About Toni
I have a background in elementary education, but my desire to raise a family kept me from ever teaching. Like so many teachers I wanted to shape and encourage kids. I wanted to show them all the things they could become; foster all of the strengths they had, be fun, inspire them, and let them see they could do anything they set their minds to. Being a Positive Discipline Parent Educator isn't the same, but in many ways it's better. I now have the ability to share tools that can help parents do all those things for their own children. 
I am so excited about what I am doing! Every time I talk about it with someone, I feel like I should take it down a notch, or they will think I'm trying to sell them snake oil. The truth is Positive Discipline has changed, and continues to change my family life; that is a big reason why I am so enthusiastic.
I hope that you will find this style of relating to children as beneficial as we have in our home. Scroll down if you would like to read about the challenges that pushed, pulled, and dropped me into this life of leading Positive Discipline classes.
Thanks for taking the time to check out the site,
Toni
“We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
When my daughter was between two and four years old, I constantly had people telling me how easy she was. She seldom had fits, when we said “don't” she typically didn't, when we said time to go she came with us. The biggest challenge when she was that age was that she wanted to read and snuggle forever at bedtime. Honestly I thought I had this parenting stuff down....WRONG!!!
My humbling came, and it did not come gently! My son was the exact opposite. He had fits that lasted 45 minutes, sometimes 2-3 times a day. When we said “don't” he looked us in the eye and did it, if we took away a toy and put it on a shelf he would move tables and chairs and attempt to climb up to get it. He hit and kicked (mostly me). He would lay on the floor and pretend he couldn't get up for extended periods of time. Everything we tried failed. We were sinking. It seemed as though our lifetime worth of patience had been used up in three long, loud, and stressful years. It was changing our relationship as a couple and our relationship with our daughter. We were at our wits end.
I had always had a Positive Discipline book on the shelf; even when my daughter was young I would pull it down to use as a trouble shooting guide. Now it seemed I could not even pick it up and choose a topic. There was nothing that said “cliff notes for parents who have almost lost their minds”.
During this time I was asked to review several parenting videos for a friend who wanted to run some classes as a small group. After sitting through about four different series I realized none of them made sense to me. There was always something that made me think...NO WAY am I on board with that. So I started looking for a Positive Discipline class in the area with no luck. After several months of checking back for classes I saw a class offered on the East Coast in the town where my sister works. The catch was it was a class on learning to facilitate Positive Discipline classes. I felt the tug in my heart, mentioned it to my husband who jumped on board with the idea and....Now I just want to share it with as many people as I can.
I won't tell you our life is perfect. We are all still human! We still have our challenges, but they are quieter, shorter, and much less stressful, and at the end of the day I almost always feel good about how we handled the things thrown our way; and on the days I don't feel good about how things went, I have the tools to recover and a growing humility to apologize for the parts I played in the conflict.
I love what I do! I learn every time I have a class. I learn in the preparation, in the delivery and from the parents and caregivers in each class. I feel so lucky to have been given this opportunity to help kids reach their potential through the people who love them most.