Hello NZSA Staff and Members!

I am excited to announce that my book has been accepted by Bateman Books and is due for release June 1st 2026.

The title is:

BREAKING THROUGH

How to Rescue Childhood and Heal the Parent-child Relationship

Please see my Plum Parenting website NEWS page, and follow the Plum Parenting Facebook and/or Instagram pages for updates.

On the NEWS page of the website you will find links to a 1-hour podcast interviewing me about my work, which will give you a glimpse of what is in the book.

There is right now an ever-increasing call for a childhood based more on whole-child experience in the real world, one that supports creative free play, healthy social interaction and growing independence, along with the development of self-regulation and resilience. Jonathon Haidt expresses these concerns in his seminal work: The Anxious Generation.

This idea may be all very well, but how will parents be able to turn things around? How will they manage to take charge of screens, navigate reactive behaviours and facilitate great experiences when their children are already hardwired for dependencies and habitual negative responses? How do you create positive effective boundaries when so far they haven't worked? How do you take the drug (addiction to screens and instant gratification) away from an addict?

My book will show how to safely and positively navigate all these scenarios throughout childhood. The goal is to lovingly settle down the defence system, (which I call the 'Guard Dog'), and set the 'True Child' free - free to be a child. 

For 35 years I worked as a nurse, midwife and early childhood teacher, then in 2007 I founded a parent mentoring service called Plum Parenting, based in Wellington, serving not only our cool little capital but also parents and teachers throughout the country and worldwide, online. This book is a response to almost 20 years of requests from my clients, and those attending my lectures, to share with the wider world my theory and methods which they describe as 'life-changing'.

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