The Empowered Parent with Dana Baltutis

Episode 67: Rose Irranca (Social Worker and Holistic Therapist): Holistic Kids: Revolutionizing Child Wellness in Australia

• Rose Irranca • Season 1 • Episode 67

Share episode

Send us a text

Looking beyond conventional healthcare for your child can feel like navigating without a map. Where do you find practitioners who understand children need support for their body, mind, and spirit? How do you know which approaches might help your unique child thrive?

Rose Irranca, a social worker with over 20 years of experience working with children, faced this exact challenge. After adding neuro-linguistic programming, hypnotherapy, Reiki, and kids' yoga to her professional toolkit, she struggled to connect with families who were open to these powerful but often misunderstood approaches. This sparked her vision for Holistic Kids – Australia's first comprehensive directory connecting families with practitioners who nurture the whole child.

The conversation delves into why children's natural intuitive abilities and connection to their subconscious mind often diminish around age seven, and how holistic approaches can help them maintain this powerful self-awareness. Rose shares powerful examples of looking beyond symptoms to root causes – whether for bedwetting, anxiety, or behavioral challenges – and how diverse modalities from child acupuncture to specialized Pilates can address issues conventional approaches might miss.

With 33 businesses already registered across Australia after launching just three weeks ago, Holistic Kids is rapidly growing into a movement that normalizes complementary approaches to children's wellbeing. Rose's vision extends beyond creating a directory to building a collective voice that can advocate for children's holistic health needs at policy levels.

If you're a parent seeking more comprehensive support for your child or a practitioner wanting to connect with families who value holistic approaches, this episode illuminates the path toward integration, collaboration, and truly supporting children to thrive in body, mind and spirit. Check out holistickids.com.au to explore the growing community and find the support your family deserves.

danabaltutis.com, mytherapyhouse.com.au, https://mytherapyhouse.com.au/your-childs-therapy-journey/ https://www.danabaltutis.com/services

Speaker 1:

Hi, rose Iranka, Welcome to the Empowered Parent Podcast. I am so thrilled and so excited to have you here because you are blitzing the way forward in holistic health. You are a social worker who has established a much needed community and directory for parents looking for support for their children, and your community is called holistic kids. In fact, your directory is not only beneficial and very helpful for the children, but also for their parents, professionals and other professionals looking for professionals to refer to. So, rose, welcome and let's start with your story. Who are you and how did you come to be the coordinator of such an inspiring venture?

Speaker 2:

Oh, thank you, dana. Thank you so much for inviting me. So my journey started many years ago.

Speaker 2:

I am a qualified social worker and I have been working with children for over 20 years, and it was through my own health journey that I went and studied unstudied some holistic elements.

Speaker 2:

So I added neuro-linguistic programming, hypnotherapy, reiki, and I'm a kids' yoga instructor as well. So I added these different modalities to my tool belt and then I thought I'm going to go on my own because, you know, as a social worker, there are quite a few restrictions into how you practice. And I really wanted to bring the holistic elements in because I love them and I found that they were helpful for me. So, of course, they're going to be helpful for children. And so I launched Coaching Confident Kids and I did that for quite a few years, and then that led on to me realizing how am I meant to be promoting this to parents and families and saying, hi, I want to teach your children about the subconscious mind and about chakras and energy. And so how do I promote that without people thinking that I'm woo-woo, you know, and being labeled in that way? Um, so that's where my journey began.

Speaker 1:

I love it and I so resonate with that, because I really believe that, uh, children are very sensitive, children are very intuitive, children are very soulful and they are really connected with their subconscious mind until around seven years of age and that's when they start really tapping into their conscious mind and that's when, unfortunately, a lot of kids lose that fantasy and that ability to trust themselves and they really start thinking about who am I in the mirror of other people rather than who am I as a person within myself, right, yeah, absolutely, they lose the focus of who I am in this universe.

Speaker 2:

You seem to know when you're in those very young stages, you belong to your family, right, and you're in this beautiful bubble and you have an understanding of where you fit because you're surrounded by it, you're nurtured in it, and then, yeah, you start to go to kindy and daycare and all these other, yes, uh, learning environments that, uh, you need to find your place in and all of a sudden, someone else is telling you how things are done and and they may differ from what your values and your traditions are at home, um, which challenges you as a child.

