Optimal Parenting

Optimal Parenting shows you how to use Natural Learning Rhythms—a comprehensive, thoroughly researched, easy-to-understand system of child development and family dynamics—to create environments for optimal well-being. This parenting approach addresses the emotional, physical, and spiritual development of the whole child. Inspired by the force that resides in each of us, Natural Learning Rhythms is a practical, yet transformative, vision that promotes greater depth and meaning in family relationships and helps children communicate with the adults in their lives.

This book guides parents to create well-being at all stages of their children's lives. Combining compelling insights with practical applications and based on 25 years of experience, Natural Learning Rhythms is poised to be the parenting style for cultural creatives.

Optimal Parenting fills a void in parenting books by focusing on well-being, relationship, and nurturing the whole child. It will appeal to anyone devoted to helping his or her children fulfill their potential, parents who want to be on the same “parenting page,” and families who desire the strengths and skills to face life’s challenges together.

Praise for Optimal Parenting

Natural Learning Rhythms provides a good deal of the theoretical basis for our work at Stages of Learning, which has demonstrated significant frequency of student engagement for 'feeling being' students who often struggle in our public school classrooms.

—Floyd Rumohr, President & CEO, Stages of Learning

Optimal Parenting captures the rich essence of Ba's extensive and successful work with families and young people. As he and his associates have demonstrated repeatedly over the course of many years, the Natural Learning Rhythms approach honors what is truly whole and human within us, and enables adults and children to grow and learn together joyfully. This book shatters our society's misconceptions about human development and gives parents and educators a new perspective that is as refreshing as it is powerful.

—Ron Miller, Ph.D., Goddard College

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of parents and teachers in the destiny not only of our children but also of our planet. I have applied the principles of Natural Learning Rhythms both here and abroad to Teens & Toddlers, a major project of my foundation, Children: Our Ultimate Investment. Due to the encompassing principles of Natural Learning Rhythms, the students became more aware of their role in society, thus becoming better citizens—much unnecessary suffering was avoided and money saved to the taxpayers.

—Laura Huxley, author of You Are Not the Target

Optimal Parenting is a useful synthesis of spiritual and scientific knowledge applied to the gentle art of parenting. Ba Luvmour explores the emotional issues of being a parent and presents charts, techniques, and kind suggestions to help the reader successfully navigate their course through parenthood.

—Pat Farenga, author of Teach Your Own

Ba Luvmour's book uncovers the wellsprings that make our children who they are, and by doing so, equips us for the wondrous journey of human unfolding that being a family can be, if we allow it. But feeding our children the proper developmental nourishment, we feed ourselves as well.

—David H. Albert, author of Have Fun. Learn Stuff. Grow

This is no handy, hip-pocket quick reference guide to parenting, but is a remarkable, extraordinary work embracing a very wide knowledge tempered by the wisdom of years of experience. The Luvmours have brought us a unique and invaluable insight into the child's mind and development which is every bit as valuable for the opening it simultaneously offers parents concerning their own personal understanding, abilities, and life-responses. By striving to be an optimal parent as outlined here, a new world can open for the parent as well as the child. The Luvmours' concept of rhythms of learning goes beyond Piaget and fills critical gaps, while the various 'typing' of children's personality-learning styles is original, fresh, and enlightening. May this work be widely read and closely followed.

—Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of The Biology of Transcendence