Ingrid Bauer is an author, compassionate parenting advocate, and a Certified Trainer for the global Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC), who has been teaching and writing about compassionate parenting for over two decades. She first began working with children with emotional and developmental special needs 35 years ago, and turned to working directly with parents after she herself became a mother in 1985. Ingrid is tri-lingual and although she has an Honours degree from the University of Toronto and did Masters work at the University of Waterloo, she considers life, relationships, nature, community, and parenting to be her primary teachers.
An activist for unhindered birth and breastfeeding, Ingrid authored a book on meeting infants’ needs in 1999 (Diaper Free!), as well as numerous published articles. When she discovered NVC in 2000, she was thrilled to find a practice that supported her in her desire to live compassion and grow world peace from the roots by addressing how we raise and interact with children, and how we practice peace in creating communities that nourish and care for each individual. For this reason and as a mother of four children aged 9, 15, 19 and 31 years, she is dedicated to sharing Compassionate Communication with parents and families, and much of her work addresses this arena.
Ingrid embraces living compassion as her spiritual practice, as well as her grassroots social change work. She is particularly interested in exploring NVC within the context of family, community, interdependence, and the whole web of life. Ingrid offers workshops, teleclasses, retreats, and family camps, with a special focus on parenting, as well as leadership training. She has a strong interest in deep nature connection and how this impacts children, communities, and cultural repair, and often collaborates with her husband, Jean-Claude Catry to offer training or camps related to connecting to the wild and cultural repair.
Ingrid assisted Inbal Kashtan in the very first
Parent Peer Leadership Program, and has been leading or co-leading the program since 2007.
Ingrid works with individuals, educators and schools, community organisations, peace groups, parenting and homeschooling groups, First Nations (Aboriginal) communities, and more. She also offers private mentoring, consulting, and parent coaching. Ingrid lives with her family, on an island on Canada’s west coast.
Ingrid is committed to bringing compassion into daily life and to creating social change through sustainable human relationships. Ingrid's approach has been called "warm, clear, compassionate and inspiring.”