Research-grounded. Deeply human.

Grounded Parenting

A guide to the early years

Eleven chapters covering the capable child, the home environment, rhythm and ritual, screens, sleep, behaviour, and siblings. The complete companion to early childhood.

Ready

A guide to starting school

Seven chapters covering what is happening for your child at the school threshold, what is happening for you, the months before, and the first weeks in.

In Between

Understanding transitions

Six chapters on the transitions that structure every day, and why understanding your own experience of gear-changes makes you better at supporting a child through one.

The complete companion to early childhood

Grounded Parenting is the guide I wished had existed when I started working with families. It is not a manual and it does not tell you what to do. It offers the understanding that makes the doing feel less fraught, because when you understand why your toddler cannot stop playing when lunch is announced, or why your three-year-old needs the goodbye ritual to happen in exactly the same way every morning, you stop trying to manage behaviour and start responding to a person.

Each chapter includes a research box with further reading, a practical Try This section, and a moment to reflect. Written for any parent, at any stage.

What is inside

• Your capable child, trusting what your child can do
• A home that invites, spaces and materials that spark curiosity
• Rhythm and ritual, routines that hold children safe
• Following curiosity, play, wonder, and questions worth sitting with
• Foundations to flourish, language, emotion, and independence
• Home and setting together, partnerships with early years professionals
• The reflective parent, noticing yourself without judgment
• Screens and technology
• Sleep and rest
• Behaviour and boundaries, connection before correction
• Siblings, why they love and fight with equal intensity

For families navigating the school threshold

Starting school is one of the most significant transitions in early childhood. Ready is not a checklist of things to buy or practise before September. It is a guide to understanding what starting school really means, what is happening developmentally for your child, what is happening emotionally for you, and how the two experiences weave together in ways that matter.

Includes a reference section on the week before school starts. Each chapter stands alone, go to what you need.

What is inside

• What is actually happening for your child, the developmental reality
• What is actually happening for you, the parent’s experience
• The months before, preparing without pressuring
• The first weeks, what to expect, what is normal
• When it is hard, separation distress, worries, and friendship
• The longer arc, grounded school readiness six months in
• For the parent at the gate, the moment of letting go

The gear-changes that shape every day

Every day is full of them. Arrivals and departures. The moment nursery ends and home begins. The child who holds it together all day and falls apart the moment you walk through the door. In Between is a guide to the transitions that thread through everyday family life, not just the big ones, but the small, daily crossings that children can find surprisingly hard.

Practical, research-grounded, and honest about the difficulty of the moments it addresses.

What is inside

• Why transitions are hard, the neuroscience of gear-changes
• Your child’s experience, what is happening in the nervous system
• Your experience, what you bring to the threshold moments
• The daily transitions, arrivals, departures, and in-between times
• Building rituals, the anchors that steady children
• When transitions are really hard, support and scaffolding