The Parent Practice has been established in SW London since 2004. Our skills are based on ideas drawn from many different sources, including Neuro Linguistic programming and Systemic Family Therapy.

Everyone who works at The Parent Practice is a parent, encountering the everyday challenges that all parents face. Whilst none of us is a perfect parent, our own family lives have been enriched, and for many of us transformed, so we are all passionate about passing on the skills and strategies.

Elaine Halligan

Elaine came into parenting thinking she should innately know how to do it? Often felt guilty when she thought she had done a bad job? Often felt ashamed when she saw someone else parenting the way she wished she could? Being a parent is for her one of the most demanding jobs she has ever done but equally it is a role filled with joy.

Elaine is a mother of a 14 year old boy and an 11 year old girl and is passionate about helping families bring out the best in their children and teenagers to help them have good self esteem and value themselves for who they are. “Encouraging good behaviour and knowing how to ensure your children feel good about themselves is essential for a happy home and calm family.”

She has been a parenting facilitator for 6 years with The Parent Practice having trained at The New Learning Centre in London in 2002-2004; done work with the Landmark Forum and also trained under Bonnie Harris in “Connective Parenting”. She has helped hundreds of families by teaching very practical skills and strategies to encourage cooperation; raise self esteem; encourage self reliance and ensure great communication between parent and child. Managing challenging

behaviour; temper tantrums and grunting teenagers can be a thing of the past as she helps clients understand their children’s temperament and how to work with it. Has a special interest in a variety of Special Educational Needs including dsylexia; dyspraxia and discalculia.

Raised in Edinburgh and after completing a law degree qualified as a Scottish Chartered Accountant with Deloitte Haskins and Sells before joining Coopers and Lybrand Corporate Finance department. Spent time with Accountancy Tuition Centres teaching Business Management and Business Finance – motivating students to pass their ACA professional exams. Now motivating parents to bring out the best in their children. Lives in London with New Zealand husband Tony and 2 ADHD cocker spaniels.

Melissa Hood

Melissa did her initial parenting training at The New Learning Centre in London. Having completed their Teacher Training Programme in 1998 she was a parenting facilitator and teacher in their tutorial programme for six years until it closed in July 2004. She began running parent services; Parenting Skills Classes, Parent Workshops and Parent and Family Consultations in Clapham in 2000. Camilla McGill joined her in 2002 and the business evolved to become The Parent Practice in 2004. Melissa supplemented her parenting training with a certificate in Family Therapy from the Institute of Family Therapy at Birkbeck College. She has also trained in Neuro Linguistic Programming, Group dynamics and Non-verbal communication (through International Teaching Seminars and NVI International) and trained in supporting separated families with the Centre for Separated Families.

Melissa brings wisdom, a wealth of experience and sensitivity to her work with parents. As well as being responsible for design and development Melissa is head of training at The Parent Practice. She currently heads up The Parent Practice Australia but is still very involved in the London operation and often makes guest appearances.

Melissa had sought help with her own parenting when her middle child was diagnosed with dyslexia, in 1997. He had frequently been in trouble at school through impulsive, aggressive and disruptive behaviour and Melissa and her husband John wanted to address this behaviour as well as helping him academically. The skills they learnt at the Parenting Skills Classes transformed their family life as they learnt how to communicate more positively and to improve each of the children's confidence.

Born in Australia, Melissa was educated in Singapore and Australia and moved to London with her husband in 1986. She is a mother of three, a daughter now aged 23 and two sons aged 21 and 19. She started her working life as a solicitor but stopped when her youngest child was born to spend more time as a parent. She then worked part time as a decorative painter satisfying latent creative urges at the same time as being a hands-on mother.

Sue Kumleben

Sue has been working in the parenting field since 2002. She was trained at The New Learning Centre in Northwest London where she taught until 2004, helping children who had been excluded from school learn strategies that would allow them to return to main stream education. Sue joined The Parent Practice team in 2003. She has done work with The Landmark Forum and has trained under Bonnie Harris, earning a certificate as an “Effective Parenting Educator”.

Perhaps her most practical education has come through her own experience as a parent. Sue’s eldest child was very temperamentally challenging at home and was so unhappy at school that he was home-tutored for two years from the age of 7. The strategies that Sue and her husband developed using The Parent Practice skills enabled him to return to full time school. He is now a remarkably confident, gentle, hardworking teenager who was accepted into Westminster for 6th Form. Sue’s other two children, a 15 year old son and 12 year old daughter, have also benefited enormously from the calmer atmosphere at home and from the skills that she is now able to teach them. Sue reports that she loves the changes that have happened in her own life; “I am now more likely to burst out laughing when something goes wrong than blow my top. Much better for everyone.”

Sue was born and raised in the U.S. From early days an Anglophile, she financed several trips to Europe by teaching figure skating. After graduating from Williams College, Sue took a law degree from the University of Virginia. In 1992, after two years each at a Wall Street law firm and Remy Martin, she moved to London with her South African husband Paul. While pregnant with their third child, Sue earned a Masters in Voluntary Sector work at the LSE.

Sue is a warm, inspirational teacher who brings empathy and thoroughness to her teaching. She is constantly reading and studying around the field of parenting and frequently brings fresh ideas and new material to the whole Parent Practice team. Her dedication to her students is second to none. Sue is also seeing how the skills can be applied from birth as her nanny Paula brings her toddler to the house three days a week.

Justine Lamont

Justine is married with two young boys (6) and (4) and came along to the Positive Parenting Course in 2007 on the recommendation of her son's nursery teacher.

"It was a refreshing to find other people were having the same sorts of concerns about getting their children into good habits, like not beating up their sibling or biting people. Attending the classes boosted my enthusiasm and made the training process a lot clearer.

