Instructor Specialty: Divorce/Separation

Adrianne Kmet

Adrianne is a trauma-informed Registered Nurse working with neurodivergent individuals and their families. As a wife and mother of two (soon to be three) children in a neurodivergent family, she deeply understands the importance of acceptance and connection as a safe base from which growth can occur. Adrianne and her husband Martin have used the Hand-in-Hand Parenting tools since their children were young and it has changed their lives!

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Priya Raghav, LICSW, RPT-S

Dear lovely parents! I am a proud mother of a passionate 9 year old boy, and a licensed Child and Family Therapist practicing in Seattle WA, supporting the emotional wellbeing of children ages 3-9 and their caregivers.  I came across ‘Hand in Hand parenting’ both as a parent and a professional. While I knew all

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Katy Linsley

I felt I had some good ideas of how to parent. I’d had a fair amount of experience working with children before having my own. I knew what I was doing. Ha! After having two children of my own, and looking after seven other toddlers over 4 years, I found that my confidence in the conventional wisdom

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Mihaela Plugarasu, M.S.

Mihaela Plugarasu, M.S., is an educator with 20 years of leadership, self- development and teaching experience. She is a mom, a co-parent and a college professor in Miami, Florida. She teaches parents how to use listening tools and self – inquiry to connect with themselves and their children, especially when parenting feels hard. Mihaela is

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Flóra Bacsó

I first graduated as a teacher of English and French. I was always interested in methods that help us connect better with each other, even in hard times. First, I found mediation, the Restorative Practices, then Hand in Hand Parenting. At present I work as a trainer, mediator, mentor and project manager for an NGO

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Belynda Smith

When I became a parent I was besotted! I read everything I could find on how to help my son thrive. Yet we struggled tremendously with sleeplessness, tantrums, aggression and a variety of life challenges. By the time my second son arrived three years later I was a mess; I continued to search for something

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Sareli Beltran

Sareli has over a decade of experience supporting families through various culturally sensitive tools. It was through her work as a positive parenting educator, that Sareli was first introduced to the wonderful world behind the Parenting by Connection approach. Being a natural skeptic, she decided to take Hand in Hand’s Professionals Intensive first and began

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Patty Wipfler, Founder

Patty Wipfler was born, raised, and educated in California, graduating from Occidental College in 1968, and is the mother of two sons. The focus of her work since 1974 has been teaching basic listening, parenting, and leadership skills to parents. She directed The School, a non-profit parent co-operative preschool in Palo Alto, and later directed

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Laurel Near

Laurel Near is the mother of three, two boys and a girl, who are now all adults. She began practicing Parenting By Connection with Patty Wipfler in the late 80s. After completing certification, she taught Building Emotional Understanding classes in her home, marketing only through word-of-mouth. Now she teaches at least four BEU classes per

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Sadie Van Gelder

A Parenting by Connection instructor in Los Angeles, and a co-moderator of Hand in Hand’s online discussion group, Sadie is also a mother of two girls and an editor specializing in articles about psychology and health. As both an editor and a parent, she is constantly on the lookout for trustworthy information, and she says Hand in

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