About us
The Nurtured Heart Approach® (NHA) is more than just a behavior management strategy for parents or educators. It is a philosophy for creating healthy relationships. Originally conceived by Howard Glasser in 1992, the NHA has been successfully implemented by families, in classrooms, and in foster care, criminal justice, and health care settings in the US and worldwide.
The Approach is a set of strategies that equips adults to guide children of all ages in developing self-regulation. It has this impact via transforming the way children perceive themselves, their caregivers and the world around them. Repeated experiences of being seen and acknowledged when things are not going wrong inspires children to build a positive portfolio of themselves: an expansive and expanding store of what the NHA calls Inner Wealth™. Children come to trust that they will receive abundant and energized recognition and reward in response to their positive behaviors.
Stand 1: ABSOLUTELY NO!
In the NHA, we reframe the notion of child misbehavior as a misuse of intensity. Nurtured Heart Approach® thinking embraces the intensity generously possessed by most children with challenging behaviors as powerful fuel that—if developed correctly—can propel these same children into amazing achievements. When a child learns to feel great about their intensity, incidents of challenging behavior dissolve.
The Nurtured Heart Approach embraces The 3 Stands™: guidelines for relationship that, when committed to, become a powerful means for transforming children.
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.