Since its conception in 1998, Kindred World has explored, pioneered and championed the thought leaders, activists, practitioners and parents who brought forward the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family. We're happy to present some of our favorite and most ground-breaking interviews for your enjoyment and inspiration here.

Please support our nonprofit work at www.KindredWorld.org.

Please follow our work, and subscribe to our newsletter, at www.KindredMedia.org.

Conscious Parenting Movement

This teleconference with Dr. Lauren Feder in June 2013 covers the sometimes overlooked need for bonding as parents while bonding with our children.  Dr. Feder covers practical advice gleaned from her family wellness practice in Los Angeles with AP families.  She also shares her recommendations for homeopathics that can help with the emotional wellness of a marriage.  
Dr.  Feder is the president of the Holistic Pediatric Alliance and Lisa Reagan, moderator for the teleconference, is the HPA's parent representative and Kindred's editor.  
Visit Dr. Feder at www.drfeder.com.  
Visit the HPA at www.hpakids.org.
Visit Kindred at www.kindredmedia.org

Every Day Tips for the Attachment Parenting Marriage with Dr. Lauren Feder

Lisa Reagan shares the history of Families for Conscious Living in a Pathways Connect Tele-conference with a gathering of international practitioners and parents.  She shares how the nonprofit's experience and her journalism inquiry into the conscious parenting movement led her on a Mother (of a) Quest and shaped insights into FCL's parent education and outreach initiatives.  

Watch her 2016 presentation on The New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family in a Monday LIVE Lecture Series for the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health here:

http://kindredmedia.org/2016/08/new-story-childhood-parenthood-human-family-lecture-apppah-ppne-program/

Learn more about FCL at www.familiesforconsciousliving.org.

Read more about Lisa's Mother (of a) Quest on www.KindredMedia.org, FCL's alternative media outlet and nonprofit educational initiative.

The Story of Families for Conscious Living

A teleconference with Dr. Lauren Feder, president of the Holistic Pediatric Alliance, moderated by Lisa Reagan.
Attachment Parenting and Wisdom of the Ages: Integrating Instinct, Intuition and Intelligent Parenting. Whether you are a stay-at-home parent to working full-time, find the best parenting approach for your family. In addition to discussing the basis for attachment parenting, Dr. Feder will share with us the best homeopathic remedies to keep on hand for nursing issues, sleeping, tantruming, exhaustion, etc.

Attachment Parenting and the Wisdom of the Ages

READ ROBIN ON KINDRED
http://www.kindredmedia.org/author/robin-grille/

Robin Grill is a Sydney based psychologist and the author of Parenting for a Peaceful World and Heart to Heart Parenting: Nurturing Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence from Conception to School Age. Robin Grille is a father, psychologist in private practice and a parenting educator. His articles on parenting and child development have been widely published in Australia and overseas. Robin’s articles and books have received international acclaim and led to speaking engagements around Australia, USA and New Zealand.  He will be visiting the United States in late 2013.  Email Kindred for more information at info@kindredcommunity.org.

Heart to Heart Parenting Teleconference with Robin Grille

Robin Grille talks with Lisa Reagan about his work as a psychotherapist and visionary book author of Parenting for a Peaceful World and his latest book, Heart to Heart Parenting.  
You can read more of Robin's work on Kindred at: http://www.kindredmedia.org/author/robin-grille/

An Interview with Robin Grille, Author of Parenting for a Peaceful World

Peter Gray, PhD, talks in Kindred's fireside chat series with Lisa Reagan about his new book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life

About the Book:
Our children spend their days being passively instructed, and made to sit still and take tests—often against their will. We call this imprisonment schooling, yet wonder why kids become bored and misbehave. Even outside of school children today seldom play and explore without adult supervision, and are afforded few opportunities to control their own lives. The result: anxious, unfocused children who see schooling—and life—as a series of hoops to struggle through.

In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that our children, if free to pursue their own interests through play, will not only learn all they need to know, but will do so with energy and passion. Children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.

To foster children who will thrive in today’s constantly changing world, we must entrust them to steer their own learning and development. Drawing on evidence from anthropology, psychology, and history, Gray demonstrates that free play is the primary means by which children learn to control their lives, solve problems, get along with peers, and become emotionally resilient. This capacity to learn through play evolved long ago, in hunter-gatherer bands where children acquired the skills of the culture through their own initiatives. And these instincts still operate remarkably well today, as studies at alternative, democratically administered schools show. When children are in charge of their own education, they learn better—and at lower cost than the traditional model of coercive schooling.

