Passionate Parenting

Passionate Parenting’s services are designed to equip and encourage all parents. With our specialist services, we hope to bring more pleasure and confidence to your parenting. Parent Education is key to raising children and building strong families and communities.

Passionate Parenting exists to:

At each event, Passionate Parenting's guest speaker will share their knowledge in their area of expertise. After registration, coffee, a welcome and introductions, there is a 90 minute power point presentation, usually an interactive session. This is followed by 30 minutes Q & A. Parents have the chance to hear the expert, face to face, and have their questions answered, while learning from other parents’ experiences and making new acquaintences.

There are parenting books, websites and magazines, but nothing is as real and as valuable as listening and learning and interacting with local experienced professionals in parenting.

Passionate Parenting is set-up to benefit numerous parties

The parents: Most expatriate families do not have great support systems (mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins) to help them during these challenging and rewarding child-rearing years. These workshops are a good opportunity to improve parenting skills as well as an opportunity to share experiences and make new friends.

The Children: with better “equipped” parents, children will automatically benefit from the new parenting skills. We believe happy children often = happy parents!

The Charities: Nazareth House, Ikageng & Little Angels & other SA charities receive half of any profit from these community service seminars.

Soul: I get to work on something that really interests me, while being at home for my kids: an ideal combination for me.

The speakers: usually accompanying spouses who are looking to set up their practices and would benefit from contact with potential customers and more PR exposure.

Passionate Parenting is in an exciting and rapid growth phase. We are expanding : it is only with our customers’ advice, (and word of MOUSE) suggestions and feedback through regular research that this is possible.

History

The first Passionate Parenting workshop was specifically tailored to English speaking expectant parents (or parents of newborn babies) and was on Survival Skills: why is my baby crying and how can I get my child to sleep? By OT (cum Laude) Lizanne du Plessis. There were just under 30 parents who attended either the morning or the evening session. That was three days before her second child was born.

A year later, the parent education seminars resumed, and since then, local and expat parents have listened to experts on Third Culture Kids, Raising Bilingual Children, Diet & Nutrition, Speech & Language Development, the Role of Music in the Development of your Child, Discipline: Setting Limits with Love, Social and Emotional Intelligence in Children etc. These workshops are becoming so popular that they are occasionally fully booked (subject dependent!).

If you want to volunteer your services and help us out at events, let us know. YOUR input is very important to us! Any ideas or suggestions for Passionate Parenting or this website are most welcome. Please contact us

About Soul

Soon after arriving in Holland with her Dutch husband, Soul Robertson became a first-time mom. Soul started “Passionate Parenting: Education Workshops” as a hobby, in October 2005 just before her second baby was born.  She was and is very motivated to learn more about parenting and simultaneously support charities that help the deprived children of South Africa, her home country.

Starting “Passionate Parenting” was her chance to do both while being a full-time mum. Now she has three children, 5y, 4y and 15months. Passionate Parenting is her fourth “baby”.

Soul is South African. She graduated from Wits University (Johannesburg) as a high school teacher with Psychology & Physical Education Majors. After one year of teaching, she went into Marketing and Sales, working for a multinational Pharmaceutical Company. Thereafter, she graduated from the University of Cape Town with a post-graduate diploma in Marketing Management.

When there is time... between being a full-time mum of three little ones and running Passionate Parenting, Soul loves to go out with husband, Adriaan, see friends, work in the garden, read books and The Bible, and keep fit by running through Clingendael early in the morning (summer only!).