Parenting

The manner in which we, as caregivers, fulfil the basic needs of children largely determines who they are and who they will become. As caregivers, we seek the best possible answers to the needs that children have. This is not about ready-made solutions. Parenting also involves dealing with the many contradictions in the needs of a child (like, being wild as well as being civilised), and between the needs of the child and our own. It is always about finding an optimal balance and reconciliation.

Double Healix for Parenting

A child’s needs are better understood when seen in the perspective of developmental phases and tension fields. Therefore, we have grouped the fundamental needs of children and placed them within the twelve phases and the six tension fields of the Double Healix model. We provide an overview of children’s needs and tension fields in parenting using clear examples from feature films, documentaries, and home videos.

Learning to parent well is also learning to lead well. By using the levels of the Double Healix model, we can draw a parallel between parenting, adult behaviour, and leadership.

Parenting Balances

Double Healix has developed an online MovieLearning course on Parenting Balances. The courses address the six most important areas of tension in the human soul, as identified in various types of research (such as Fons Trompenaars’ cultural comparative research and the Hexaco personality research). By following this course, you will gain a good understanding of the areas of tension that every person, and therefore every caregiver and every young person, must learn to manage.

In the course, we show and discuss general and difficult parenting situations related to one of the six balances. We also discuss some important aspects of developmental psychology. See below for the link to the MovieLearning course ‘Parenting Balances’.

Blended Learning

Alongside the online course Parenting Balances (that can be studied independently) Double Healix has also conducted various Parenting Balance programmes involving blended learning, which combines online and live training sessions. Recently, for example, we successfully completed two blended MovieLearning programmes for the youth care institution Levvel (see the reference from Mariënne Verhoef, member of the Board of Directors of the Levvel Foundation, at the bottom).

Video Platform

MovieLearning course Parenting Balances

Parenting Balances

This course is about recognizing and enduring tensionfields in parenting, and optimizing your responses to the child’s conflicting needs.

View the course

References & testimonials

Video Platform

We completed the two MovieLearning trainings with great pleasure and success. With this highly visual way of learning, we offer our pedagogical guides a new ‘toolbox’ with various interventions for familiar parenting situations. Combined with the theoretical framework that clearly illustrates areas of tension and parenting balances, family home parents can immediately apply what they have learned to their daily practice. The impactful film clips touch you and truly immerse you in the world of children and young people with a troubled past. The guides indicate that they have learned to look more sensitively beyond certain behaviours of children and that they have gained more behavioural interventions at their disposal. I wish everyone who is professionally involved in the upbringing and development of children and young people could experience such a MovieLearning programme.

Mariënne Verhoef

Member of the Board of Directors of the Levvel Foundation

Very inspiring, sharpening, challenging, lifting me up.

Iris Deuss

Systemic therapist at Juvent Youth Care, trainer, coach

The training in the Double Healix model has brought me a great deal. Every training day brought me joy as it provided me with insights and tools. I use the model daily in various areas of life: personally, in raising my children, in coaching employees and teams, and in observing organisations. The different phases, paradoxes, and levels guide my thinking and actions, leading me to different interventions. The visual support with film clips touches deeply in the heart. A very inspiring and activating training, which also brings stillness and sparks ideas!

Irene den Ouden

Team coach at Juvent Youth Care

View more references