Parenting can be delightful, difficult, funny, heart-breaking and enormously rewarding. It may be the very best—and the most challenging—thing you have ever done. If you are very fortunate, the highs and lows are interspersed with precious glimpses of what an incredible privilege being a parent is.

The Positive Parenting cards will be a wonderful tool for opening up conversations and storytelling with parents about their experiences, struggles, ideas, and hopes for their children and for themselves as parents.

Each card features an original line drawing by artist Anna Marrone, of an everyday object that can be found in many family homes, such as a toaster, a ball, a shoe, a pet’s bowl, a sandwich, a toothbrush or a garden spade. Accompanying the line drawing is a sentence starter to get the conversation rolling, for example:

• I was proud of my children when …
• Something I find difficult as a parent is …
• As a parent, I was really surprised when …
• A good thing about my family is …

We hope that this set of cards will be at home around the kitchen table, in meetings, in parenting workshops, out-of-home care reviews and in any family skill building event, no matter how diverse the make-up and style of families may be.

Published by Innovative Resources, 2015
ISBN: 978 1 920945 76 3
40 laminated, full-colour cards, 130mm x 140mm
Polypropylene box and 56-page booklet
Concept: Lorraine Leitch
Development: Lorraine Leitch, Russell Deal & Karen Masman
Illustration and Design: Anna Marrone