Jeff Everage Shares Ancient Techniques for Modern Parenting

Presentation for the Indigo Village “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child” Parenting Conference March 10, 2012 

Existing in the world today are pockets of cultures that still adhere to an ancient way of life. Jeff Everage uses the San People of Botswana to illustrate that though we live in a modern world full of conveniences, there are ancient values of community, play, and mentorship that we can use to help us parent our modern children.Click here for the Ancient Models of Community Slide Show by Jeff Everage

About Jeff 

People often ask me how I got the idea for PeaceInYourHome.com.  It was a journey that started before I even knew I wanted to be a great parent.  Like many members of Generation X, I waited until I was in my late 30’s to have children.  It had been almost 20 years since I was parented.  I didn’t remember much and what I did remember wasn’t functional.  Because I went straight to the Naval Academy after high school and never returned home for more than a month, I was not present to the parenting that my young cousins received at home in Georgia.   I missed being a part of raising that generation.  I had inadvertently isolated myself from parenting models for most of my life.  Instead my models were TV,  which showcased only fantasy or the totally dysfunctional, and the slew of parenting books that fixed problems like crying, but did not teach parenting fundamental concepts.  I was basically on my own.

My military and entrepreneurial career didn’t help much either. They don’t give parenting education in the Navy SEAL program.  In fact, you might say that my entire career, both in the navy and afterwards, trained me to be an autocratic parent. Imagine my dismay when no one at home was following my orders!  Chaos erupted. The tipping point happened when my second boy turned two and started fighting with his older brother all the time.  Not only were we still not getting sleep, but there was no peace and quiet home. Nothing I did seemed to work. I got really depressed. It was a tough time.

And then I met Susie Walton and took Redirecting Children’s Behavior.  Despite the course name, my behavior was dramatically “redirected.” Susie was a fresh, new model for parenting for me and became my mentor and close friend. Susie and the course changed my life forever.  I took it two more times and then became a certified instructor.  Before long, parents at work and school were asking for my advice after watching how effective I would manage conflict and create a connection with children.  Children that didn’t even let their fathers hold them for long were jumping into my arms.

Over the period of 2 years, I went from totally hopeless to mentor, teacher, and model. I am a lifelong learner and this kicked of a quest to get more fundamental knowledge about children and families. I started to realize that children and parents had the same basic needs that our fast-paced, media-centric, visit-our-families-once-a-year culture was no longer providing.  I started to see that we, as a culture, were blind to what was now missing.  We no longer worked together to raise children. I realized that a lot was missing in my family’s “village.” This made Susie’s village message even more meaningful to me.

In my journey, I have discovered parenting and cultural fundamentals that are backed by new brain science, our evolutionary development, our cultural history, our biology, and appeal to our common sense.  For the first time I felt like I was grasping the whole story of parenting.

The first step for me was to build a community that accepted and followed the same principles that I was learning from the experts like Susie Walton, Kathryn Kvols, Jon Young,Meredith Small, Robert Saplosky, and others. I wanted more access to these amazing experts, whenever I needed them. Any time I pulled out my phone to call Susie, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a site I could go to and get some of the answers and knowledge refreshment I’m looking for? And so PeaceInYourHome.com was born. I’d like to personally invite you to come on this journey with me, with the ambitious goal of creating a parenting community that will help us have happy, thriving children and peace in our homes, communities, and world.

My vision for the website

• Why would you listen to me anyway?  Because we are science-based, cultural-anthropology-based, and common-sense-based.  We aren’t trying to fix your children, and we are not trying to sell you anything but high quality training. And we aren’t marketing to you either.
• My vision for PeaceInYourHome.com is to be the place where parents go for good advice and training throughout their life of parenting and grandparenting.  We are starting with courses based on the highly effective Redirecting Children’s Behavior Course, but that is only the beginning.  Soon we’ll have Susie’s advanced course online as well, and then we’ll move to master’s courses from more experts, that you’ll be happy to learn from.  There will be nature awareness experts, nursing specialists, story-telling gurus, and cultural anthropologists, to just name a few.