Speaker 2:

You go, well, hang on a second, that's not not what mom and dad said, and, um, so it causes some confusion, and then you kind of lose your way a little bit and you know. So this starts to be this ongoing effect of you know who am I in this world and and you need to kind of learn it at such a young age, because you're no longer in that fully nurtured home environment- and also, I think you know, children are very susceptible to influence and depending on who is the person influencing, that is going to shape their identity right.

Speaker 1:

And so, you know, we sort of go full circle. And then we grow up and we have all of our you know, teens, our 20s, our 30s and our 40s. We start to think who am I actually? Where did I sort of sway off path? So I think this quest for self-identity, self-development, self-knowledge, self-awareness, it is a lifelong process, but I love it when young children are taught how to cue into themselves and tap into this amazing treasure trove that they have right in their heart and in their soul and in their body.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Can you imagine if we taught all our children this tool to go well? You know you need to feel good within yourself and you need to. You know what does it mean to listen to your intuition? How does that feel for you? What are stomach butterflies for?

Speaker 2:

You know, really tuning into those physical cues as well as the emotional cues, to figure out, well, who am I and what do I want to do. And you know, how am I going to present myself to the world? And yeah, it's absolutely an ongoing learning curve. I mean, even still, you know, in my 40, I'm still looking up to people and going well, you know, how can I be like them? You know, I love this aspect of what they're presenting and I'm going to take that aspect and I'm going to apply it to myself and now I'm going to better myself.

Speaker 2:

You know, and it's that continual involvement you know, of how we can, uh, grow and mature and develop and experience. I think that's the end part. You know, how do we experience everything that we're meant to experience?

Speaker 1:

and experience ourselves and and the other thing, um, I love from the neurolinguistic programming framework that everybody is amazing, an amazing human being, and when we are taught that within ourselves, then there's no competition, there's just connection right with other people. And what an amazing world that would be if all kids had that in their heart, rather than putting other people down and putting themselves down.

Speaker 2:

You know that permission to be the best person that you can be. And just because a child has a tantrum doesn't make them a bad child. It means they've got a stomachache or they're feeling uncomfortable, you know. So there's always something behind an action, and this is what we teach our children. If we teach our children the tools, now that they have the ability to change an outcome through that action, then they take responsibility for it and they have decisions that are in their best interests, rather than responding to, you know, in a current situation where they're feeling overwhelmed, you're feeling overwhelmed. Well then, let's sit down and get on their level. Let's blow some bubbles and do some deep breathing. You know, it isn't just the child that needs to learn the tools, we. I think it's generational. Now we're really coming into it where parents and families are learning and teaching their children, and now we're going to the stage where we can actually teach the children directly yeah, because more and more parents are aware of it now, so let's get it, I love it and I just love that.

Speaker 1:

Holistic kids. So how long did it take you to conceptualize the idea of holistic kids, that directory, that community?

Speaker 2:

well, like I said it, it really came to me when I started my first little business, coaching confident kids, and I thought, well, I want to be able to refer to other people and I thought, well, where are they? Where are all these other holistic providers? And also, in terms of how do I find that client, like I said before, where do I find this parent who is okay with me? Talking about energy, you know, and people can think that this is woo-woo, but I really want to bring you back to the point of you know, when you're sitting silently or you're walking and you feel someone looking at you and you whip your head around to see who's watching you, you know, you get a feeling, you sense the energy. We all have it. It's just the way of explaining it. So I want people to take that on board and go. This is what we're talking about. It's that intuition and tuning into the body and its senses and going well, hang on a second, something's up you know, so I really want to um, go forward and go.

Speaker 2:

Well, how do I find all these people around me?

Speaker 2:

and you know the business went okay, because you find that one person and that one person talks to someone else and all of a sudden the word of mouth gets around and you've got your clients coming through. But I felt we really shouldn't rely on word of mouth Like why is it hidden? Why is it alternative, you know? Why is it allied? Why can we not work in collaboration with? So this is where the idea came from. I thought, well, let's have a platform, and I'm all about things running smoothly and easily. I love efficiency. You know, I'm a mum of three boys. I love efficiency. I love things. If we've got to go somewhere, I'm not going out of my way.

