Samantha O’Neill

Hello and welcome,

My name is Sam O’Neill and I’m the founder of Assured Parenting.

I came to set up Assured Parenting partly because, like all children, my son comes with his own sets of challenges and I gradually realised that I needed help in knowing how to parent him well. None of us are given instructions when we get home with our newborn or a yearly update as they grow up! So, undoubtedly like many of you, I turned to books, articles and blogs about parenting for help. I also attend many parenting lectures and courses. I wonder if you have also felt, ‘I can do this’ when reading the books but have then found it much harder to put the advice into practice. When my daughter came along, she arrived with a completely different personality and demands. Coupled with my desire to leave teaching, I decided to train as a parenting coach. I soon realised while doing my training that the ideas and techniques that I was learning were going to help me create a calmer, happier and more positive family. I could see that I would have a great parenting toolkit to bring my children up and help them become warm, resilient, fun-loving, capable, kind and independent. And I was so excited to be able to share this with other parents who may be having similar worries and difficulties to me.

It is now an absolute passion of mine teaching this course. I love knowing that I am helping parents' build really strong relationships with their children that will last them for years to come. When you take my course, you will see that my aim is not to tell you how to parent, but to give you the tools that you need to be the parent you want to be. You will find yourself able to adapt the skills that you learn to suit your family values and dynamic and each individual that attends the course will take away their own important priorities from it.

My background is in teaching and within this the pastoral care of students. I have taught History for 20 years at 3 different secondary schools (Worksop College, James Allen’s Girls' School (JAGS) and Wimbledon High School) and worked as a pastoral Head of Year at the latter. Here, the well-being of the pupils in my year group was my priority. This was a job I loved doing as it meant helping pupils work through some of their most challenging behaviours and worries. In being a part of the wider pastoral team at school I learnt a huge amount about the teenage brain and the best strategies to improve children’s well-being.

Putting my love of teaching together with my love of reading about children’s brains, behaviours and parenting styles is what led me to want to help other parents and so I started to research how I could set up my own parenting business.

I have now completed The Parent Practice’s Training for Trainers Programme and am a certified Parent Practice educator licensed to use The Parent Practice materials and methodology and to deliver the Parent Practice 10 week positive parenting course.

My parenting principles are designed to help you manage your family life by enabling you to parent positively and effectively in order to give your children a happy childhood and develop in them the values that you would like to see in the future.