Celebrating our 5 year anniversary!

Five years ago we were, frankly, desperate and struggling with parenting. 

It was May 2020. 

Yes – we remember that time, don’t we, fellow parents? That period of lockdown when parents were getting frustrated by trying to work out what a subordinate clause was, and children were slowly shutting down and losing their joy… 

It was at the peak of that period when we realised that our eldest son, who was in Year 1, was no longer the happy, bouncy child he had been. He was angry; screaming at us whenever we attempted to make him do any kind of school work; crying; or even worse just withdrawn. This was behaviour that we’d really never seen before. 

Parenting suddenly felt like an uphill battle, and as a mum, I felt like a total failure. I didn’t understand why this was happening or how to help him. I was scared of doing the wrong thing, but to do nothing seemed like an even worse option. 

I needed help

Admitting that you need help is not an easy thing to own up to as a parent – we like to think we’ve got this whole thing nailed, that we’re in control of the rollercoaster and directing it’s every swerve and loop. Other parents seemed to be handling things so much better – their children enjoyed their school work, liked the social peace of lockdown, enjoyed just being ‘cosy’ with their family. Well, that was not us; our particular rollercoaster was hanging off the rails, upside down, about to crash to the ground. 

But here was my first stroke of luck – I just happen to have instant access to a Chartered Psychologist – my dad, Dr Adam Abdelnoor. He was the person we turned to in that moment of need. 

Over the course of an hour’s phone call, he listened whilst we explained the issues, allowing us to express the anxiety we had about the mental wellbeing of our 5yo. He didn’t give us ‘tips’ or empty advice on how to overcome the issues; he didn’t judge us or make us feel stupid; he certainly didn’t claim to have all the answers. 

What he did instead, was to unpick with incredible insight and empathy, the reasons that might (I use that word advisedly) be causing the problems. Not the ‘surface’ reasons, like ‘he hasn’t seen his friends in three months’, but the deeper psychological reasons – why seeing his friends was important to him, what was happening in my son’s brain (and heart) because he hadn’t seen them, and how our response to how he was feeling was impacting him. 

There were so many lightbulb moments in that hour’s conversation that I felt like flashbulbs were blinding me! 

After he’d laid bare the real drivers behind what was going on, he offered us some strategies and ideas on ways to tackle it. Again, these were not glib ‘pointers’, they were powerful tools to help me communicate with our son more effectively, how once we changed our behaviour, we might then see a change in his, and how adopting a less forceful approach to his school work might actually lead to greater co-operation.  

The birth of Parenting with Passion! 

That call was the spark that lit the fire behind Parenting with Passion. 

After that call, I was awake ALL night, turning over in my mind the knowledge that this guidance he’d given me was like gold dust that all parents would benefit from. And I felt a burning desire to create some way to enable that to happen. 

By morning, I’d decided that while the world was ‘sheltering in place’, we needed to bring parents together, by offering online workshops to share the concepts and ideas that were sitting in my dad’s brain about parenting and the relationships we have with our children. He was a published author with a PhD and a lifetime of experience of working with children and young people who were having a difficult time; he'd raised 2 children and 3 step-children of his own. Who else was better qualified to do this? 

And thus Parenting with Passion was born out of the ashes of lockdown in May 2020. 

Our first start…

The business started with three of us – myself, my husband, and my dad. What really inspired me was the space that I could see Parenting with Passion occupying that fell somewhere between parenting coaches (who are rarely psychologically trained) and formalised psychological help (that is usually only accessed on a medical basis). What we were offering was neither of these, and was unique – parenting support that was rooted in deep, expert psychological wisdom with the aim of helping parents to develop more harmonious and co-operative relationships with their children. 

In those first few months, we decided on our name, and employed a designer to create our logo. 

We worked together to create a series of workshops on topics that many parents find challenging – childhood fears and how to overcome them; handling tantrums; how to get children talking; how to respond to wrong-doing. We ran those as pilot sessions with groups of kind friends who were willing to give up their time to take part and feedback to us. Things were moving along at pace. 

Our second start…

But then… life got in the way. Working full time, with two children, it all just became a bit much and I didn’t have the capacity to continue, so Parenting with Passion was put on a back burner. However in the summer of 2023, a chance conversation with Lisa Bedlow reignited the Parenting with Passion project with a bang! 

Lisa was someone I barely knew at that point, but had heard about from my son who knew her through school, where she seemed to be doing a bit of everything, from running after school club sessions, to helping with forest school. She seemed a bit like wonder woman, and all the children just adored her. 

That conversation with Lisa was one of those watershed moments that change everything. In the space of probably no more than 15 minutes, we both realised that we were very much on the same wavelength when it came to our approach to parenting, and I felt sure that Lisa was the ideal person to help us move the Parenting with Passion ‘project’ along. She had such incredible expertise and knowledge around parenting, and I just instinctively knew she was the ideal person to work with us. Happily, the timing of that meeting also coincided with a change in my working arrangements that meant I had the freedom to give more time to developing the business once more. 

What we’ve achieved

Over the past 18 months since Lisa joined the team, we’ve accomplished many things, including: 

• Establishing up a Facebook community in Autumn 2023
• Building and launching our website in early 2024 as a source of advice and information for parents
• Creating videos and blogs on parenting topics that we’ve shared far and wide
• Setting up a You Tube channel in May 2025
• Starting to offer 121 support sessions with individual parents 

What’s next! 

• We’re in the process of developing the ideas and content for a series of interactive online workshops
• In due course, we plan to convert Parenting with Passion into a Community Interest Company to better reflect our commitment to ethical conduct over profit
• We are in the process of creating a LinkedIn page for Parenting with Passion.
• We’re exploring options for publishing a book and other useful resources on the Parenting with Passion method/approach. 

Progress has been slow; we’ve gone down many rabbit holes, and reached a few dead ends in our exploratory phase of getting going. But it’s such an exciting moment to have reached our 5 year anniversary, and see something real and tangible taking shape. As a team, we’ve put our hearts into what we’re working on, and I can’t wait to see where we are in another 5 years! 

We're always on the lookout for fellow parents with a passion for what we do and who might want to work with us. If that is you, please get in touch!