Speaker 2:

We're going to do three other things along that way to make sure that we cover everything and, yeah, it's done that we don't need to worry about it anymore. So I really wanted this to be efficient, for how? How do I find all these people and bring them together? And I love community development. That's what I did as a social worker. I worked in schools and I loved bringing people and community together. So, yeah, that that was the origin. You know, let's get this together. And then I started thinking, oh, because I'm not a technological person in any way whatsoever.

Speaker 1:

Is that a limiting belief? Rose, Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

But you know, I do do things at the moment like I went onto the back end of the website today and made an adjustment without looking at my notes and I was like, well, hello you know, we have progress forward.

Speaker 2:

This is amazing, um, but I also believe that you need to stick to your strengths and we pay it forward. So I pay it forward to an amazing web technician that I have and she's amazing and wonderful and helps me and I go and do the things that I'm good at, which is you know absolutely, and that's the thing of a good team, right, you've got a good team behind you absolutely, and the energy that we create welcomes the positive energy of others into our space, and that's how we grow, and it's organic because we are attracting.

Speaker 2:

You know, like attracts like. So that's exactly what I'm up for. So we did this for about. Oh, I thought about it for over a year and then, about 18 months ago, I thought, yep, I'm just going to do it. And now, coming from that limiting belief that everything needs to be perfect before you go ahead and create it, I thought, no, I'm going to chuck that out the window, I'm going to utilize my NLP skills and I'm just going to start, because starting somewhere is better than not starting at all. And so I put it up onto socials. But once it's on the socials, it's real. You know, yep, this is coming soon.

Speaker 2:

And then I need to figure out, you know well, where do I build a website? Where do I find this information? How do I collate it? How do I set it up? So it's this huge learning curve. I have designed how a website will be efficient before. So that came in practice through my volunteer work with Guardian South Australia, where we do parental rights and child safeguarding, and so I had established something before. So this was like yeah, okay, I've practiced it, I can apply it. And now we launched three weeks ago, where you can see all that hard work, and we're still working on it. There's still stuff happening. I'm still adding stuff to it, you know, because I just want everything, but I realise I can't have everything all at once. So, step by step, it's fabulous now. It's going to be even better later, you know.

Speaker 1:

Oh, sounds amazing. So, rose, in your own words, what are the main aims of of holistic kids? For someone who's listening to this podcast and thinks, oh, I'm not sure, what do I do, what? What are the main aims of holistic kids?

Speaker 2:

that we need to find holistic support for your children so that they can thrive in body, mind and spirit. That's it. It's simple. What it's doing is never. It's making it easy. We don't need to search anymore, we don't need to go by word of mouth. You simply get onto the website, type in what it is that you're after in your location, and up it comes. You know, there's all that, and the beauty is that there are just so many modalities out there that we're gonna find things that we didn't even know existed that's what I'm excited about.

Speaker 2:

Someone came um, have joined us and said, oh, can you please add emmet therapy? And I was like I've never heard of this like this is fantastic that this is coming. I mean, I saw someone the other day who does pilates with children and they've been doing it for 15 years. I've never known someone to do pilates with children yoga yes, pilates no yeah I'm like super excited about that.

Speaker 2:

Um, you know, imagine having that strength and that agility in such a gentle way. You're not going out there playing rugby and footy. You know there's something for everybody. There's those football players, but then there's those kids who just want something a little more less stressful and traumatizing on the body yeah, so, and also great for the dancers, the kids that are dancers stretching. Yeah, yoga is great for everybody so yes not for everybody.

Speaker 2:

Um, so I want our healthy kids to become healthy adults, and we're going to do that by teaching them the tools. Now we're going to educate them, and we're going to educate them through connecting you to these amazing providers that are all over.

Speaker 2:

Australia. We're going to list those providers and give them, like their own mini website, so you don't need to go anywhere else. You know it's on there. Everything that you need to know about the provider is there. We're offering networking with providers so that they're we upskill, so that we help one another thrive, you know, so we can look towards another.

