The Jai Institute for Parenting is delivering on a promise that I made to myself when I was 16 years old.
My parents got divorced when I was just 4 and my dad very quickly remarried. A few years later, my half-brother, Ian, was born. His mom, my stepmother, was definitely an authoritative parent. In all truth, she was an abusive parent. She was incredibly manipulative and the things that my little brother did that were “cute” on Tuesday, would get him locked in the bathroom for an hour on Friday.
She was incredibly punitive with him. She would put Tabasco and soap in his mouth, and make him sit at the dining room table until he completely cleaned his plate, to the point that he’d gag on his food. So I had a front row seat as a teenager to witnessing the ramifications of the dominant model of parenting on a young and growing little boy.
One day when he was being punished for not finishing his dinner, he was sitting at the dining room table at my dad's house, and I'll never forget the picture. He was sitting at the head of the table and his little body was just slumped over, looking so sad and defeated. He didn't want to gag down the mushy fish sticks on his plate, and yet he wasn't allowed to get up until he did.
I remember standing behind him and taking in this scene and I just had this download moment where I heard myself say, “When you become a parent, you are going to know how to do it fairly.” Even at that time, I really understood that the way he was being parented was deeply unfair.
When I became a mom 20 years later, though, I was having a hard time living up to that promise. I had my own two evolving human beings with all of their feelings, emotions, and needs, with their individual high highs and low lows.
At the time (t's embarrassing to admit this now as the CEO of a company that teaches peaceful parenting and parenting without punishments and consequences) my go-to resource was “Supernanny.” What's really true is that watching it always made me feel better about my own parenting).
One of the things that “Supernanny” taught was when a child “broke the rules,” you would put them in time out for as many minutes as they were old, and then they needed to apologize for the transgression. If they didn't say they were sorry, they needed to sit for another three minutes if they were three years old, or another five if they were five.
One time my son got put in time out and he sat there, I kid you not, for over an hour. It was like 20 rounds of four-minute timeouts, and then the rest of the day, he wouldn't look at me or give me any attention. It was like he was holding a grudge, and you know what, he should have been! I thought to myself, “This isn't it, this is not the way to live up to that promise that I made myself when my little brother was eight years old.”
So I started down a path of interviewing conscious parenting experts for a podcast I had at the time, and really started learning that there are more effective, more conscious, more loving, and more effective tools of parenting that have everything to do with emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, conscious communication, and really understanding the neurology of a child. This more peaceful method allows us to understand what's happening in our children’s growing brains as they're developing, so that we can be their guide and mentor, and teach them to navigate their own emotions and communication in a very mature way.
I was blessed a decade ago to meet my then co-founder Jolette Jai, who had a body of work that actually systematically and effectively taught these tools to parents.
Over the last 10 years, we've been training parenting coaches in the Jai methodology all over the world. The number of lives that this work has changed is so humbling. It still brings me to my knees when I hear the stories of a mom who stopped yelling, or a dad who thought there was no way that he could let go of timeouts or taking kid's toys away or punishing them, and that all bedlam would break loose if their control was released (and of course, that's not how it works).
I think the magic of this work is when we meet another human being, whether they're 2 or 92, we have the space to understand that they have real needs and real feelings, and that the intention is to create connection and collaboration within that space, behavior really goes away.
One of the things we teach is that behavior is an expression always of an unmet need. So when needs are met, children don't need to act out. They don't need to retaliate. They don't hold a grudge. They don't need to bicker with their sister to gain attention, or to scratch that itch. As if by magic, the houses of the families that we support become super peaceful, dare I say fun, all the way through the teenage years.
I have the blessing of having brought this work to my children when they were quite little and now they're 14 and 16 years old. People will meet them and they'll say, “How'd you do that? Your kids look me in the eye and they can have amazing conversations.”
I will sometimes respond and say, “Well, I used the modalities that we teach, which is learning to parent with conscious communication and not using punishments and consequences.”
Well-meaning parents will look at me a little cross-eyed because they think there's no way that could work for their kids. They'll say to me, “Oh, well you had good kids.” To which I respond: “Oh my gosh, you didn’t see Myles when he used to bang his head against the floor for 40 minutes..
I share all of this so that you can feel into whether we might be a place for you to consider learning to parent, to meet the parenting ideal that you have in your own mind, not out of a sense of perfection, but a sense of knowing that you have the tools to be the parent you want to be for your child. If this really excites you, you might even consider joining us in our
parent coach certification program.
We're on a mission to change the world by changing the way that parents parent, and I'd love for you to join us in that cause.
Meet Your Author, Kiva Schuler,
Jai Institute Co-Founder and CEO
Kiva’s passion for parenting stemmed from her own childhood experiences of neglect and trauma. Like many of her generation, she had a front row seat to witnessing what she did not want for her own children. And in many ways, Jai is the fulfillment of a promise that she made to herself when she was 16 years old… that when she had children of her own, she would learn to parent them with compassion, consistency and communication.
Kiva is a serial entrepreneur, and has been the marketer behind many transformational brands. Passionate about bringing authenticity and integrity to marketing and sales, she’s a sought after mentor, speaker and coach.
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