A brave, counterintuitive proposal for freeing our children from the shackles of the curiosity-killing institution we call school, Free to Learn suggests that it’s time to stop asking what’s wrong with our children, and start asking what’s wrong with the system. It shows how we can act—both as parents and as members of society—to improve children’s lives and promote their happiness and learning.

Peter Gray, PhD, Evolutionary Psychologist on His New Book, Free to Learn

Who are the adults driven to bring a New Story, Practical Wisdom and Inner Sights forward at this time?  Social Scientist, Paul Ray, PhD was not looking for this emerging subpopulation in his marketing studies in the 1980s, but there they were: people who were questioning Traditional ways of thinking/non-thinking, rejecting the Modern materialist lifestyle, and in defiance of cultural norms "creating" a new way of life based on the integration of their inner and outer worlds.  Ray shows in his book, Cultural Creatives, the gift of this growing sub population isn't just a sustainable vision for the future, but the return to living according to Practical Wisdom.

We Are Cultural Creatives - With Social Scientist, Paul Ray PhD

Read the transcript here: http://www.kindredmedia.org/2013/10/bruce-lipton-on-the-honeymoon-effect-an-audio-download-and-print/

In this LIVE Q&A, Bruce Lipton covers his initial discoveries of the connections of biology to beliefs as a stem cell biologist, to the epic era of evolution we find ourselves in as the human race to his latest book, The Honeymoon Effect, which shows us how to override our unconscious programming to create heaven on earth. 

About Bruce's New Book, The Honeymoon Effect:
With authority, eloquence, and an easy-to-read style, Lipton asserts that if we use the 50 trillion cells that live harmoniously in every healthy human body as a model, we can create not just honeymoon relationships for couples but also a "super organism" called humanity that can heal our planet.

About Bruce:
Bruce H. Lipton, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. He is a stem cell biologist, bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and Spontaneous Evolution, as well as the recipient of the 2009 Goi Peace Award.  Visit Bruce at www.brucelipton.com.

Bruce Lipton on the Biology of Belief, Spontaneous Evolution and The Honeymoon Effect

Read the book excerpt here: http://www.kindredmedia.org/2013/10/the-business-of-baby-interview-with-jennifer-margulis-and-book-excerpt/

In this Kindred Fireside Chat, Jennifer Margulis talks with Lisa Reagan about the book that took her ten years to write.  The Business of Baby covers the complex gauntlet of decisions faced by new parents in the first year of their children's lives and shows how American families are trapped in "institutional failure" and systems that do not support wellness.  Margulis, an award winning writer and professor of investigative journalism at Brandeis University, illustrates clearly why American children consistently land at the bottom of all international measures of wellness.  Margulis' brave and insightful investigation is a welcome guide for parents questioning a business model of care whose performance record for children is failing and fundamentally incapable of producing wellness.

About the Book
Why, despite our state-of-the-art medical technology, does the United States have among the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the industrialized world?

Why do American obstetricians award pregnant women who are planning to breastfeed with “free” samples of infant formula?

Why are American newborns given a vaccine at birth against a sexually transmitted disease?

The Business of Baby, an eye-opening work of investigative journalism, exposes how our current cultural practices during pregnancy, childbirth, and the first year of a baby’s life are not based on the best evidence or the most modern science, revealing how American moms and their babies are being undermined by corporate interests.

An illuminating combination of meticulous research and in-depth interviews with parents, doctors, midwives, nurses, health care administrators, and scientists, Margulis’s impassioned and eloquent critique is shocking, groundbreaking, and revelatory. The Business of Baby arms parents with the information they need to make informed decisions about their own health and the health of their infants.

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, and on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine. She has condemned child slavery on live prime-time TV in France, worked on a child survival campaign in Niger, and taught American literature in inner city Atlanta. A Boston native, she lives in Ashland, Oregon with her husband and four children.

Jennifer Margulis on The Business of Baby

Peggy O'Mara, founder of Mothering Magazine, shares over thirty years of insights into the growing conscious parenting movement that began with her questioning cultural norms that did not support family wellness.  You can visit her now at her new site: http://www.peggyomara.com.

