Lecture

How to become a better NVR-counsellor for parents and teachers.

To improve our work with parents and teachers, we have to speak their language. The language of therapists and counsellors/coaches is completely different. In my lecture I will illustrate how we often ‘lose’ parents and teachers in the process of counselling because of this. How we can overcome this ‘mismatch’ and can achieve maximum engagement by parents and teachers. The secret lies in speaking with them in their own language. To do so we have to: a) connect to their distress; b) take their goals seriously; c) look for their strengths and achievements; d) link NVR-concepts to their experience, and e) listen to their requests and objections. By these means it is possible to achieve close to zero dropout and motivate parents and teachers, even the ones that are quite sceptical or hesitant.

Biography

Haim Omer is the founder of  the Non Violent Resistance-approach for parents and teachers.  He is emeritus professor at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. He has developed the model of Non Violent Resistance in families, later evolving into New Authority, with its application to families, schools and communities. 
He is the author of 11 books and more than 80 academic articles. He has published many studies on the method and its applications with parents of children with aggressive behavior (like child-to-parent violence and violence against siblings), juvenile delinquency, anxiety disorders and OCD, depression and suicidality, school refusal, teen-drivers and prevention of computer- and smartphone abuse.  His most recent books are the 2 parallel books ‘Courageous parents’ and ‘Courageous teachers’. Haim is married and has five children: Anat, Yonatan, the author Mike, the painter Noam and Yael.  He dedicated one of his books to “my five children, who taught me all I know about parental helplessness”.