AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NURTURED HEART APPROACH
Additional Information
The Nurtured Heart Approach® (NHA) is more than just a parenting or educator behavior management strategy. It is a philosophy for creating healthy relationships with the people in your life.
Originally created by Howard Glasser in 1992, NHA is being successfully implemented through families, classrooms, foster carers, health care professionals, social workers and criminal justice organisations that are seeking successful, early intervention techniques.
The Nurtured Heart Approach consists of a set of strategies that assists children in further developing their self-regulation and has been found effective with children of all ages. It focuses on transforming the way children perceive themselves, their caregivers and the world around them. Children learn to understand that they will receive endless amounts of praise, energy, recognition and reward through the positive behavior they display and this supports children to build a positive portfolio of themselves, which we call “Inner Wealth™.”
Intensity is key to Nurtured Heart Approach thinking. Unfortunately the word 'intensity' has negative associations in our society and teachers, parents and childcare workers can view it as the enemy. In Nurtured Heart Approach® thinking we believe intensity is a powerful quality that, if developed correctly, can propel children onto amazing achievements. When a child learns to feel great about their intensity, the incidents of challenging behavior dissolve.
The Nurtured Heart Approach embraces The 3 Stands™, that when committed to, become a powerful means of transforming children:
Stand 1: ABSOLUTELY NO! I refuse to give my time, energy and relationship to negative behavior. I will not accidentally foster failure nor will I reward problems by responding to them in animated ways. I will save my time and energy for searching for success.
Stand 2: ABSOLUTELY YES! I will relentlessly and strategically pull the child into new patterns of success. I will constantly recognize the success and achievement that children are displaying no matter how small and present them with clear undeniable evidence of their value and how great they are.
Stand 3: ABSOLUTELY CLEAR! I will have clear and consistent consequences for children when a rule has been broken. “Here are the rules, and here’s what happens when you break a rule.”
