Welcome To The La La Tigers blog

A child's mental and emotional world is everything.  And it's no different for us as adults. I invite you to think about a time in your life that has been particularly emotional or stressful...were you able to focus? Learn? Be amazing at your job? Or were you all over the place?

Our children are no different, yet we seem to be so much focus on our children's external worlds - teaching them the abc's, or to count and think, that we're not teaching them what really matters, which is how to manage internal landscape of thoughts and feelings.   How to manage their racing thoughts, anxiety and fear. How to deal with difficult emotions and to give both them and parents help with dealing with these things, because that's how we raise a whole child. That's how we help parents bring up emotionally healthy children. Children who can live and love to their full potential.

And the best way to teach children anything, is through love, fun and music

Join the Raise a Tiger...

Trying to get my children out in the mornings was just horrific.

One of my children was hyperactive and found it very difficult to follow simple instructions. He  was all over the place, jumping off things, throwing things and was unable to be still or calm in any way shape or form.  He was also really dissociated , which meant that he was really detached and found it very difficult just to tune in to what was happening, which meant that following any kind of instructions, or getting him to do anything, was pretty much impossible and I just felt like I was smashing my head up against a brick wall.

And then one day, purely by chance, a song came on the radio while we were trying to get out in the morning and I'd been saying something over and over and he wasn't listening, but as I was talking to him, he just started singing this song...and that was the moment that I realised that I'd found a way in, a way to reach him.

So when I first started writing songs, it was...

"Raise a Tiger " The parenting programme that increases confidence & self-belief in children through increased attachment, music & fun. This programme is for parents of children aged 2-7, who want to raise a wholehearted and confident child who loves, trusts and believes in themselves. Give your child the gift of inner strength, whilst having a whole. The Raise a Tiger Programme is an original and fun music programme with a serious intention. It combines the vehicle of music and the power of suggestion with parenting insights and strategies to encourage self awareness and mental and emotional wellbeing. Become the parent you really want to be, whilst planting powerful suggestions of capability and inner strength in the subconscious mind of your child heap of fun. No musical experience necessary.

Come and Play! 

One of the most important things I teach parents, is the true power of response - ability (thank-you Wayne Dyer for this incredible term) and how to achieve it.  What I mean by this is how vital it is to have the ability to respond instead of react.

I have seen first hand how children can become stuck when negative emotions such as fear, hurt and shame take root and are not able to be fully understood or even expressed.  If not dealt with, the child can cut itself off from this part of itself, to avoid feeling these painful feelings. It causes a split or separation from self and it happens in all of us in some way and some worse than others.  It's a method of self protection from pain and we all do it to some extent ..but if these emotional wounds are left to fester, or shoved down inside of ourselves to avoid feeling the feelings, these splits can go on to cause a lack of empathy, an inability to feel compassion and even to love as we shut ourselves off from any...

“Music was my first love, and it will be my last…..”

Me too, Jon Miles!

And yet so many children these days aren’t getting the chances they deserve to experience music as part of their school education. I fondly remember my first piano lesson at the age of 5, I had begged for ages and I was lucky enough to be born to a musical father, so I was encouraged and we used to jam when I got older.

Music lessons at school were a chance to create something real and immediate with my classmates, sitting on benches, each given an instrument to handle and control. A drum, the glockenspiel or if my luck was out, the triangle. We all made our contribution and it really made us work together as a team to make amazing sounds.

Music education in our schools is on its knees. Specialist teachers have dropped off the end of squeezed school budgets and now teaching music has been left up to our already stretched teachers, who are expected to challenge and enthuse children about...