Helping families build stronger, healthier relationships for more than 30 years.
At LIFE Seminars, we believe healthy relationships are learned. Our in-depth, research-informed courses help parents, couples, and professionals understand the why behind the how. We offer practical tools through courses, books, and professional education.
Meet Dr. Allison Rees
For over three decades, Dr. Allison Rees has helped parents, couples, and professionals build stronger, healthier, relationships through practical education.
Allison
Educator, Counsellor, Speaker, and Author
Her approach is warm, relatable and deeply informed, helping people understand what to do and why it works.
Our History – LIFE stands for Living In Families Effectively
LIFE Seminars was founded in 1981 by Dr. Alison Miller, a child psychologist with Child and Youth Mental Health in Victoria, B.C. Drawing on her clinical experience and her experience as the mother of three children, she developed the original LIFE programs.
Since 1993, Dr. Allison Rees has taught, expanded, and continued to develop the LIFE programs. LIFE Seminars has been included in a longitudinal research study examining its impact on families with encouraging findings for families.
LIFE Philosophy
1) Each person is a growing creature with unique potential, and deserves to be unconditionally loved, cherished, nurtured, esteemed, respected, and encouraged to develop to his or her full capacity. Parents can provide unconditional love and encouragement by allowing every child to develop at his or her own pace, and by appreciating each child’s uniqueness.
2) A healthy family is a place in which each member is loved and respected for who they are. As they grow, members are encouraged to take increasing responsibility for their own life decisions and the development and use of their unique gifts. Children’s moves toward independence are encouraged and appreciated, rather than regarded as insubordination. Roles and areas of authority are determined by individual gifts, maturity, experience, expertise, and interests, rather than by gender or hierarchy.
3) Parents and families deserve to be empowered with education, so that they can understand and solve their own problems. The knowledge of effective parenting does not reside only with “experts”.
LIFE’s Philosophy of Family Life Education
The following are some of the reasons we think LIFE Seminars are effective:
1) A comprehensive parent education content that emphasizes not only the
usual discipline issues but also both child development and individual child temperament. Parents are taught what child behaviours are normal before being given techniques to change behaviour. As well, parents can address age-related issues through their small discussion groups.
2) Parents learn their parenting and family living skills in their family of origin. Education based solely on skills training is ineffective. Deep-rooted attitudes and patterns learned in childhood must be identified, challenged, and replaced with a
new set of beliefs and attitudes, if parents are to make permanent changes in their approach to family living.
3) Presentation guidelines that maximize learning through a combination of lectures, cartoons and printed materials including homework, and small group discussion. Participants of different backgrounds develop a sense of trust and community despite socio-economic and cultural differences and find themselves sharing in small groups about common family concerns.
4) An emphasis on the parent’s own self, intimately focusing on overcoming the shortcomings of one’s upbringing, learning effective ways of handling emotions and meeting one’s needs, and building self-esteem on a lasting basis. This goes beyond the “skills training” of other parent education programs, which often leave parents feeling informed but personally inadequate.