Sally Flintoff

Sally Flintoff lives in Perth, Western Australia.

She is the mother of 2 boys, both adopted internationally at the age of 4 years, one in 2003 and the other in 2006.

Contact Sally: sally@consciouslyparenting.com.au

Sally holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Auckland University, New Zealand and a Graduate Diploma in Computing Science from Curtin University, Western Australia. She has extensive life experience, having spent much of her life travelling the world. She met her husband while on a 6 month expedition across Africa!

“After moving to Perth in 1996, my husband and I decided it was time to finally settle down and start a family. Unfortunately, unknown to us at the time, life had something very different in store for us. After three years of intensive IVF treatments we were still without our much longed for family. We looked towards adoption as a means of building our family and some three, extremely challenging and stressful years later we finally received the news we had dared not dream of – we were to finally be parents of a much cherished 4 year old boy. Despite some significant challenges due to our son’s legacy of early trauma, we somehow survived and even blossomed in some respects. There were times I didn’t feel positive about the way I parented and sometimes it even felt like I had to take away my son’s heart and spirit to gain some kind of control, but as I looked back to my own upbringing and looked around at society, I accepted that this was how parenting was supposed to be. Behaviour modification strategies formed the backbone of the majority of parenting tools and everyone used threats, consequences and coercion in the name of teaching their children responsibility. So three years later we were again blessed with the news of our second son.

To say his arrival threw our family into chaos cannot possibly do justice to the nightmare we suddenly found ourselves in. At any given moment I was faced with two, completely out-of-control, aggressive, often violent children who gave an entirely new meaning to the words defiance and sibling rivalry. In the face of this I too very quickly spiralled out of control myself. Our family descended into a dark abyss from which I honestly thought we would never escape.

Although I had a very good intellectual understanding of attachment issues having educated myself extensively during the adoption process, reading about them and understanding them at some level in my head simply had no bearing on living with it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with no let-up, ever.

I fervently researched more, and tried many techniques with my children to try and bring even the most minimal amount of order into our lives and home, but none of them worked. Traditional parenting techniques and what I call 'traditional' attachment parenting techniques advocated for children with early trauma made no inroads with their behaviours. Nothing worked until I stumbled across the Beyond Consequences Logic and Control model of parenting.

Today my family stands as a living testament to the power of this method of parenting. The changes that have been brought about in my home are nothing short of a miracle. Both of my children have gone from major defiance to willing compliance, from disrespect and refusal to do the simplest of tasks to obeying me politely and even offering their help with chores unsolicited! We have moved from a family of complete disharmony and dysfunction to a family of love, peace and joy. We have reached a place that I honestly believed was never possible for our family to reach.”

Other Qualifications:

• Beyond Consequences Certified Instructor with Heather Forbes USA 2008
• Creating Secure Attachment with Internationally Adopted Children Course with Dr Bryan Post 2006
• Connection Parenting Course with Pam Leo 2008
• Non Violent Communiction Course with Stephanie Bachman-Mattei 2009
• Neurobiology of Childhood Trauma & Attachment Workshop with Allan Schore 2009
• Circle of Security One Day Workshop with Glen Cooper 2009