About Peaceful Parent

Genevieve and Dan Simperingham run the Peaceful Parent Institute together. They have been running groups together for fourteen years, including facilitating over 150 weekend personal development retreats for individuals and couples.

Genevieve is a Certified Aware Parenting instructor, having trained with Dr. Aletha Solter, psychologist and author of four ground-breaking parenting books

Dr. Solter is the founder of the Aware Parenting Institute, who have instructors in over 60 countries, Genevieve being the only one in New Zealand. Genevieve is an International speaker, who over the last 16 years has presenting hundreds of workshops and courses. Dan brings a wealth of experience in the personal growth field. He has counselling, psychotherapy and psychosynthesis training, and has over 10 years of experience facilitating a variety of groups with both adults and youth.  He worked for some years in a residential psychotherapy program for adults. He enjoys the dynamics of working with teenagers and has a particular passion also for supporting Dad's! Dan also co-facilitates with another educator running leadership and personal growth camps (read more) for groups of high school teenagers. Dan has also been very involved in the men's movement and on several years, has been part of a team of men who annually facilitate "Pathways to Manhood" for teenage boys with Essentially Men.

Dan and Genevieve run the Peaceful Parent Institute with the help of Marie Cadman, their invaluable office administrator, who brings in lots of additional skills that are essential to the smooth running of the office, the planning, the feng shui and endless support and inspiration! There is also behind the scenes a goup of dedicated parents who are enlessly committed to supporting the work of Peaceful Parent, who help promote the groups.

Genevieve Simperingham is an Irish woman, living in New Zealand since 2000. Dan is from Auckland, New Zealand. They have been working together since they first got together in Dublin in 1995. They lived together in Ireland for six years before moving to New Zealand. From the time they first met, they discovered that they had so much in common in their interests, passions and ambitions. They both were involved in personal development groups for years before they'd met, so they began to combine their skills and build on the groups that Genevieve had already been running, which was a series of about eight weekend residentials per year throughout Ireland and England.

"We are passionate about helping adults learn how to stay in relationship with their children through the inevitable conflicts and differences of opinion that are normal in close relationships. We share with parents that conflicts offer an opportunity for growth, learning and deeper understanding of each other and ourselves as parents. The skills that we teach allow the bond to ever deepen between the parent and their child."

Among Genevieve and Dan's areas of expertise are recovery from childhood conditioning (including abuse and trauma) and the healing of pre-natal and birth traumas. In their parenting courses, they bring to parents great wisdom and experience from their years of facilitating inner child work with adults. Their work has taught them that it's never too late to have a happy childhood, but the earlier it happens the better!

Genevieve was initially drawn into the area of personal development as a teenager through her own journey of healing and recovery. She has overcome very deep wounds of extreme trauma relating to childhood physical and sexual abuse, which was what originally inspired her to work in areas where she could bring healing, support and training to others interested in learning more peaceful ways of relating. Little did she know that healing her own traumas would lead her to helping hundreds and hundreds of adults and families in the years to come to.

Genevieve's work is very diverse, having trained in and studied many different healing and therapeutic modalities over the years. Genevieve initially completed a series of training courses in Energy Healing and Counseling Skills, which form a strong foundation for her work. In addition to completing many training courses, Genevieve has apprenticed with some highly skilled healers, therapists and shamans.

Genevieve and Dan's journey led them to train with some very special teachers in 1998, a group of Earth Wisdom Teachers (Ehama Institute) led by Rainbow Hawk and Wind Eagle based at the time in California. They took part in intensive teaching ceremonies with them, which were strongly focused on the Medicine Wheel, over a two year period. The Medicine Wheel offers a model of wholeness and harmony, a model for creating and maintaining harmony in groups, a model of self exploration and self healing, relationship skills and conflict resolution skills.

Genevieve and Dan believe that to solve the current problems that we face in our society, we need to draw on the wisdom and experience of holistic systems that incorporate a balanced integration and honouring of our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects. This body of teachings that Genevieve and Dan had the great benefit of learning from offered them tools and teachings that have been tried and tested, a comprehensive, logical and holistic system that we can learn from. One of the many amazing tools that this path offers is a Council process; a way of sitting together with respect, a way of listening to all voices as being equally valid contributions to the creation of a picture that’s bigger than the individuals in the group. It’s a path that draws forth the best in humans, drawing forward the wisdom, kindness and loving heart that each person naturally yearns to show the world, but may not have known how.


"As parents : We are the proud parents of Oisin, thirteen, and Ayesha, eight. They are both very happy about the work that we do with parents because they know that it helps parents and it helps children and that's all good. Oisin and Ayesha are our biggest teachers. We don't always hit the spot in balancing all the needs within the family, but we're all very onto it with listening to and respecting each person's perspective and repairing any misunderstandings or hurts that arise, there's plenty of time and space for all the voices and all the emotions. We are very proud to be doing the best we can to end the unhealthy cycles of dysfunctional relating that was the norm in our childhood years, and sadly still is the norm, in our society.

"In giving to our children the listening and validation that we didn't receive, we heal patterns from our childhood, in giving to other parents the listening and validation that they didn't receive, we support them in healing their wounds and hence breaking the negative cycles of hurt leading to hurt, blame leading to blame, abuse leading to abuse. With each genuine heart connection that's made, the torn shreds of our society are being rewoven into the beautiful tapestry of peace, harmony, love, beauty and interrelatedness that we have the potential to create.

Before becoming parents, we had already been running Personal Development workshops for a few years, so our main aim was to always support, rather than repress, our children's emotions and also to keep a strong focus on clean and clear boundaries within our family. We were already immersed in a world of helping adults re-parent themselves in healthier and kinder ways than most people experienced as children. Having the privilege of being right there with an adult who exposes the intense painful feelings they felt as a child when they were emotionally alone or silenced is very profound and each experience opens the heart to the pain that human beings carry that relates back to the emotional vulnerability of the parent child relationship."

"Thank you for hearing me ... Thank you for loving me ... Thank you for breaking my heart, thank you for tearing me apart, now I've a strong, strong heart, thank you for breaking my heart". Sinead O'Connor