We bring you this webinar with Pennie Brownlee who is known and loved in New Zealand for her books, her residential retreats for parents and teachers, and for her straight talking, passionate approach to early childhood education..

Just as any understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and te Ao Maori asks that we who are Tauiwi get very conscious of the stories, beliefs, values and practices in our own culture first, we need to undergo a similar exercise around our stories, beliefs and values in relation to children. Out of those ‘unseen cultural quantum packages’ has grown our disastrous treatment of children (and their families), both within families and in/by institutions: Oranga Tamariki, in state care (‘rescued’ from families), childcare centres, schools, the courts, correctional facilities.

Few of us have received helpful instruction into the nature of personal power. The dysfunction among adults in work places, the personal grievance cases, the workplace bullying … all of these symptoms tell us that we haven’t really made it to first base when it comes to using personal power with peers. This is hardly surprising because the skills for using personal power in partnership with another are conspicuously absent from our childrearing practices, especially in the first three years when the foundations for personal interactions are laid down.

In this session we’ll explore the nature of personal power: the baby’s, the toddler’s and our own.