We encountered Ruth when our now teenage son was almost 3 years old. She shaped our thinking about what it means to raise children well. We continue to try and slow down our parenting in order to avoid reacting in the moment to the endless stresses of parenthood. We do our best to care for ourselves so our relationship with our son isn’t burdened by our concerns, and we try to remember that this raising our son in nonviolence is a continuing practice rather than a predetermined objective.

Parenting with nonviolence has become a framework within which we attempt to support our son through his sometimes tempestuous growth and maturing. Ruth’s unexpected insights and valuable tools for parenting draw on current brain research, trauma informed therapy, and philosophy. More importantly she inspires a vision of peace and justice through parenting which has an impact beyond our family. When we model behavior rather than instruct, our relationship our son deepens and he intrinsically exhibits trust, confidence and resilience. We are grateful for Ruth’s insight, guidance and spirit of revolutionary change.

I knew the definition of empathy, but it wasn’t until Ruth opened my eyes and taught me what it really means to have empathy that I was able to understand its true impact. It fosters trust, connection, love, and respect, and has the power to heal wounds past and present. Ruth sees and hears the unmet needs behind every child’s behavior, and puts everything in perspective to bring families together. She has taught me to have compassion for my children, myself, and others. She models kindness, the type that can break the cycle of dominant paradigm that we grew up with and accepted as normal. She is a firm believer in our brain’s plasticity and shows us how to be a better version of ourselves we want to be. I feel incredibly lucky to have Ruth’s guidance while navigating the parenting journey, and hope that the lessons learned will be passed down to my children to theirs.

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from Ruth was how to make an Empathy Book. It’s a parenting staple in my life. I get as much out of making them for my son, as he does when he adds to it and draws the pictures while we read it. Visual learning aids work well for kids and this tool is therapeutic and creates deeper communication. In our home things don’t get brushed under the rug they get put on a book shelf.

Ruth models kindness and compassion and you feel it in her calm speaking and loving listening. From the way she models & guides her workshops I’ve learned new ways to speak & listen to my son. Implementing Ruth’s ideas has created a relationship with my son where he can tell me anything and knows I really listen & think about what he says. He trusts me & feels heard.

I have hosted Ruth’s parenting workshops in my home because it gives me support in my parenting and I love being able to contribute to others and be surrounded by a community of parents who are like minded. With Ruth’s weekly teachings I see parents take new actions that creates more connectedness with their kids.

At Ruth’s support groups she creates a safe space for everyone to feel heard and connected. I continually learn from Ruth and from other people’s sharing in her sessions that supports me & my child with many different situations. It prompts me to come up with new ideas of how to navigate similar issues in my life…like an aha moment just by listening.
I am forever grateful to have her support on my parenting journey. I recommend her to all my fellow parents.

I’ve known Ruth for over 20 years and have greatly benefited from her support and teachings. She has provided training, technical assistance, coaching, and guidance to my staff in her nonviolent parenting and caregiving philosophy, and has helped redefine the way we work with young children. As an administrator of a large nonprofit organization, I know that I would not be able to provide my staff with a clear vision of equity and social justice in early childhood programs, if it weren’t for Ruth’s example.

Fairly consistently, I went twice a month to parenting support group. Week after week, Ruth coached me in how to be a more loving human being. She created an incredibly safe space for us as parents, for our children, and for the inner child within us. She allowed us to be as vulnerable as we wanted to be. She modeled empathy by showing it towards us and towards our children even when we couldn’t do it for ourselves and didn’t think that we or they deserved it. She motivated me to be more empathetic, gave very specific feedback about whatever scenario we would bring to her, and yet left lots of space for us to have our own agency and develop our own practice with our children.

Ruth created the curriculum for the 10 week class. Although, she was not our teacher in the class, I learned about our socio-emotional development and our brain and how connected they are. I realized that I was not equipped to handle my daughter’s emotions. I learned theory and skills I could use to support my daughter. I learned how to identify, honor, and manage my own emotions instead of either being permissive or aggressive towards my daughter when she had big feelings.

However, to truly shift my practice, I needed Ruth’s support. As a teacher, I know that we learn when we are motivated, have strong models, get specific feedback, and we practice a lot. Ruth is an incredibly strong teacher.

I met Ruth and parenting with nonviolence when my now teen, was a toddler. Nothing has had a more profound impact on my family than this paradigm shift. This work has enabled my partner and I to build strong, empathic connections with all our children. It’s created a scaffolding based on emotional intelligence, co-regulation, and love in our family. That scaffolding has given us the ability to navigate the trickier parts of parenting with a lot more grace then I imagined was possible. More than that, I have found so much support and connection as a parent and a person in this community that without it, I don’t know where I would be.

Parenting is the hardest and most rewarding job I have ever had. Over the past two years, Ruth’s immense expertise, tremendous insights, responsiveness, and buckets and buckets of empathy has helped me become a better mother, teacher, and human being.

The journey is so precious and when things got very hard, Ruth became a valuable mentor to me. She continues to walk with me on the path of being a healthy human being, reminds me to keep things in perspective, and reach within me to find empathy for my daughter and myself and to stay in connection with my daughter. Ruth has definitely helped me to be more resilient as a parent and find new strategies to love myself and my daughter.