Spreading the Light of Conscious Parenting: Our Feature in SBS Australia

We are incredibly excited to share a significant milestone in our journey at The Conscious Hive. Our passionate commitment to conscious parenting and its transformative impact on families has been recognized on an international stage. We were recently featured in an insightful interview by SBS, a leading Australian broadcaster, highlighting our commitment in nurturing connections and fostering harmonious family dynamics.

In this exclusive interview, we dive deep into the ethos of The Conscious Hive, discussing our approach to conscious parenting, the stories that have shaped our mission, and the profound effect of our work on families, especially within the Brazilian community in Brisbane.

This feature in SBS is a heartwarming affirmation of our vision and efforts. It symbolizes the growing relevance and necessity of conscious parenting in today's ever-evolving societal landscape, resonating with families across cultures and continents.

You can read or listen to the interview here.

For our global audience, and those who may not speak Portuguese, we've translated the entire interview into English. We believe it’s essential for our message to be accessible to all, transcending language barriers and connecting hearts and minds universally.

Below, you'll find the English translation of the interview. We invite you to read, reflect, and join us in this beautiful and necessary dialogue about conscious parenting, a journey of love, understanding, and deep connections.

Brazilian in Brisbane Promotes Practice of Connection and Compassion in Child Rearing

What is the best way to raise children? How to react to challenging behaviors in children? How to prevent anxiety, stress, and fatigue from affecting parenting? These are questions many mothers and fathers ask themselves, often finding no answers but acting on what they consider common sense and intuition, while being inundated with opinions and recommendations from family, friends, and even influencers on social media.

In Australia, a Brazilian engineer underwent a career transition and became a parenting mentor after becoming certified by the Aware Parenting Institute in the United States, following the birth of her first child. Today, Rafa Guadalupe is professionally dedicated to spreading the concept and practice of Aware Parenting, about which she spoke to SBS in Portuguese in this interview.

The premature birth of her first child, now five years old, was what sparked Rafa's greater interest in researching and learning about the concept and practice of Aware Parenting.

"The premature birth of my son in 2018 was the most difficult moment of my life. Through this trauma, I delved deeper into my motherhood, completely surrendering myself. It was a matter of survival for my son. When I finally brought my baby home after five weeks in the hospital, I remember looking at him and thinking: How do I create a genuine connection with my son? I then began reading books on secure attachment and quickly moved towards Aware Parenting."

Rafa says the books were the beginning of her studies on the topic, and after attending some parent groups practicing Aware Parenting, she learned about the Aware Parenting Institute in the USA, where, according to Rafa, what caught her attention is that everything taught there is scientifically grounded.

"The institute was founded in 1990 by psychologist Aletha Solter. She was one of the pioneers, among the first researchers in the concept of conscious parenting. So this was one of the first institutes in the world to study and educate parents and professionals in this regard. The fact that she is a researcher and doctor means there is really a lot of scientific grounding."

According to Rafa, what she learned at the institute were various aspects related to conscious parenting: "We study secure attachment from pregnancy, the baby's needs, how to start building the bond from the first days. We also learn to see a child's behavior always as a symptom of deeper issues, such as unmet needs, stress, or traumas accumulated in the child's body, or even lack of information, like when a two or three-year-old paints on the wall because they didn't know they couldn't do that. So we start to look at the child with more compassion, understanding that they are not doing it out of malice. We begin to understand the reasons behind these behaviors."

Rafa also mentions learning about what happens in a child's body, which, like adults, goes through stress and challenging situations. "The release of stress in our bloodstream and our nervous system is activated. If we don't have the chance to process our emotions healthily, through crying, laughter, play, we end up suppressing it, and it comes out as stress. So we study how to help our children and ourselves process our emotions healthily, return to this state of balance, and naturally create emotional resilience."

