Meet Jason and Cecilia

Doing it together

Hi! We are Cecilia and Jason Hilkey.

We are passionate about helping parents communicate with their kids to avoid meltdowns and power struggles.

We do things differently here! While the “mainstream” does time outs, we do time ins. When “conventional wisdom” says to punish, we find a win-win and set limits. When other people say “big kids don’t cry” and “be tough”, we talk to kids about their feelings and give them empathy.

But parenting “differently” can be hard. Most of us were raised pretty traditionally. Most of us weren’t prepared to meet the emotional demands of parenting. You might feel alone, or like you’re doing it wrong.

We’ve been there too! And we are not perfect parents–even today (ask our kids!). But we’ve learned a few things along the way, in our work and our own family.

Now our workshops and conferences have touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in over 200 countries! But that’s getting ahead in the story.

Jason and I met because we used to surf at the same spot in California. (It took him 5 years to ask me out!) By the time we got married we were both working with children with disabilities. I was an occupational therapist and Jason did assistive technology.

Shortly after we had our two children, we became teachers and co-taught in the same preschool classroom at a progressive Reggio-inspired school for kids 3-12 years old. (Luckily, our kids attended this same school!)

As teachers, we learned about nonviolent communication (NVC), Alfie Kohn, John Gottman, Thomas Gordon, positive psychology, growth mindset and more. And we got to practice new ways of communicating with our students and in our family. Slowly, we began to teach other parents what we learned too.

Years later we got inspired to serve families outside the walls of the classroom and we took our parenting classes and passion for kids online.

Now we speak, write, teach parenting classes, do parent coaching, and host virtual parenting conferences, that touch families around the world. We’ve collaborated with Dr. Daniel Siegel, Dr. Shefali Tsabary, Dr. Laura Markham, Drs. Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, Jessica Lahey, Scott Noelle, Dr. Christine Carter, Dr. Kristin Neff, Theo Koffler, Dr. Daniel Rechtschaffen, Zen Parenting Radio, Charles Eisenstein, Dr. Peter Gray, Tara Mohr, Alfie Kohn, and Dr. Ross Greene.

But the best part of our work is creating a community of parents just like you, who come to us for support, camaraderie, or help–and then they say, “Aah, this feels like ‘home’. I’ve found my people.”.

We live in Oregon with our two kids (who really want us to update these photos on our website!) and a big fluffy cat.