Episode 9: In today’s episode I have the pleasure of talking to Kate Baltrotsky. Kate has been an Aware Parenting Instructor since 2014 and is the mother to 3 children. She is completing her Ph.D. at Southern Cross university evaluating the Aware Parenting approach, focusing on playful discipline. She has recently had the first part of her research published in the Journal of Child and Family Behaviour Therapy titled “Parents’ Experiences of a Brief Online Parenting Program with Playful Discipline”.

In the episode, Kate outlines this first research study on the effectiveness of the Aware Parenting approach and why she felt called to undertake research. She describes the contents of the training that was offered to parents as part of this study and her key findings. She explains how her research has found that short parent training programs on Playful Discipline are effective to support parents to be the parent they want to be, to understand that behaviour is a sign of unmet needs or unreleased feelings and to give parents effective strategies to respond to challenging behaviour in the form of special time, power-reversal games and loving limits. Kate describes the next stages of her Ph.D. and the need for additional evidence in the scientific literature to increase the mainstream acceptance of the Aware Parenting approach. She also talks about what she has learnt from parenting this way herself, including letting go of “perfect” in parenting and the importance of finding ways to meet our needs as mothers.

To find out more about Kate, follow her on Instagram at Katesurfs or email her kate.baltrotsky@scu.edu.au Her research article can be found here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07317107.2022.2084596 The free Facebook group we mention is accessible here https://www.facebook.com/groups/484995275036830