Speaker 2:

You know, if I'm a hypnotherapist and looking at another hypnotherapist and going, wow, what you do is amazing, teach me, educate me, you know, help me, uh, raise my bar so that I can then be a better practitioner for children, because that's the result, right, that the children are going to thrive, because that's the end result, right, that the children are going to thrive and educating families. So we have wonderful providers who can supply us with information through our blogs and our articles and our information through our newsletter, so that we're continuously engaged and continuously learning, and we want to be holding webinars. So that's going to be coming soon in terms of let let's find a solution to this problem, but there are multiple solutions and we've got to find which resonates with us. Yeah, absolutely, it's got a 12 year old. You know, if we go this is the problem that we're going to be talking about today.

Speaker 2:

If you're 12 years or older and I'm still wetting the bed, okay, you know, this is a problem that many parents are addressing. So let's get the acupuncturist, let's get the hypnotherapist, let's get the sleep specialist, you know, let's get them all. Let's get parents asking questions so it's interactive and we can go. Yeah, you know, uh, sleep therapy really resonates with me, or I think my child's really going to go well with exercise. Physiology I'm not quite sure, but whatever it is that you resonate with, go with your intuition and you know, see what happens.

Speaker 1:

I love it and I love the fact that you're, you know, embedding all of this knowledge around like common problems that parents have.

Speaker 1:

You know, my child doesn't communicate, my child doesn't play with others, my child is, like you say, he's wetting the bed, or she's wetting the bed, or my child's a fussy eater, or my child doesn't want to leave the house, and that's when you really resonate. So it's not also, we're just not thinking about the problem, but we're also thinking about these are all the different solutions that you can try, because a lot of parents may have gone down the traditional route, but that didn't work. So what else can they do? Because, as we know, children are very sensitive. And the other thing is, isn't it? It's often that parents have an idea how their child should be in that moment, at their age and in their context, and then the pressure is on that child. So often we really need to work with the parents to support them that it's okay to have a child that might be neurodivergent, that may be not on the regular directory or trajectory of development, and that you know there are other ways that you can support your child to open up, to express themselves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, we want to get to the root cause, right, and sometimes we're just putting Band-Aids on there, absolutely. You know, take a panadol. It's like, well, that's cold. But why is the stomach, that tummy, ache there to begin with? Uh no, it's not because the food they're eating we've we've eliminated nutrition as a cause.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, obviously they've got anxiety. You know it's happening because this is happening at school, because your parents are separating or whatever is happening in a child's life. So we really want to be systemic and this is what the whole body, mind, spirit thing is about. You know, we're looking at your cognitive, your spiritual, um, your social. You know everything comes into practice where we sit there and go okay, well, there's five different elements. Let's have a look how we're sitting in all these different elements and let's see who we align with to address that specific need. You may come to the website and go. I know that my child has a physical problem, so you can literally search my child has a physical problem, find someone in my area who addresses physical problems, and then you may go see someone and they go yep that, yep, okay, everything seems to look okay. I think that there may be an emotional trauma behind this. Excellent. That's a good thing, right, because we we got. We're rooting it away, we're going okay what is the?

Speaker 2:

what is the problem? Then you go and find someone who resonate, who you resonate with in your local area that does EFT, you know, that does tapping and you know in two sessions it's done. Why? Because we don't need to know what the trauma was. We don't need to hold through the trauma to fix it. We just need to subconsciously acknowledge that there is something there and that we need to remove it or just edit it. Yes, it no longer traumatizes us and we can perceive it in a different way, and then we move forward, knowing that there's positivity behind our next actions rather than fear oh, I love that, rose, you're speaking right to my heart because I love um.

Speaker 1:

I coach parents. I really talk about that. You don't need to live through that trauma over and over and keep bringing it up. It's just about being able to acknowledge and release. Yeah, so, rose, how many providers have you had uptake into your directory community of holistic kids so far?

Speaker 2:

Three weeks and we've got 33 businesses who have joined, which is super exciting, and I think, if we keep up that trajectory, we're going to have Australia covered. You know, it's going to be really really good. So, yeah, it's really really exciting, and they just come from a whole range of backgrounds.

Speaker 1:

And is it just South Australia or different states?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so majority is in South Australia because this is my home state and this is where I know a majority of people.

Speaker 1:

But you know, we've got four in Queensland.

