Passionate Parenting

We wish to thank our expert speakers for sharing their knowledge and presenting for Passionate Parenting. Angel Buster, Eowyn Crisfield, Fiona Curtis, Graciela de Mussini, Katherine Fortier, Kathryn Voyles, Marie Dewulf, Nester Moyo, Renata Hamsikova, Sinead Hewson, Tina Keogh, Vardit Kohn, Yolanda Bokhorst.

Listed Alphabetically:

Angel Buster

Angel graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and from Capella University with a Master’s in Education.  She moved to the Netherlands seven years ago and has worked in the field of learning and development for almost 10 years in various roles, including Trainer and Facilitator, Learning and Development Manager and Learning Consultant.

Angel has also taken her passion for engagement and getting people ‘on purpose’ into the world of children’s fiction.  She has written and published a book on the topic of purpose and exploring the natural gifts of creativity and intuition.  She hopes to connect the topics she is passionate about in the corporate world to the personal lives of people in order to have a more meaningful impact from an earlier age. See www.indrasnet.com / thekingdomofcolors.com. Topic: “Do you really Know and Understand your Child” December 7th 2009

Eowyn Crisfield

Eowyn Crisfield is a *ESL/EFL lecturer and consultant (BA TESL, MA Applied Linguistics). She has been a practicing teacher and teacher trainer for 16 years, mainly in Canada and in France. She has in-depth training in bilingual education and issues related to child bilingualism, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Her other work includes research on motivation in language learning, curriculum development and teacher training for bilingual schools.

Eowyn is active in several professional organizations, and is a regular speaker at conferences relating to English teaching and learning. In addition, she gives regular lectures and consultations on child bilingualism. Eowyn moved to Holland in 2003 and is the mother of three children.

Eowyn will be offering one-on-one consultations on an individual basis, subject to her availability as well as intensive language planning workshops, where 4 couples will work together. More information will be available at the seminar.
*ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language)
Topic: “Raising Bilingual Children”  June 15th & October 14th 2009

Fiona Curtis

Fiona is a Speech Pathologist (also known as a Speech and Language Therapist) who runs a small private practice in The Hague.  Originally from Australia, Fiona has over 20 years experience in working with a broad range of speech, language and swallowing disorders in clinical settings and in management positions in the public, voluntary and private sectors.  Fiona now has two young children aged five and seven, around which work is juggled! Fiona’s current special interests are early intervention for young stutterers, developmental speech disorders, and early language and literacy development.  Fiona’s work with adults is specialised in accent reduction therapy.  Fiona also runs Baby Signing Classes.

Fiona moved with her husband, Keith, to the Netherlands in 2001.  Fiona and her family enjoy life to the full in The Hague as well as travelling about Europe, keeping up with family and friends all over the world and when possible we all stop to smell the tulips….

“Dialogic Reading – For Pre-schoolers” June 8th 2009

Graciela Cepparro de Mussini

Graciela is a Licensed Psychologist dedicated to working with children, adolescents and families. She is also a Professor in Psychology graduated from the Catholic University in Argentina (UCA )and has worked as a teacher for many years in all primary, secondary and university levels. She has worked in both hospitals and school settings. Her licensure thesis on “Primary prevention of drug dependency in children and adolescents” (1989) led to developing a drug prevention program named “Aprender a Elegir”/ “Learning to Make Choices” in 1992.

Since becoming a mother and an expatriate in 1994 she focused her attention in the growth and development of ex-patriate children (Third Culture Kids). She has been invited to be a speaker at corporate and school events on this subject.  Graciela now serves as Psychology Services Coordinator at the International Health Center The Hague (IHCH) where she has her private practice. She is a member of IFTA (International Family Therapy Association) and NIP (Nederland Instituut Psycholoog). She is also the mother of three multi-lingual children. Topic: “Expat Kids & Global Nomad Families” April 27th and September 21st 2009

Katherine Fortier

Katherine Fortier is originally from Canada and obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and then a Master’s degree in Child & Educational Psychology,  specialising in Play Therapy and Psycho-educational Assessment.   Her career has included positions for school boards and community children’s mental health services.

Since moving to The Hague in 1997, Katherine has been very involved in parent education, providing courses and seminars for parents on a wide variety of child and parenting issues.   A mother of three, she brings both her professional expertise and personal experience to the role of parent educator.  Katherine is a popular speaker and has lectured and taught widely in community, school, and university settings.

Katherine currently maintains a busy private practice in The Hague offering both counseling and assessment services.  She is a member of the Psychology/Counselling team of the International Health Centre as well as a Psycho-educational Consultant to the HCO (Haagse Centrum voor Onderwijsbegeleding).  Katherine regularly consults and collaborates with international schools in and around The Hague.

Topics: Defiance & Difficult Behaviour, Raising a Confident Child, Siblings (with less) Rivalry (, YES / NO- Why YES is best and how to say NO and mean it!

