sense of community is incredibly important because it’s often missing and parents are afraid of being criticised if they’re really sharing their problems.

The programme is based on systemic principles and this perspective shows that until children are happily embedded in the family and not trying to put right existing problems, it can be very difficult for them to start belonging to a new community, like school. All parents want their children to do well at school but not all children are sure that doing well is good for the family.

Everybody is hoping children won’t be affected by tensions and strains within the family, but children have loyalties and they will always put their family’s needs first, even if they don’t understand them.

The kind of help we offer to parents is understanding how to give their children the rightful place in the family and for nobody to be left out. We aim for parents to be able to be parents and children to be able to be children.

This can make an enormous difference to the freedom children have to be creative and to be able to love and attach themselves to friends, teachers, new learning and life.

As a philosophy and as a way of working, parents feel magically supported and relieved of what can feel like trying to run up the down escalator. After Rooted Parenting programme parents begin to feel as if they can run up the up escalator, which is much nicer.

Part of the methodology of systemic work is to create a family map of generations and it is often when parents can actually create an image of what resolves, heals and brings peace to the family that the image begins to change the way parents hold problems.

Creating images and maps through the constellations process is an incredibly powerful tool and works in a very different way from standard lectures, advice or “have you tried xyz approach?”. It takes people to a place where it allows love to flow more easily, even when parents are distressed. What parents really learn on our course is for their children to take the best of what’s available and leave the rest with parents to deal with.

Sometimes there are patches of family life where hope runs underground. Our 6 sessions programme can change the feel of family life to rekindle a sense of hope. Everybody needs hope.

Rooted Parenting’s flagship is the parenting programme, but we also bring systemic understanding into educational settings and organisations to enhance how we function within a group.

Sara Poss and Betsy Gibson