Developmental Parenting: How Will Raising a Child Raise You Too?
We all develop throughout our lives. One of our greatest challenges is to learn how to engage with people who are at different levels of development than we are. This conundrum is more prominent and evident in families where parents are at different levels of development than their children.
A parent’s preferred parenting style is informed by their own developmental level, and it is not uncommon for that style to be incompatible with what a child needs at their developmental level.
This workshop features the Integral Stages developmental model that has been built on Ken Wilber’s AQAL model. Because its expression of development is based on the spaces in the quadrants, it is possible to pinpoint a developmental level that we or someone else is enacting in the moment simply by asking three questions, which leads one to the presenting level of development. With this kind of instant recognition in the moment, a parent can observe the peaks and valleys of their child’s development and learn to adjust their parenting skills to the specific needs of the child in the moment.
Inspiration
We are inspired to do this workshop as we explore the intersection of AQAL and TEAL. Teal is a developmental level that visions multigenerational time and space and consciously plants seeds today that often grow beyond their own lifetime. That is the responsibility and the possibility that most parents intend. However, sometimes it is difficult to know which seeds to plant and how to nourish them.
As Teal penetrate the organization of the home environment, a developmental space is created in which children are consciously invited from the beginning of their lives into healthy growth patterns. They gain momentum as they repeat through the octaves of our children’s lives, even after a parent’s lifetime. Thus they are primed to develop the qualities that are needed in organizations of the future. Teal organizations may be more likely to thrive when we have a population of leaders who have been reared in these kinds of environments.
One way to support a generation of Teal level adults is to provide a roadmap to Teal level parenting. We are excited to provide a roadmap to Teal level parenting and healthy parenting styles at every level to set our children up for healthy and efficient development.
Application, embodiment and anticipated results
Participants can expect some practical ways to recognize, practice and utilize knowledge of the child and parent’s developmental patterns, to select appropriate parenting practices for the child with agility as the child dances between different levels of development in their growing up process. Throughout, questions, critiques, speculations and discussions for use and practice will be welcomed, recognizing the benefits of continuing research and practice for the evolution of this work.
Presenters
Terri O’Fallon is an Integral scholar who derives theory and research from a passionate practice of auspicious wondering, learning, and marinating in life. She is the daughter of a 95-year-old dancing mother, eldest of seven siblings, parent of adult children, grandparent, and has over fifty years of teaching from pre-kindergarten through post-PhD. She has a PhD. in Integral Studies and an MA in Spiritual Direction. Her embodied life has supported her love of ordinariness. Growing up and waking up.
Kim Barta is an internationally recognized psychotherapist and speaker known for his heart wisdom and innovative Shadow to Spirit work. Kim’s successes in diverse places of healing include creating: therapeutic programs utilized by 3 Psychiatric Hospitals, Shadow To Spirit workshops, several new forms of effective therapy, and founding a mind/body healing clinic helping people of all ages for over 25 years with depression, anxiety, anger, addictions, physical illness, and spiritual health.