She says that in conscious parenting, awareness is not only about the children but mainly about the parents themselves. "Issues from our childhood, difficulties we went through in our childhood that we didn't have enough emotional safety, didn't have the chance to process at that moment, we kept inside us and now as parents, it comes back, and often influences how we are dealing with our children."

Rafa is certified as an instructor in Aware Parenting from the Aware Parenting Institute and now has her own company, The Conscious Hive, through which she provides individual and group services to parents, educators, and people who work with children. She also created a group of Brazilians in Brisbane, the city where she lives, to share her knowledge of Aware Parenting.

"I wanted to introduce the concepts of Aware Parenting to the Brazilian community. The meetings are in person for 2 hours. It's a diverse group, with mothers, fathers, educators, and even mothers of children who are now adults. We meet once a week and I always bring a different topic. But it's not just about learning. Participants also have the chance to share their difficulties, challenges, and share their stories."

Speaking of how she applies Aware parenting at home with her two children, now aged five and two, Rafa explains that Aware parenting is already very natural for her, and part of her nature as a mother. She gives an example:

"When I wake up, the first activity of the day is to connect with myself. I need this to be present with my children when they wake up. So I wake up a little before them and do something for myself, like meditate or have tea. When they wake up, I need to reconnect with them, as we've been separated for the night. So we play for 15 minutes and I already warn that it will be just that time. At the end of the game there may be tears or tantrums, but I welcome them, let them cry, and then they understand that it's time for breakfast."

Rafa explains what she considers the positive outcome of the acceptance and connection used in Aware parenting: "When we offer emotional safety for them to express their emotions, they feel loved, secure. Children naturally will cooperate because it's part of human nature. Aware parenting, in practice, is about finding these moments of connection. It's when the child does something that we feel they shouldn't do, that is challenging for us, but we look with compassion and curiosity at what they are doing, not to punish, but to try to understand the reason, to offer compassion and safety for them to express what they are feeling."

Rafa says she still sees many more mothers than fathers concerned about offering conscious parenting to their children. "We need to start demystifying this issue that only the mother is responsible for learning about raising children. It's 50, 50, right? The father also has this responsibility. Let's take a bit of this burden off the mothers."

Asked about the difficulties that a stressful routine can generate for the practice of Aware parenting, Rafa acknowledges that it is very difficult for people who are tired and overloaded to provide the necessary support for their children.

"The basis of parenting with awareness is being well first with ourselves, having our basic needs met. Sometimes we are so tired that we even lose patience with the children because of it. We need to have our cup full first to be able to be the parent we want to be. So for immigrant families, single mothers, married mothers who end up parenting solo too, if we don't have support, if we don't have our basic needs met, it's asking the impossible for us to stay calm, to be centered to be able to welcome our children's emotions."

For immigrant families, Rafa highlights that there can be a good side to not having family nearby, which is the lack of interference in raising children. "Especially if we come from an authoritarian upbringing, learn about Aware parenting, and want to apply this democratic way of raising our children. In this case, when the family is far away, we don't have the authoritarian influence coming from grandparents, uncles, or whoever."

Speaking of the support network, Rafa believes it's possible to find people who will help you when you don't have family nearby. "For example, I always looked for family daycare for my children [family homes where they take care of children] because I wanted them to have the experience of having someone close, with few children, like an aunt, and be there at the aunt's house spending the day with cousins. Today my daughter goes to a family daycare that is like a grandmother, it's like being with the grandma with the grandchildren. So they are people I know have family values I can trust. We build a little support network to help us and to be the parent we want to be."

Speaking about the possibility of offering Aware parenting to children even if they are no longer young, Rafa says it's never too late. "The relationship with our children is forever. We continue to be parents of our children, even when they are parents of their children. No matter the age they are, we always have the chance to seek connection with them."

We hope this interview inspires you as much as it has energized us in our mission. At The Conscious Hive, we remain committed to supporting families in their journey of connection, understanding, and love. Together, we can continue to make a positive difference in the world, one family at a time.

Warm regards,

Rafa Guadalupe - Founder