What is Holistic Parenting?

• You do not focus on just one or two aspects of child development.
• You understand the four basic developmental needs of children.
• You understand that every child is different and their needs vary as they grow up.
• You understand that if developmental needs of one area are not met, it may affect the developmental needs of other areas.
• You do not treat your child’s behaviour on surface. Instead you look at the underlying causes of your child’s behaviour and see things in big picture.
• You understand that parenting is not just applying techniques.
• You take family as an organization where harmony in vision, oneness, trust and understanding on each other can only lead to desired results.
• You believe that it takes the whole environment of the family to educate a child.
• You realize that you can be effective as parent only when you are positive and content.
• You can see the impact of your small actions in the lives of your children.
• You understand that in the final analysis these are parents who are the curriculum of their children.
• You understand that parenting whether good or bad is irreversible.
• You do not over rely on others or schools for the development of your Children.

About the Five Dimensions of Holistic Parenting

A brief outline of the five dimensions of holistic parenting is as under:

1st dimension: Personal Management
It teaches you to be thankful and happy, how to cope up with stress and how to come out of it. It reminds you to follow healthy routine, take personal care, and build self confidence with an emphasis on self learning and positive thinking.

2nd dimension: Spouse Support
This dimension makes parents learn to value emotional needs of each other as husband and wife. It makes them realize that for being good parents they need to develop mutual understanding and trust. It highlights the importance of their contact time, spouse health, joint decision making and a clear parenting policy.

3rd dimension: Family Culture
For good parenting it is important to know how you celebrate human dignity. It is about the values of respect, simplicity, sharing and cooperation as norms of the family. It emphasizes to care about issues in family ranging from safety and hygiene to book reading.

4th dimension: Child Rearing
It shows how to love kids without spoiling them. This dimension provides an insight into a diverse range of issues and establishes clear indicators of successful parenting. At this stage parents realize the greater goals of parenting and critically review their parenting approach. This dimension introduces the essential skills and strategies that every parent must have to facilitate children in their academic and non-academic parts of lives.

5th dimension: Social Behavior
The greatest aim of parenting is to develop confidence, creativity and character in children for the pursuit of continuous excellence in social behavior. The 5th dimension is the highest stage of development and is all about achieving husn-emaashrat.

Length of training

Spread over 20 instructional hours in two different modules, the workshop has lecture sessions, individual and group exercises, presentations by the participants and quizzes. Different modules are developed and brought together at the end. Depending upon the participants, the workshop’s layout is customized. A minimum of three days are required. Sometimes on request, the number of days is increased to reduce the hours per day.

Objective of the workshop

• Realize the value of four basic developmental needs in the upbringing of children
• Revisit your parenting vision, analyze your parenting approach and kick off the natural process of holistic parenting with the framework of five dimensions
• Develop an insight into how children feel and think and how parents should rear them
• Evaluate your personal management, spouse relationship and family culture with the help of contextually appropriate self-assessment tools
• Identify what you specifically need to do to enhance your effectiveness and develop an action plan for meaningful parenting

Trainer Profile

Salman Asif Siddiqui is founder and director of Educational Resource Development Centre (ERDC), which is an institute of teacher training and material development in Pakistan. He has specialized in Educational Psychology. During his extensive experience of 16 years in the field of education, he has served the roles of a teacher, trainer, counselor, author and editor. He has over thirty children’s books and teachers’ courses to his credit as author or editor. His books are taught in the schools of Pakistan, India, UAE and UK. He has conducted hundreds of training workshops for teachers, trainers, school heads, parents and students all over the country in association with several public and private institutions. He has spoken to educational forums in Pakistan, Europe and UAE and worked for a number of leading national and international organizations. He has been invited by leading TV channels to talk on education and parenting. He has also received the Award for Professional Excellence from government of Pakistan. He is married, with two daughters and one son. Based on his extensive and rich experience of working with parents, teachers and children Salman has proposed a framework of holistic parenting which is consistent with our context and value system.
His research work and ideas on parenting is being compiled in the form of a book ‘Five Dimensions of Holistic Parenting’.