Reflective Parenting Training

Course Tutor: Dr. Sheila Redfern

Course Fee: £200 (including training and course materials)

Course Length: 6 hours practical training on Zoom.

Course Dates: 5^th February 2026 or 11^th February 2026 (for parents of 0-12s) or 4^th March 2026 (for parents of teenagers and young adults) 9.30am – 3.30pm.

Course Requirements: This course is open to all parents or carers who want to understand their child or teen better and learn how to support their emotional and behavioural development.

Course Follow Up: At the end of the training, participants will be offered the opportunity of individual follow up sessions with Dr Redfern either in-person or online to support their Reflective Parenting.

Training for Parents

Do you find yourself wondering what’s going on in your child’s mind? My books Reflective Parenting and How Do You Hug a Cactus? offer a practical guide to parents to understand what Reflective Parenting really means in practice. They can guide parents through the tools and general stance they can take towards their child or teenager in order to promote their mental health, and supports them in raising emotionally healthy children and young people. This one-day course takes parents through all the main ingredients needed to become a more reflective parent.

This one day training course for parents and carers introduces them to the range of tools they can use with their children and teenagers which will bring about a closer understanding and connection between them. I show parents that the key to promoting a closer, long-lasting connection, is learning how to ‘mentalize’. This means learning to reflect on parents’ own thoughts and feelings, leading to greater emotion regulation. Then turning their attention to being curious about what’s going on in their child’s mind, and what their thoughts and feelings might be about. When we feel ‘mentalized’ by someone else, we feel truly understood and connected to them.

This one day course will draw on the theories of mentalization, attachment theory, and child development (including neurodevelopment), and help parents to apply very practical tools, grounded in research, to their everyday parenting interactions with their children, leading to more emotionally healthy children and teens.

What I Do

I am highly experienced in the assessment and treatment of attachment disorders and in promoting reflective parenting. National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) evidenced treatments are used including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT) and

Video Interaction Guidance (VIG).

I provide both specialist psychological assessment and evidence-based treatments for a wide range of difficulties in children and adolescents aged 0-18, and their parents and/or carers including:

Depression / Low mood

Family/relationship difficulties

Social anxiety

Panic attacks & panic disorder

Agoraphobia

Specific Phobias

Health Anxiety

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Post-Traumatic Stress

Peer relationship difficulties

Parent-infant attachment difficulties

Generalised anxiety

Examination / college or school stress

Low self-esteem

Parenting difficulties

Emerging personality disorder

Assessment of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Cognitive assessments

Support to foster carers and adoptive parents

Unsure whether I can help you? Simply drop me an email or call and leave a message. I may get back to you quicker by email due to the high volume of calls I receive.

Reflective Parenting - The Book

A Guide to Understanding What's Going on in Your Child's Mind - second edition coming out in January 2026!

How to make a positive impact on your relationship with your child, starting from the development of the baby’s first relationship with you as parents, to how you can be more reflective in relationships withtoddlers, children and young people.

More Resources for Parents & Children