It’s so easy to fall into the trap of parenting without real awareness, relying on other people’s ideas and values or outdated child-rearing techniques. In her new book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World, Cathy Cassani Adams, LCSW advocates mindfulness, calm, and self-regulation at a time when all parents desperately need it. Adams discusses everyday parenting issues like peer pressure, stress from school, self-care, emotional intelligence, sexuality, gender, and more. She offers concrete examples and strategies to help, using the seven chakras as a guide. She teaches parents how to listen and grow in the relationships they’re creating with their children, with connection as the primary focus.
For ten tears, Adams and her husband Todd have co-hosted the Zen Parenting Radio podcast, a top-ten kids and family podcast on iTunes, and they are the creators of the Zen Parenting Conference held in Chicago. Adams is the author of The Self-Aware Parent (2009), The Self-Aware Parent Two (2011), and Living What You Want Your Kids to Learn: The Power of Self-Aware Parenting (2014). Adams is a social worker, a former elementary school teacher from a family of educators, and a yoga teacher. She is a frequent guest on WGN Radio and she has been featured in Parents, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Ebony, Crain’s Chicago Business, and Today’s Chicago Woman.
Adams will be in conversation with Maru Torres-Gregory, JD, Ph.D., LMFT (FAN ’19 and ’21), a couples and family therapist and a faculty member in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. Dr. Maru has extensive experience working with couples, adults, young adults, adolescents, and families.
