Golfers know you cannot fix the shot until you read the conditions, and Geoff says parenting works the same way

Geoff has played golf for most of his life, still competes at 70, and recently shot 77 in a club competition, so his parenting lens does not borrow from golf loosely - it comes from someone who understands the game from the inside. He sees a direct parallel between good golf and good parenting: the mistake is usually not solved by forcing harder, but by reading the lie, the pressure, the weather, the course, and the conditions shaping what happens next. For golfing parents, especially those who know the pressure of performance or travel, this reframes a child’s behaviour in a way that feels immediately familiar. Geoff shows why behaviour, like a golf shot, is not something to simply correct in isolation; it is a response to the conditions around it, and when parents learn to read those conditions, they stop wasting energy fighting the wrong problem.  

About Geoff Owen

Geoff Owen, podcast guest

Founder of Biologically Aligned Parenting, Reframing Oppositional Behaviour Through Parent-Child Environment

Nearly 40 years Exploring child development30+ years Applying the framework as a father2 Published parenting booksOld Vic Theatre School Trained

Geoff Owen is the founder of Biologically Aligned Parenting and the author of The Parenting Assumption, a book that challenges the belief that children’s behaviour needs to be managed, corrected, or controlled.

His work grew out of a question he began asking long before he became a parent himself. After training at the Old Vic Theatre School and spending years in theatre, Geoff came across The Continuum Concept, a book that changed how he understood childhood, maturity, and the environment children need in order to develop. Years later, when he had daughters of his own, he put those ideas into practice in real life rather than treating them as theory.

Geoff’s view is direct: behaviour is not the problem; behaviour is a response. He works with parents who are exhausted by daily conflict, resistance, defiance, distance, aggression, or over-compliance, and who feel they have tried everything from boundaries and consequences to consistency, explanation, and professional advice. His approach asks parents to look beneath the behaviour and understand what the child is responding to in the environment around them.

Through Biologically Aligned Parenting, Geoff helps parents see how the pressure to control often creates the very resistance they are trying to stop.

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From Behaviour to signal: A different way to understand children
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