Nurtured Heart

The Pears Family School uses and promotes a Nurtured Heart Approach to communication to support creating change over time. This was developed by Howard Glasser, Psychotherapist and founder of The Nurtured Heart Institute.

Using this approach, adults supporting children ensure that any opportunity for noticing and energising the positives we see is fully explored. 

This means in moments of challenge and difficulty, wherever possible, we limit the attention and energy these moments receive. In contrast, when things are going well the challenge is to catch, celebrate and energise these moments of success.

When naming what we see going well, we are as specific and detailed as possible. It might sound like I noticed you kept going when you made a mistake on that Maths question. This shows me how resilient you are.

Reflection Time is built into each school day and is an opportunity for families, teachers and students to use the Nurtured Heart Approach to celebrate each other.

We appreciate that this approach can feel like learning a new language at times and might be particularly difficult if in our own experiences of care those looking after us focused more on what was going wrong than right. We support each other to develop confidence in speaking the language of Nurtured Heart through Parent Learning and through the everyday practice of how we speak to and about each other at The Pears Family School.

A pdf of ‘virtues’ we aim to spot and name is available here

Watch a video on the Nurtured Heart Approach here

Listen to the Nurtured Heart Podcast here