Mind Adventure Method

Most parenting advice tells you to correct the behavior. This is about something that comes first.

When nothing seems to work

Your child doesn't listen. Melts down over small things. Resists even the simplest requests. You've tried explaining, consequences, counting to three. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn't.

What most parenting advice doesn't tell you is this: most behavior isn't defiance. It's a signal. A child who feels overwhelmed, tired, or disconnected shows it through their behavior, because they don't have the words for it yet.

The behavior isn't the problem.
It's what's underneath the behavior that matters.

Connection changes everything

When a child feels truly seen and safe, not corrected first, but understood first, something shifts. They become easier to guide. More cooperative. More themselves.

This isn't permissive parenting. Boundaries still matter. But correction lands very differently when it comes from a parent a child feels close to. Connection is the ground underneath everything else.

"Children don't usually ask for more reward charts. They ask for more connection."

Julia Penning de Vries, MD, pediatrician and mother

The Mind Adventure Method

A collection of simple, practical tools to help parents build connection with their children through everyday moments with shared stories, play, curiosity, rituals, and small moments of undivided attention.

Created by a pediatrician. Designed for ordinary evenings when you have very little left to give.

🌿 Calm & Reset — for overwhelming moments
💛 Connected Moments — for everyday connection
🔁 Repair — for after the hard ones

Who made this

I'm Julia Penning de Vries, pediatrician, mother of two, and the creator of the Mind Adventure Method.

After years of watching children be labeled difficult when what they needed was connection, I started building tools that parents could actually use in real moments. Not a workbook. Not a therapy program. Something you can do tonight.

My book Connected, Not Perfect goes deeper into the ideas behind these tools. The tools are the practice. The book is the why.