Meet Talisa Tuman | Child Development Specialist & Circus Artist + Instructor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Talisa Tuman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Talisa, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I started two businesses – ParentingResources.com and CirqueParty.com – with the overarching goal of bringing joy and education to families. My professional and academic background is in Early Childhood Education and over the years, the most critical need I’ve found has been to make the knowledge of child development cultivated in academia be accessible to parents, especially new parents, particularly those looking to prevent cycles of family trauma from continuing through their children’s upbringing. During the pandemic, I wrote, recorded, and published the book Parenting Compass For Navigating the Early Childhood Years, and started my consulting/coaching business, ParentingResources.com, to meet that need.
I also have a movement background, which led to my other business, Cirque Party LLC, which my partner, Robin Gopal, has also shared about. As a child, I was always the eager little gymnast climbing on everything. Any time my parents took me to see acrobats perform or gymnasts compete, I would feel both mesmerized by what I saw and itching to have a turn flipping and flying too. I have now created the entertainment company that the child in me has longed for. It started with my enthusiasm to share the joy and sense of community aerial dance brings: I began inviting friends and family to learn and practice aerial silks and other apparatuses with me outdoors, using my portable aerial rig. My community hang-outs quickly grew into a business as I began getting requests left and right to set up for parties and events! With so many people (especially families) making requests, I knew I needed to make it official, and founded Cirque Party LLC in the summer of 2023. Within our first year, we have already achieved our initial goal of getting regular bookings and are excited to see how our business continues to grow.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
As the founder of Parenting Resources, I share my story to provide context for the motivating factors that drive me every day. I dive briefly into my family history not with the intention of judging previous generations but rather to show where I come from and to honor my family by doing my part in carrying us forward as we all do our best to heal from past traumas.

I was born to teenage parents. Rather than inheriting intergenerational wealth, I inherited intergenerational trauma, which has fueled my drive to learn everything I can about child development and prevent cycles of trauma from continuing in the family I raise. As an undergraduate student at the University of California Los Angeles, I studied sociology and applied developmental psychology and was a student assistant at several of the UCLA children’s centers including ECE Fernald and IDP Franz. While at UCLA, I heard about the RIE® Approach (Resources for Infant Educarers™) and was instantly drawn to it as the notion of respecting human beings right from the start of life captivated me. I carried the respect-based RIE® principles with me as I pursued a master’s degree in early childhood education at Loyola Marymount University and worked full-time at their children’s center for 10 years, first as an infant/toddler teacher and then as its site supervisor & infant/toddler curriculum coordinator for many years.

Recognizing the influence I was able to have over more than 1000 families thus far as an early childhood professional over the years, and the foundation I helped provide for each of these families as they learned about respecting their infants, empathizing with their toddlers, connecting with their preschoolers, and so on, I sought opportunities to have an even wider reach and be a resource to families all over. In particular, I wanted to bring the knowledge and insight I gained back to my hometown in southeast Alaska.

So, when the pandemic hit and the LMU Children’s Center closed temporarily, I immediately set to work writing a book for parents and in December of 2021, I published Parenting Compass for Navigating the Early Childhood Years as an ebook, print, and audiobook after recording it myself. I also started my online consulting business, ParentingResources.com, which has enabled me to connect with families across several states along the west coast and build a partnership with the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (my mother is Tlingit).

While I continue to expand my online consulting business and build a stronger presence on social media platforms and the like, I am also now seeking a brick-and-mortar studio/classroom space where I can facilitate in-person RIE® Certified Parent-Infant Guidance™ classes. After learning about the RIE® Approach at UCLA, I continued my involvement with the RIE® organization over the last 15 years and have recently become a RIE® Associate which is what allows me to provide these crucial and highly sought-after classes. In particular, there is a demand to have these classes in my neighborhood (West Los Angeles) and while I am currently canvasing the area for spaces for lease, I am also seeking sources of funding to acquire the supplies and equipment I need for the space.

In addition to RIE® classes, I also plan to use the space for children’s gross motor development classes, applying my background in movement as well: I was a competitive gymnast for many years and am now an aerialist with my own mobile aerial entertainment company, Cirque Party LLC. I also launched and run the Parent & Me program at Jagged Vertical Dance & Fitness. Under Cirque Party, I have provided workshops for neurodivergent children, and I would love to have a space to offer these types of classes and workshops more regularly. In keeping with my goal to prevent cycles of trauma from continuing, my goal with the gross motor classes is to provide spaces for children to learn fundamental gymnastics skills without experiencing the abusive and overly competitive coaching atmosphere I grew up in. These gross motor classes would also enable me to provide further professional development for sports and dance coaches so that they can gain strategies and tools to put consent-based and respectful coaching to practice in their own spaces. This is already something I have started doing, as I presented a workshop, Consent-Based Coaching: Taking a Child-Led Approach, at the American Circus Educators conference – EdCon 2024 – that took place in Dallas, TX, in October.

Another goal I have with acquiring a brick-and-mortar space is to network with child and family trauma therapists so that they can use the space for their practice as well, thereby providing the families I reach with additional resources to prevent cycles of trauma from continuing across future generations.

All these services would be under the umbrella of my Parenting Resources business, with the goal of providing families and child development professionals with an array of resources for their children to have the best possible start to life. This is also a space I hope to provide my own future children as I prepare to be a mother myself in the coming years, enabling my own children to have a positive, supportive, empathetic, and respectful environment and community right from the start.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
This is a little difficult to talk about at the moment given the fires that are still ongoing and the devastation that will take years to recover from. My favorite hiking trail was in the Palisades. So many people I know and love have lost everything. However, what has been beyond inspiring has been how the people of Los Angeles have risen to support each other like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Amidst all the unfathomable tragedy here, it’s been so beautiful seeing humanity rise and communities support each other without hesitation. It feels like the people of Los Angeles have been showing their true colors, and it’s beautiful. It really feels like a true city of angels, rising from the ashes.

That being said, if I had guests visiting from out of town right now, I’d take them to all the sources of community I’m grateful to be a part of. The aerial dance and circus community within and around Jagged, Aerial Physique, Cirque Party, and so on. The skating community with the Los Angeles Skate Hunnies. The community of service and spiritual upliftment inspired by the Bahá’í Faith. One of the greatest things about Los Angeles is that in spite of its vastness and reputation for materialism, you can find pockets of “small town” community and genuine people everywhere.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
For my parent education business, I want to give a shout out to the RIE® organization, and in particular to my mentor, Ruth Anne Hammond. I am also inspired by and thankful to the child development communities (families, staff, and professors) at UCLA and LMU, whose children’s centers I learned from and worked for, for many years.

Cirque Party would never have come into being without the incredible community of aerialists I’ve been so grateful to be a part of these last few years. At the studios Jagged Vertical Dance Fitness, and Aerial Physique, where I train and teach, I have been uplifted in every way both by the aerial training and by the people themselves who make it so special and supportive.

Website: ParentingResources.com and CirqueParty.com

Instagram: @aer.talisa @cirque.party @parentingresourcesece

Facebook: Talisa Hayes, Cirque Party, ParentingResources.com

Image Credits
Credit for all images goes to my husband and photographer, David Tuman.