Dr. Silvia Casabianca has been training parents for over 30 years!
HeartMinded Parenting — raising children to evolve into compassionate citizens takes both love and wisdom.
Imagine a world where we deeply care for ourselves, others, and the planet. That world is not a utopia — it is a biological possibility. Neuroscience teaches us that we are born with the capacity for affective empathy. But feeling what another feels does not translate into action on its own. It requires something more: the courage to turn toward suffering — our own and others’ — rather than look away, and the wisdom to understand what a person truly needs (Dr. Paul Gilbert).
These are the qualities we want children to develop. But we cannot guide children toward what we have not found in ourselves. Before we can help a child love themselves and feel genuine concern for others, we must be willing to reflect on our own lives — to become aware of where and how we carry our own wounds. That is where HeartMinded Parenting begins: not with the child, but with the adult who raises them.”
After three decades working with families, I’ve developed a comprehensive approach to parenting that integrates neuroscience, attachment theory, inductive discipline, trauma-informed care, and transformative learning. This parenting modality isn’t about techniques to force the child into compliance and change of behavior—it’s about understanding what needs are expressed through behavior, how children’s brains develop cognitive empathy and how we can nurture that capacity from the beginning.
What we explore:
- How the science of the brain can be applied to cultivating cognitive empathy and compassion in children and families (Outcome expected? Less fear, less conflict, better relational skills)
- How reflective practice helps us recognize ingrained patterns and beliefs that block empathic presence (Elevated awareness of how we are adopting parenting practices that didn’t work for us!)
- How inductive discipline builds moral reasoning (so that children learn to guide their behavior by the do-no-harm principle rather than by avoiding punishment or seeking of rewards) — and why this matters for raising principled, compassionate human beings with an ethics of care who will go into the world capable of supporting others,
- How to read behavior as a language expressing the child’s emotional needs
- How to foster cooperation over competition
- How self-compassion and active listening transform family relationships
- How emotion regulation — for caregivers and children alike — keeps us from being hijacked by the fight-or-flight response, so we can access the brain’s affiliative capacities
- How moral development requires developing an ethics of care and how raising children by applying punishment/reward does not contribute to moral development, a principled life around the golden principle.
The curriculum is student-centered and flexible. It adapts to the learning needs of either the families or the counselors in training (12 Florida CEUs – Cebroker 50-625)
Interactive. Practical. Grounded in research and decades of clinical experience.
Interested?
Call (239) 948-9444 or email mail@silviacasabianca.com
Let’s talk about what your training needs are, and how we can set up a Heartminded training.
What If the Most Powerful Thing You Could Do for Your Client Happened Outside the Session?
By Silvia Casabianca
Most therapeutic approaches keep parents on the periphery — a brief consultation, some guidance after the hour. And yet parents are often as lost and frustrated as the child sitting across from you. When that frustration has deepened into blocked care, leaving them outside the room is a missed opportunity.
HeartMinded Parenting might have answers for that
We offer a six-week online course — approved for 12 CEUs by CE Broker (50-625) — that brings you a coherent, research-grounded framework for drawing parents into the therapeutic process as active participants. Not as problems to manage. As partners in change.
What You Will Gain
Grounded in family systems theory, Adlerian psychology, Martin Hoffman’s inductive discipline, Paul Gilbert’s CFT model of emotional regulation, and Lawrence Kohlberg’s model of moral development, HeartMinded Parenting gives you the clinical language and practical tools to help families move from fear-driven responses toward genuine connection.
You will understand why power assertion and love withdrawal fail to produce the lasting behavioral change your want to see. You will learn to recognize “blocked care” in parents and know how to address it with the same warmth you bring to their children. And you will leave with a parenting framework focused on inducing the development of cognitive empathy and moral reasoning in children — outcomes that show ripple effects on the family and the society at large.
How It Works – FORMAT
Six weekly or bi-weekly two-hour sessions, delivered online, scheduled at your convenience. Maximum six participants per cohort — because genuine dialogue requires space, not a webinar. Participants engage in the same reflective process they will facilitate with families: guided journaling, personal reflection, and individualized written feedback.
Who This Is For
We offer training to families, parent educators, mental health counselors and counseling grad students, family therapists, and clinical social workers who believe that inviting a parent in — and treating them with the same regard we hope they will extend to their child — is itself a therapeutic act.