I See Only a Hat: What The Little Prince can teach us about parenting
In the opening pages of The Little Prince, a child draws a boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant. Every adult who looks at it sees only a hat.
It raises a question at the heart of parenting:
What might our child be seeing that we have stopped being able to see?
As parents, we bring love, but also our worries, expectations, histories and ideas about what a child should be. When we are rushed or anxious, it becomes easy to see the behaviour, the unfinished homework, the screen time or the attitude, and miss something of the child underneath.
This half-day workshop uses The Little Prince to help us look at our parenting with fresh eyes.
We will travel through some of the book’s memorable encounters. The King, the Vain Man, the Businessman and the other inhabitants of the little planets help us recognise the reflexes we can fall into as adults. The Fox invites us to think about what relationships need. And the Rose brings us to questions of love, responsibility and caring for someone who is also growing into a person separate from us.
This is an in-person psychodrama workshop, so we will explore these questions through action as well as conversation. Using simple psychodramatic exercises, we will bring everyday parenting moments into the room, look at familiar interactions from different positions, step briefly into our child’s world, and experiment with responding differently.
We will explore questions such as:
What am I no longer seeing in my child?
Which parenting reflex do I move into when I am worried or under pressure?
How much of the parent I am today comes from the parenting I received?
What might my child be experiencing in a difficult moment with me?
What would it mean to bring more patience, presence and curiosity into that moment?
This is an opportunity to notice the parent you already are and to see what becomes possible when you slow down enough to see your child again.
Open to parents of children of any age. You do not need to have read The Little Prince.
Session details
- Facilitated by: Aruna Gopakumar and Preeti Balasaria
- Date: November 14, 2026
- Time: 9:30 am – 1:00 pm
- Venue: The School of You, Bangalore — map
- Format: In person | Experiential | Psychodrama-based
Fee
We have deliberately kept the fee accessible to encourage more parents to participate.
- Early bird, for first 12 seats: ₹1,999/-
- Regular fee: ₹2,499/-
About the Facilitators
Aruna Gopakumar
Aruna Gopakumar, TSTA (P) — psychotherapist, supervisor, and founder of The School of You — brings her years of therapeutic and leadership experience to this workshop.
Preeti Balasaria
Preeti Balasaria is a facilitator, Transactional Analysis Learner Practitioner, currently training as a psychotherapist and working towards certification as a Transactional Analyst (CTA). She brings together over a decade of corporate experience in global technology organisations with a background in education and coaching.