Peggy was the Editor and Publisher of Mothering Magazine from 1980 to 2011. In 1995 she founded mothering.com and was its editor-in-chief until 2012. Peggy’s books include Natural Family Living, Having a Baby Naturally, and A Quiet Place. She has presented at Omega Institute, Esalen, Bioneers and La Leche League, International.

She is the recipient of the La Leche League, International 2001 Alumnae Association award, the International Peace Prayer Day 2002 Woman of Peace award, the National Vaccine Information Center 2009 Courage in Journalism award, the Holistic Moms Network 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, and five Maggie Awards for public service journalism from the Western Publishing Association.

Peggy is on the advisory boards of Attachment Parenting International, Best for Babes, Holistic Moms Network, Infant Massage USA, Intact America, and Oak Meadow. She is the mother of four adult children and grandmother of two. Peggy has lived in Santa Fe, NM for 29 years.

Peggy O'Mara on 30 Years of Leading the Conscious Parenting Movement

Mindful Discipline is the Kindred June 2014 Book of the Month Selection. Read the introduction to Mindful Discipline here: http://www.kindredmedia.org/2014/05/mindful-discipline-loving-approach-setting-limits-raising-emotionally-intelligent-child/

Lisa Reagan, Kindred's executive editor, talks with Chris White, MD, about his new book, Mindful Discipline.  Chris shares insights into:
1. Healthy self-discipline is a gift
2.Why Life is primarily responsible for growing our kids up
3. Why Life wants parents to be intuitive gardeners
4. Why it is your own state of consciousness, as the parent, that matters most
5. Why it is important to be intentionalistic, not perfectionistic

Chris also shares "the most toxic aspect of conscious parenting," examples of how Mindful Discipline works in a holistic approach to your own situation, and how the real intention of most parents, to not repeat their own childhood experiences, can be addressed through self-compassion and mindfulness.

Lisa Reagan says, "The most beautiful aspect of the Mindful Discipline process that Chris walks us through in this teleconference, is that the very worst scenario can become an object lesson in emotional intelligence that provides for a deepening relationship between the parent and child that is only possible when things AREN'T 'perfect'."

Read the introduction to Mindful Discipline here: http://www.kindredcommunity.com/2014/05/mindful-discipline-loving-approach-setting-limits-raising-emotionally-intelligent-child/

Mindful Discipline: With Chris White, MD

Charles Eisenstein is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity. He is the author of several books, most recently Sacred Economics, The Ascent of Humanity, and The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible.  In this fireside chat, Eisenstein shares insights into what it means to bring a child into a world that is caught up in the space between the Old Story of Separation and the New (Ancient) Story of Connection.

Lisa Reagan, Kindred's executive editor, attended Eisenstein's workshop on the Space Between Stories in 2013 in Charlottesville, VA.  She asks Eisenstein to help Kindred readers understand the hallmarks of the Old Story, the possibilities of the New Story and "why should we bring children into a violent and dying world?"  Charles' answer at the workshop caused her heart to burst and eyes to leak.  Listen for his answer in this interview.

Read Charles on Kindred here: http://www.kindredmedia.org/author/charles-eisenstein

Visit Charles at: http://www.thenewandancientstory.net/

Parenthood And The Space Between Stories, With Charles Eisenstein

Lysa Parker and Barbara Nicholson, founders of Attachment Parenting International, and authors of the book, Attached At The Heart, talk with Lisa Reagan about the spiritual essence of attachment parenting as mindful parenting. The edited transcript of this interview is here: https://www.kindredmedia.org/2015/09/mindful-parenting-the-spiritual-essence-of-attachment-an-interview-with-api-founders/ 



Parenting As A Hero's Journey is an educational initiative of the nonprofit Kindred World. Visit the site at www.ParentingAsAHerosJourney.com. 

Kindred Media is an alternative media outlet and educational initiative of the nonprofit Kindred World. 

Visit Kindred at www.KindredMedia.org

Visit Kindred World at www.KindredWorld.org

Mindful Parenting: The Spiritual Essence of Attachment

Read the interview on Kindred: http://kindredmedia.org/2015/10/what-is-integral-parenting/

Read Miriam's articles on Kindred: http://kindredmedia.org/author/mmartineau/

About the Interview:
Mariam Mason Martineau talks with Lisa Reagan, Kindred's editor, about Parenting As A Spiritual Practice. 

