How it started
When Morgan was born, Reilly and Suzanne started doing a YogaKids video at home. Eventually, they found a YogaKids class in which mom and daughters participated together. YogaKids is an international program teaching kids and parents the benefits of yoga at an early age. It was taught at the Brentwood Center of Health by Michaela Turner.

A branch of YogaKids is yogi parenting. After becoming certified to teach yogi parenting, Turner decided to offer a one-day seminar in June for her YogaKids families (and anyone else who wanted to come). In it, Turner taught redirecting behavior via yogic principles.

“What I like is that Michaela taught a lot of useful tools. Such as putting on your silly chore hat every time you and your kids clean the house.

“And you don’t have to know yoga to benefit from this,” Suzanne says. “Every parent could benefit from this.”
When Suzanne Tucker’s daughter Morgan wouldn’t answer her one morning as to whether she wanted oatmeal for breakfast, Suzanne stood in front of her and started to mime eating oatmeal.

“She looked up at me, and smiled, and said, ‘Oh yes mom, I’d love a bowl of oatmeal,’ in a funny voice,” Suzanne says.

Her husband, Shawn, “just looked at me like he thought I was crazy, but when he sees it works, he’s totally on board. He’ll say, ‘I don’t know what you are doing, but whatever it is, it works, and I like it.’”

What Suzanne is doing is part of a practice she has learned through yogi parenting.
What it is

“For me, yogi parenting is a way of being more than a thing you do, it’s a place to come from, an approach to parenting.”

That approach includes allowing your children to make mistakes to help them grow and being in the moment with them as much as possible.

“It’s about understanding the mind of a child,” Suzanne says. Yoga, with its breathing techniques and teaching you to be “present” in your mind, help with that.

For instance, when a child scrapes her knee, the parent’s natural reaction may be to say, “Oh, tell me what happened.” In yogi parenting you pull the child into the present and say, “Let me see it, let’s work on helping this now.”

“You bring that child into the present instead of letting them relive the past,” Suzanne says.

Suzanne says she often uses the approaches she has learned to help her and her children control their anxiety by practicing yoga breath. “It brings them into the moment, and I find they relax.”