Speaker 2:

We've got three in Melbourne, so they're starting to come up. We've got two in the Northern Territory. I was like, yeah, and they're all coming from different backgrounds. So in Victoria, for example, we've got a Reiki practitioner, a child acupuncturist and a magnesium maker. So they're quite diverse and I love that, same as in Queensland. There's just so much happening there. I think we've got five. Actually five are now from Queensland, which is super cool. Um. So yeah, I think if we can keep building and getting people from different um modalities, then we can definitely offer a one-stop shop for parents to go to.

Speaker 1:

Uh, so we are in the growth stage yeah. I love it, you know, is there a fee to join Rose?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so we not for parents. For parents, it's absolutely free. Come on, this is who it's for. It's for our kids. We want you to utilize it. So for providers, for holistic practitioners and product makers, there are three different memberships. So we've got our community starter, our business builder and our premium partner. And you know, even starting with the community starter, it's a full listing. You know you can put everything about you on there. Nothing comes back to me. It all leads back to your own website, to your own socials, to your own family or you know booking program. So we are basically like the yellow pages for Holistic Health for Children. That's what it's all about. And, yeah, you can choose from the three different memberships and we want to make it as accessible and easy for everyone to join as possible.

Speaker 2:

And we're actually 30% off as well at the moment for all providers. So yeah, hop on board.

Speaker 1:

Hop on board Rose. What is your vision for the future for Holistic Kids?

Speaker 2:

That is such a big question. I don't want to limit it because I think we always have the potential for absolute greatness and, as a collective, who knows what we can achieve? I think you know, if we end up in 10 years time with 10,000 people registered and showcasing their services, then that's a strong force and we can really make changes. We can really go and speak to our politicians and make change for children. I'm not wagging that off the table. I think that's absolutely possible. I've already created another group in South Australia. We have 12,000 members in that group and, yes, we have discussed things with politicians and I meet with different members and you know we're quite active in the community about how we can support one another and make change for our kids. So we can transfer that over easily and especially with all the knowledge and skills that the providers bring. I mean, who knows so much to achieve?

Speaker 1:

So, rose, you're a parent, you said of three sons, wonderful sons. How do you look after yourself, and is it important for you?

Speaker 2:

Oh no, no, no, I have to practise what I preach and we all know we don't do that. Okay, so I try very hard. I think my, I just love being a part of my children's lives. So, yes, we've got soccer on five days a week or kickboxing, and you know who's got to go to work and et cetera, but I love watching my children play. I absolutely love being there and, you know, really backing them, being their cheerleader Absolutely, I'm their their cheerleader, absolutely, I'm their biggest cheerleader and I absolutely love that. Now you know you have to be your children's biggest cheerleader because you are their sounding board and I'm more than happy to come and project that out onto them and go, you know, be magnificent, because I believe that you are absolutely magnificent.

Speaker 2:

So they are my greatest joy, and I take time out very late at night when I sit down and watch Netflix.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love Netflix. I am. I always talk about it. I actually say I watch something on the TV, but it's not TV, it's Netflix. I think it's very. What do I say? It's just, you just sit there and it all entertains you. That's it.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm surrounded by boys. Yeah, sorry, I'm surrounded by boys as well, right? So it's my time to sit down and watch my things. You know, girly love stories love it. You know, I love it too. I love it too.

Speaker 1:

I love it too well. Rose, thank you so much for being on the empowered parent podcast. I am so thrilled that you have started this venture, this directory and this community, because I too believe that um takes a village to support the child and also to support the parent. And you know, I really believe in energy. There's a lot of research in energy. David Hawking's did a whole thing about energy.

Speaker 1:

I just had Tony Everard talking to me the other day. She's going to be on a podcast or she's just been on a podcast whenever this is going to air about masculine and feminine energy heal, healed energy, wounded energy. So it's, it definitely is out there, and we also know that you. When we feel good, then so much can happen, but when we don't, we are constricted and then we get sick and then our health goes down. So I'm really excited to see where Holistic Kids goes and I'm really excited that my therapy house is part of the community. I really believe in what you're doing, rose, and I hope other providers get on board, and I also highly recommend for parents to get on board and see what else is available for them, their children and their families. So thank you for being on the podcast, thank you, dana, wishing you much love.

People on this episode

Contributor

Dana Baltutis

Host