Abigail Wald

Abigail Wald is the co-host of the popular “Hand in Hand: A Podcast for Parents,” and also the founder of RealTimeParenting.com, where she works with parents through private sessions, classes, and speaking engagements. While raising her own children, Abigail found herself struggling more than she had anticipated, and found two things helped her more than anything else during those years: having a working understanding of the neuroscience of connection, and also the set of simple and practical listening tools from Hand in Hand Parenting. Full of gratitude toward those that had helped her young family thrive, Abigail felt a calling to share all that she had learned. If she had struggled as a parent, she knew, there were other wonderful parents out there struggling, too. In 2014, she went back to Hand in Hand to become a certified instructor and has since coached thousands of families. She felt pretty complete about her work until the day she walked into a talk that Dr. Michael Gurian was giving. His work not only illuminated all that she had known; it added an entirely new dimension – one she felt deep in her bones simply HAD to be shared with as many parents as possible.

Today, Abigail is now also Certified Gurian Institute Trainer, and absolutely loves sharing these ideas with parents and seeing their faces light up. It is as if they are being given permission to finally raise the children they have, in a way that lines up with neuroscience, evolution, and just plain practicality. Parents stand on a slippery slope, she believes, straddling the basic nature of their children on one side, and some very powerful societal norms on the other. Dr. Gurian’s works helps raise parents above the fray, and find their own voice in the mix.

In the school environment, Abigail is passionate about helping educators develop a new understanding of what children are really communicating through their off track behavior, because it is often not what we think. And if we misdiagnose the problem, the solution will be poorly conceived. Kind and effective solutions abound, but we have to look accurately at the problems to be able to heal them.

Abigail’s particular areas of focus are:

• Helping parents stop the cross-generational tide of trauma, and find their own parenting story of hope and healing
• Helping parents and teachers equip both girls and boys with a sense of their own inherent “rightness” so they can learn from a place of curiosity and not fear.
• Helping parents learn to advocate for their children in the school environment.
• Helping educators understand what is really behind off track behavior, so they can address the root cause, and not get caught up in the symptoms.

Abigail can be reached at abigail@realtimeparenting.com.