About Integral Parenting
Parenting can be a most powerful vehicle for spiritual growth, compassion-in-action, and evolutionary activism.

Yet… people on a personal development path often feel their practice must be put on hold when they take on the full-time job of parenting. How can changing diapers become your new meditation, or playing with legos your most advanced yoga?

And… many parents are awestruck by the responsibility of raising a child. They are overwhelmed by vastly different schools of parenting wisdom, struggling to forge a path that honors themselves and nurtures their children. How can we hold the truths of such varied perspectives to raise our children with the most consciousness, love, and creativity we can muster? How can we raise the bar for ourselves as parents while forgiving our very human limitations?

Miriam Mason Martineau has spent 20 years asking such questions: as a researcher, integral practitioner, and mother. She has found the practice of parenting undergoes a radical shift when placed in a new context: an integral, evolutionary perspective. Parent, child, and the relationship between them are all invited to stretch the limits of their human potential — all while honoring the ever-present, already-whole perfection of the spiritual realm.

Join us for this transformative, 8-week online course! Together we will explore this new frontier in the parenting adventure. From meta-perspectives to daily practices, we’ll discover just how powerful this integral-evolutionary context can be in creating the fullest, richest, most loving parenting practice. Raise the bar for how you show up as a parent, and provide your child with the very best foundation for being a loving, creative, conscious being — while discovering an unshakeable ease amidst the inevitable ups, downs, and doubts of parenting.

Experience the full range of yourself and your child in the vessel of parenthood: immanent and transcendent, becoming and simply being, fundamentally connected and undeniably individual.

Integral Parenting: How Parenting Is A Spiritual Practice

PLEASE support the PLA with this great gift for YOURSELF and you can REST FOR A CAUSE! Starting November 3rd all registered participants in Rest for a Cause will embark on 15 minutes of 'rest' practicing a sleep-based meditation technique from Bold Tranquility for 21 days and simultaneously raising money for the Parent Liberation Alliance. GET YOUR 21-day free REST FOR A CAUSE PASS HERE: https://www.crowdrise.com/parentliberationalliance

Teresa Graham Brett, author of Parenting for Social Change, and Lisa Reagan, editor of Kindred Media, talk with Dieundonne Allo, founder of the Alliance for Parent Education in Africa, about his experiences introducing South African parents and professionals to the possibilities of parenting for peace.  As Allo shares in this interview, the reception of APEA's programs is welcome, as "people are looking for solutions and alternatives to traditional dominator and abusive parenting practices and beliefs." 
You can read about APEA on the Parent Liberation Alliance's website, as PLA is the American partner of APEA. www.ParentLiberationAlliance.org

 Stay tuned for a transcript of this discussion on www.KindredMedia.org.

Conscious Parenting In Africa

In this interview with Darcia Narvaez, PhD, listeners discover the connections between the neurobiology of brain development in babies and the current ecological, social and cultural crises created by disconnected, brain damaged adults, a product of modern parenting practices and beliefs.  Narvaez is one of Kindred's most popular contributors and a new member of our international advisory board.  She is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Her recent book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association. In 2016, she is organizing a conference on Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous KnowHow for Global Flourishing. 

You can read her work on Kindred here: http://www.kindredmedia.org/author/darcia-narvaez-phd/

A transcript of this interview is available here: http://www.kindredmedia.org/creating-sustainable-humans-with-conscious-parenting-an-interview-with-darcia-narvaez-phd/

