Our History
Echo Parenting & Education began its life as The Center for Nonviolent Education and Parenting in 1999. It was created by Ruth Beaglehole, M.A. as a response to how she saw children being raised worldwide. The roots of Echo Parenting & Education were founded on Ruth’s lifelong commitment to children and a path that led her to understand what children truly need. After a decade of working as a preschool teacher and parent educator, Ruth founded the Teen Parenting and Child care Program in 1985 at the L.A. Technology Center, a Los Angeles Unified School District adult school. A model program, teen mothers earned their High School diploma while enrolled in Ruth’s Child Care and parent education program. It was here that Ruth saw a raw vulnerability in these teen mothers, who in the early days screamed at and spanked their kids. She was face to face with the long-term effects of hurting children in the name of “discipline”.
Ruth really felt for these mothers and saw how much they needed to be cared for. She taught them to emotionally connect with their children, and the tools of nonviolent parenting began to emerge. Ruth quickly created a bottom line within the walls of her Child Care Center; no spanking or yelling.
In the place of these hurtful practices, teens were taught how to express love, using techniques for connecting communication, effectively breaking the cycle of family violence. Ruth modeled nurturing and love, which many of the teens, conditioned in violence, had never experienced. Ruth quickly realized the vast need for parents who craved nurturing and support and information about child development. Thus she deepened her commitment to the needs of children through her work with adults, and began to develop a philosophy that would support adults in relationship with children in the best possible, most loving way.
This experience, along with decades of work in early education formed the basis of the philosophy of nonviolence. It’s success created support for Ruth to extend this philosophy to the wider community, and CNVEP (now called Echo Parenting & Education) was born. Today, two of the mentors from Ruth’s early work remain on the Echo Parenting board of Directors, and six of the teen mothers themselves are part of the Echo Parenting staff, a testament to the effectiveness and beauty of the practice of nonviolent parenting.
From the beginning, Echo Parenting & Education has provided Parenting Services, Days of Dialogue, and the Festival of Childhood in Echo Park. Today, it has expanded to include a variety of Professional Services, an educational Newsletter and Community events, reaching approximately 10,000 people annually.
Echo Parenting credits the influences of a diverse theoretical and Academic spectrum in shaping it’s own philosophy, including; Daniel Goldman, Robin Grille, Alfie Kohn, Joseph Chilton Pearce , Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, Dr. Dan Seigel and Dr. Murray Strauss.