Our boys have such different temperaments, one is gregarious and outgoing, relishing new experiences. The other is more reserved and happier to be around those he knows really well and doing things he is more familiar with. So, when we go to swimming lessons one cries because he doesn't want to get in and one because he doesn't want to get out! We still have the same boys (sorry we can't provide personality transplants - nor would we want to!) and now, thankfully we have a whole raft of skills to anticipate these issues and work through them.

“I decided to train as a facilitator in 2008. I absolutely love when clients come to class and share their experiences of parenting and how the skills work for them, it's a powerful learning tool. You would expect the answers to questions like how to toilet train or make homework go more smoothly and what is so exciting is seeing advances in deeper ways, like helping children to think of their own solutions to problems. This can change our whole perspective on what our role really is in bringing up our children."

Before having children Justine worked as a lawyer at a number of different law firms in London, having moved to the UK from her native New Zealand in 1997. Her legal training has provided little insight into the job of bringing up the boys but does help to give clarity and structure to her facilitation style. She is passionate about the skills and techniques that are being taught.

Camilla McGill

Camilla has 4 children aged 12, 10, 7 & 5 years old. She runs 1:1 Parent Sessions for The Parent Practice, seeing parents with a wide range of issues from general challenges to more specific problems. Parents report that Camilla is wise, humorous, insightful and extremely understanding. She gives practical coaching and guidance and inspires parents to make as many changes as they feel comfortable with. Clients are often really surprised by the incredibly positive impact even one session with Camilla has on their lives.

Camilla has been actively involved in the field of Parenting for ten years. In 2000 she came to classes run by Melissa Hood because both she and her husband, Paul, were struggling to manage their eldest child who was nearly 3 years old at the time. Whilst at times delightful and entertaining, he could be defiant, un-cooperative and aggressive. Camilla felt that the pleasure and joy of being a parent was severely lacking from her experience. The skills she learnt in the classes proved absolutely invaluable. The change in his behaviour was marked and the teachers at his nursery school were intrigued to witness it. She then started training to become a parent facilitator and with Melissa Hood co-founded The Parent Practice .She was a facilitator and Head of Marketing full time until 2009, when she decided to have a break to spend more time with the family.

Educated at Godolphin and Latymer Girls school, after which she lived in Paris studying French Language and Literature. She then studied and worked as a Reflexologist and Nutrition Consultant and she went on to study Neurolinguistic Programming, Hypnotherapy and Counselling.

Camilla moved into working in Training and Development and had clients from a number of large banks and management consultancies including Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Co. Her work was with individuals and teams, teaching them ways to increase personal effectiveness and motivation to improve their productivity.

Lizzie Nicholson

Having trained initially as a teacher, Lizzie assumed that bringing up children would be second nature. “My first two children arrived just a year apart and by the time they were toddlers, I was tearing my hair out and had become the exasperated shouting mother I had never wanted to be. I went to seek help from the Parent Practice and the skills they imparted revolutionised my home life. The biggest change has been in the morning routine. I used to feel like a nag getting everyone out of the door in the morning, but now I can employ methods to make sure things go calmly with a splash of humour thrown in! The effects are thrilling and the work is a driving force in my family life. – I feel so lucky to have found this!’

Lizzie was born, bred and educated in the Derbyshire Peak District. She graduated as a teacher in 1997 and moved to London to teach in prep schools first in Fulham and later in Putney. In 2003, Lizzie put her teaching career on hold in order to have children of her own. She now lives in Fulham with her husband Dan and her three children Lucinda 7, Theo 6 and Trinity, 14 months and is involved with the Fulham branch of the Parent Practice.

Juliet Richards

Juliet has been a facilitator at TPP since 2008 and first came as a parent in 2004. At that time, she enrolled on the Positive Parenting Course desperately seeking any effective way to keep her pre-school sons either still or quiet. Although she did not make a lot of progress on the volume and speed issues, she did find many skills and techniques which helped her in other areas, and a much greater understanding about her children's development. In particular, she relished the effect of creating a positive atmosphere, and notes the difference between her first son's first words which were "no" "stop" and "down" to her second son's first words which were "marmite" and "tractor". The skills have enabled her to feel that she is on the same side as the boys, and she and her husband are able to actively pass on the values that they feel are important. And when things start to get tough, she feels she has resources and ideas to draw on, which have enabled everyone in the family to gain in confidence.....

Juliet was born and brought up in Kent, and was educated there and in London. She now lives in Clapham with her husband Paul and their two sons, aged 7 and 8 years old. After formal education, she worked at various financial advertising agencies, before joining a PR firm in the City.

From there, she worked at NatWest Markets and J.P. Morgan helping manage their marketing communications programmes. The communication skills acquired in her former working life stand Juliet in good stead as a facilitator and her presenting style is clear, empathetic and humorous.

John Hood

John joined The Parent Practice at its inception helping with its creation in 2003 and thereafter running the office and being the first point of contact for clients. In 2009 John also took the facilitators training and then started to facilitate courses and workshops – especially those for fathers where John could bring a male point of view to the teaching.

John is married to Melissa Hood one of the co-founders of the business. They have three children, a daughter of 23 and two sons of 21 and 19. John initially become involved with positive parenting techniques in the late 1990’s when he attended a series of courses at The New Learning Centre in North London.

John was born and brought up in London and Dorset. He now lives in Clapham with Melissa. After formal education, he worked first as a civil engineer in both Sydney and then London and then in 1992 moved into finance with Chemical Bank. John thereafter worked for Chase Manhattan and JP Morgan until 2003 and has since worked on a freelance basis as well as with The Parent Practice.