Special discount for knowitall.ch readers who sign up as a couple or bring a friend.
If you are are a parent and were asked what you would like for your child, most of us would place happiness at the top of the list. However, try as you might, happiness is not everlasting – life throws challenges at you that cannot necessarily be planned for or controlled. However, you can control your emotional strategies and skills to navigate challenges more successfully, and hence build your capacity to bounce back and maximize your potential for experiencing happiness.
Positive Psychology is the ground-breaking study of what makes us feel good, function well and flourish. Its research findings offer parents a new outlook on how to nurture children’s potential, find optimism and meaning in life transitions, overcome educational challenges and increase overall family wellbeing.
In this region of Switerland, we are lucky to have two experts in this field, both of whom have been working with Positive Psychology for many years. Because of their shared experience in applying Positive Psychology to leadership development, teacher training, parental coaching and youth skills development, Laurence Van Hanswjick de Jonge and Sandy Perrin, set up Positive Psychology Consulting in 2013 to help improve lives for people at work, for children and teachers in school, for parents dealing with kids, and for expats in the process of re-balancing their life.
Laurence is a developmental Neuropsychologist and coach who provides developmental and psychological assessments in English and uses Positive Psychology extensively in her work with children and parents. She explained the philosophy behind Positive Psychology to us, “It is a field of study grounded in over 20 years of academic research and it looks at all aspects of a person’s being. Positive Psychology does not discount traditional psychology, nor supersede it. But while traditional psychology focuses on treating psychological deficits and getting people from ‘abnormal’ to ‘normal’ or ‘average’, Positive Psychology aims at identifying approaches and processes to unleash people’s potential to go beyond normal in order to reach extraordinary performance, wellbeing and life satisfaction.”
Sandy is an Education Specialist, business consultant and mediator and has experience in applying the principals of Positive Psychology to leadership development, teacher training and conflict management. Asked what makes her company special compared to other psychology practices in the region, she told us, “We specialize in making rigorous academic material accessible and relevant to the community. We have synthesised and organised the broad material in the field Positive Psychology into four distinctive areas: Corporate and Leadership, Education, Parenting, and Youth Life-Skills Development. We offer workshops, training programs and coaching in these areas allowing our clients to learn about Positive Psychology from the perspective that is of the most interest to them, living and working in this region of Switzerland.”
With corporate clients, Laurence and Sandy focus on integrating Positive Psychology into their organisation, and concentrate specifically on leadership development, so that clients can achieve more desirable business outcomes, meaningful collaboration and engagement in the workplace.
In the field of Education, Positive Psychology Consulting collaborates directly with schools to increase social wellbeing, optimal learning, and teachers’ work satisfaction. Laurence and Sandy provide teacher workshops and expertise to produce effective Positive Education programs in house.
For parents they propose a variety of workshops, where parents can learn to use simple evidence-based Positive Psychology techniques and apply them to their existing parenting strategies in a natural and intuitive way. The workshops are designed to help parents discover alternative parenting strategies, that will enable them to tackle challenging situations confidently and equip themselves with more parenting choices to help their children become more resilient, resourceful, and optimistic.
Believing that children should not miss out on the opportunity to learn essential skills for personal development, Laurence and Sandy also offer a series of Youth Life-Skills programs. Sandy explained, “Most schools to date still do not teach children the skills of effective thinking, feeling, and relating in their curriculum. This is especially true for children who are doing well, it is often assumed that they will naturally figure out life and be happy. Often there is no second thought about whether happiness and fulfilled living can be taught. However, there is extensive scientific evidence that the foundations for increased well-being and life satisfaction are teachable skills and can be learned. It is the combination of these skills with academic teaching, which propels children, not academia alone”
For children, the following two programs are currently offered:
1. Self-leadership and Mental Judo program: teaching children the core-skill of resilience. Resilience is a critical predictor of our success and happiness. It is the ability of a child to deal more effectively with stress and pressure, to cope with everyday challenges, to bounce back from disappointment and adversity, to develop clear and realistic goals, to solve problems, to relate comfortably with others, and to treat oneself and others with respect.
2. Strength Power: helps children to find and follow their strengths and passions. Strengths are the things that we do that make us feel energised and alive when we do them. The goal of the program is to help young people find and focus on what interests, engages and energises them, so they can start to put their best self forward and begin connecting their unique inner qualities to their promise as adults.
To find out more about the benefits of Positive Psychology, visit Laurence and Sandy’s website at www.positivepsychology.ch. Click here to view their list of upcoming workshops on Positive Parenting, and click here for workshops targeted specifically at teachers.
To encourage more parents to find out more about the unique benefits of Positive Psychology, Laurence and Sandy are offering knowitall.ch readers a combined Fr. 50.- discount on the early bird concession price, or a combined Fr. 100.- discount on the full workshop price, if they book as a couple or “bring a friend” to any of their workshops taking place before the end of June 2014. Just mention this article on the knowitall.ch website when you make your booking.
Positive Psychology Consulting
Laurence Van Hanswjick de Jonge
Sandy Perrin
www.positivepsychology.ch
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Click here to download flyer on Positive Parenting Workshops
Click here to download flyer on Positive Education Teacher Workshops
