Parenting is deeply rewarding, and deeply challenging.
This retreat is grounded in connection-based parenting — an approach that is neither permissive nor restrictive and which meets children's big feelings and difficult behaviour with warmth, curiosity and loving limits rather than control.
Set inside four unhurried days in the Somerset countryside, we'll explore how to stay connected through the hard moments: meltdowns, defiance, sibling conflict, and the everyday ruptures that test our patience.
We will include the importance of recognising what regulates our own and our child's nervous systems.
We will look at the specific challenges presented by the internet and screens, and consider how we can stay true to our core values in this terrain, whilst also supporting our children in the development of important life skills.
Sessions are gentle by design, with plenty of room either side for rest, walking, and quiet company. Bring swimwear if you want to plunge in the lake or take advantage of our woodland sauna session.
42 Acres itself sets the tone: a working regenerative farm and wildlife reserve where beavers, wild boar, and barn owls share the land, and where the food on your plate is grown a few steps from where you sleep.
This is about stepping away from your daily life to resource yourself and refresh your perspective so that you return home with more capacity for your children/young people and the relationships you're engaged with every day.
We have designed this retreat for parents/guardians without their children: come as a couple if your children are old enough to stay with family or friends, or one parent/guardian can come alone. And of course single parents are always welcome.