Kathryn Voyles

For the last 20 years Kathy has worked in media, with Human Rights NGOs, ran a lunch catering service, completed many cookery courses and discovered a huge passion for food, gardens, and the environment (currently running an Environmental NGO in Holland called Kids in the City). She believes that the key to good food is excellent (and where possible, organic) ingredients and beautiful presentation. Kathy’s history includes years as a dental hygeinist, she is from New Zealand and is the mother of two very discerning, health-food loving children. For your interest see http://thelunchbox.blog.com
Topic: My kids will Eat That – January 18th 2010

Marie de Wulf

Founder and director of Coach2MoveOn, Marie is a professional life Coach (French & English) who works with private clients from her home in The Hague. An expatriate for 15 years now, she has experienced first-hand the challenge and joys of creating a balanced life, running her own business and raising three children. She is passionate about parenting and the role it plays in today’s society. Her focus lies in helping clients to be in control of their life rather than be at the mercy of it and supporting them to make their parenting easier. See her website www.coach2moveon.com

Topic: “Pathways to Parenting – Using Values as your Internal Compass” – November 23rd 2009

Nester Moyo

Nester is an accomplished senior midwifery advisor with over 28 years experience 8 of them at  international level, at the International Confederation of Midwives, here in The Hague. She has served and still serves as a temporary advisor in several technical consultative meetings of the World Health Organisation. Her expertise brings her into hot demand as a speaker and was invited to speak on ways of reducing maternal mortality to the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament (May and June 2007) and also invited to speak on the role of midwives and midwifery services in reduction of maternal mortality to the World Health Assembly (May 2007). Nester, originally from Zimbabwe, has three grown children, one grandchild. She is very familiar with the Dutch health care system and teaches regular English pre-natal classes for ACCESS at Bronovo, ater her office hours.

Renata Hamsikova

Renata Hamsikova is originally from Czech Republic and  has lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years now. She worked as a translator for a.o. the Ministery of Justice. After her son was diagnosed gifted Renata realized that there is not a lot of knowledge of giftedness among the teachers and she became an advocate for a better education for the gifted. She studied at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and obtained her Specialist in Gifted Education certificate. From 2008 she started her own business.

Renata has been giving regular lectures and workshops for parents of gifted and talented children. She works also as a advisor for the primary

schools. Her main focus is to accomplish adequate education for the gifted. She has developed a social skills training for the gifted children

and teens. Besides emotional and academic help, she also advises parents with issues regarding their children's teachers and schools and she works as a counsellor with the highly able studens (IQ 160+) and their parents.

If you already have questions regarding gifted education in the Netherlands, visit her website http://www.ieku.nl.

Topic: Strategies for Gifted Children: 5 October 2010

Sinéad Hewson

Sinéad Hewson is a business coach specialising in business leadership and innovation. She works internationally with entrepreneurs and SMEs helping clients develop effective, highly performing businesses that are successful. She has a young family and like all parents juggles family, meals, work and a couple of plates in order to get the job done and enjoy life! See her website www.clientfocusedcoaching.com.

Topic: Parenting Pressures 14 June 2010

Tina Keogh

Tina is originally from Ireland.  She qualified with the National Childbirth Trust in the UK in conjunction with Luton University.  She has a wide knowledge of the maternity systems of  The Netherlands as well as France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, and the UK.  In 2006 she went on to train with the Association of Infant Massage. Tina has trained with the Irish Red Cross in Dublin to obtain her First Aid in the Workplace certificate and then did her training as a First Aid Tutor with the St John’s Ambulance in London in 2007.

Tina has been living in NL for 8 years and has two children and runs her own company Great Expectations.nl.  She has been teaching parents now for just over 7 years and is passionate in her goal to help parents bridge the gap between the culture in their own home countries and that of The Netherlands. See her website www.greatexpectations.nl  

Topic: First Aid: 26 Sept & 3 Oct

Vardit Kohn

Natural nutritionist Vardit Kohn has been interested in food for as long as she can remember. Starting with Linguistics, she then did a Master's in Business Administration in London and worked as a marketing consultant in Europe. Vardit studied a two-year practitioners’ course in Natural Nutrition (completed in London in 1998). She has been in nutritional practice ever since, seeing and advising clients; speaking in public; publishing books and writing extensively on the subject; acting as a trend tracker and consultant to the food industry; and hosting workshops.
Vardit is married to Richard, mother of three young girls - aged 12, 9 and 7 and lives in the Bussum, north of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her website: www.forgoodness-sake.com

Topic: Ten Top Tips for Turning Around your Child’s Diet – 6 April 2009

Yolanda Bokhorst

Yolanda Bokhorst studied civil law at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and notarial law at the University of Leiden. After having completed both studies she worked for 15 years in a general notarial practice in The Hague. Yolanda joined Pels Rijcken in 2001. Ever since, she has dealt exclusively with her favourite field of law, the notarial family law practice. In addition to drawing up wills, prenuptial agreements and cohabitation contracts, Yolanda’s practice includes winding up complex estates, in which she acts as an impartial estate notary or as an advisor to one of the parties.

Estate planning is an important part of her work. She advises clients on how to transfer their assets to their children in a way that is both responsible and favourable in a tax sense; where not only tax motives, but personal aspects play an important role, as well. She also advises clients on the international aspects of these matters. It is therefore not surprising, that there are many expats among her clients. She is also a member of the specialists’ association Estate Planners in the Notarial Profession. Yolanda has two children.

Topic: “Your will be Done: Death and Family Testaments in NL” – May 25th & September 14th  2009