These days we don’t hear a lot about apprenticeships, the deliberate and long-term commitment to learn a trade under the intimate supervision of a master craftsman. But the concept of apprenticeship is far from outdated. Here at Apprenticeship Parenting we embrace the belief that children are their parents' entrusted apprentices. Twenty years of attachment and neuroscience research has established that it is through another person doing life with us, moment-by-moment, year-by-year, that our brain becomes wired to master our emotions effectively and express our abilities competently in the world. And just as a carpenter best learns his craft slowly and with close oversight from an expert working alongside him, so a child best learns about life slowly and with close oversight from parents who are able to process life alongside her. 

Apprenticeship Parenting is offered as way to help parents draw alongside their children and walk with them as they grow.   We understand that there is no perfect way to parent, and that no solution works in every situation every time.  What we offer instead is a developmentally and biblically sound framework for assessing and working through the situations parents face everyday with their children. We use an analogy of children as boats and parents as harbors to explain this framework. Children sail away from their parental harbors to explore their world and return to these same harbors when they are in need of refuge and refueling. These concepts are explained in detail under our "Parenting Resources" link, where you can read about Safe Harbor Parenting, Harbor Time and Rest Stops.

Rather than a quick fix, we embrace a long-view and grace-filled approach to parenting.  We want you as a parent to feel empowered to tell your child, “Do as I do with you.”   Our prayer is that the tools and information presented here will help you to raise your child to be a secure, resilient, and competent adult.