Creating Sustainable Humans With Conscious Parenting: An Interview With Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Robin Grille shares his journey with a homeschooling group in Hong Kong who have fought for Parenting for a Peaceful World to be translated into Catonese and distributed in China next year.  Robin shares his insight into cultural changes happening in China and around the world at this time.  He believes the "backlash" experience to the dying dominator and authoritarian models of parenting and government are breeding last gasp grabs for power that dominate mainstream media.  However, there is a New Story (www.KindredMedia.org)...
Robin covers his talk at the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative in England and his presentation at the Healthy Birth, Healthy Earth Sumit at Findhorn, Scotland last month.
Robin covers the gamut with insights from PFPW, guidance from his book Heart to Heart Parenting, and his admonition to all activists to not look for predictions of the future but to set their intentions for how they want it to be and work in that direction together.
This is a fun and epic interview with one of the most celebrated thought leaders of the conscious parenting movement.
Read Robin on Kindred here: http://kindredmedia.org/author/robin-grille/
Watch the Parenting for a Peaceful World Video Collection here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKSc66Q_SuJMxIq3ew_fg9jJO-H-4JVRZ
Take an Inner Child, Inner Wisdom Virtual Tour with Robin at the Parenting As A Hero's Journey website here: http://parentingasaherosjourney.com/robin-grille/
Visit Robin's website here: www.our-emotional-health.com

Robin Grille: Parenting For A Peaceful World Goes To China - And Lots More!

Parenting in today's times is challenging parents everywhere.

This free, 55 minute download of, An introduction to Connection Parenting, by Pam Leo, is given to all parents who want to learn more about how to create a stronger connection with their children. After listening to what Pam shares, if you can, and if wish to, please donate whatever you can, to her new nonprofit initiative, The Book Fairy Pantry Project. 

Please go to BookFairyPantryProject.com to learn about the project and make a donation if it inspires you to help make sure ALL parents have books to read to their children, so all children can learn to read. Thank you.

You can also subscribe to the BFPP's newsletter to catch up with Pam on her travels presenting lectures on Books, Babies and Bonding, as well as read her work on Connection Parenting, poetry on BFPP, and more at: http://kindredmedia.org/author/pam-leo/

See Connection Parenting here: http://amzn.to/28KIdtn

Connection Parenting With Pam Leo: Parenting Through Love Instead Of Fear

The Conscious Parenting Movement, based on attachment science, neurobiolgy and brain development and founded organically by multiple pioneers and organizations over 30 years ago as a consciousness-raising movement, arrived at the United Nations this past February in the form of an international alliance of nonprofit and educational organizations under the banner of CEPP, Childhood and Early Parenting Principles.

In this interview with Valerie Unite, the founder of CEPP, the listener learns of the exciting networking and information exchanges currently taking place at the UN, the necessity of helping governments, cities and communities develop effective and cost-saving programs based on conscious parenting principles, and the plan going forward.

Visit and read about CEPP's work at www.cepprinciples.org.

This interview's transcript, as well as resources, can be viewed here:
http://kindredmedia.org/2017/05/conscious-parenting-movement-goes-un/

Conscious Parenting Movement Goes To United Nations

From Daniel Sperry, Kindred's Artist-in-Residence:

"When Lisa Reagan, Kindred's editor, suggested the idea of my being the first artist-in-residence at Kindred, I noticed some threads coming together that had been wafting through the different spaces of my life for awhile. 

One was the idea that I had been wanting my work with music and poetry to be connected to a purpose, to life, to the ordinary lives of the planet. As a cellist. and composer, and spoken word artist, a lot of what I do can easily remain somewhere up around some cloud, to the left of the moon as it rises. 

So here was an opportunity to connect my creation to the quest we are on when we choose to raise a family, in the most conscious and creative way we can. And that excites me.

Upon considering how I might do this, I began looking at the work of particular poets I love - one who immediately came to mind was Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet from San Antonio, Texas, who in addition to writing much widely acclaimed poetry, has also written children's songs as well, and who carries the sense of compassion in her work that attracts me.

I've chosen Naomi's poem, "Shoulders", as the first contribution I will make of this artist-in-residency, because it speaks directly to the connection between what we do as parents and the prospect of living in a world where we take care of each other in that same careful, and tender way. 

I'm not big on interpretation of poems - I will let her words speak for them selves. But one thing I will add, is my great enjoyment in including the fine voice of my daughter, Ali Sperry, on this first piece. 

Ali is a singer-songwriter finding her way in Nashville, TN. I've been wanting to include a few "sung" lines in the pieces I create, and this was a great opportunity to do that. She makes me proud, of course, but all the more because her voice and her work are completely authentic to her. Yes, she had some kind of a model in her father, and her mother, but she has discovered her own special gift, in her own way, and it is even more exciting for me to wrap her performance on this piece into my first offering to the Kindred Community. 

I look forward to your comments and feedback. There is much more to come."
