with other parents and asking yourself hard questions about your motivations, you can see your family situation more clearly. Even if you find yourself veering off the happy and loving path you first envisioned for yourself and your family, you will be able to identify problems when they are still manageable. You may also be better able to seek the advice and support of family and friends, or professional help if necessary, before a situation becomes critical.
I have seen myself and my children make small, consistent changes in the way we communicate with each other. My sons are adults, turning 30, 38 and 40 the year this ebook is published, and two are married. I treasure growing friendships with my daughters-in-law and adore my two granddaughters!
My sons no longer need the kind of mothering I so enjoyed giving in the past. In a way, we are both farther apart and closer now. The space allows the intimacy first to happen and then to grow. I no longer pretend, or even aspire, to be a “supermom.” Instead, I am content that we speak to each other often. We share worries, joys, plans and sometimes just listen to each other. On occasion, I need to apologize for something I've said or done and they do the same. What do you know... we're human!
Other parents have helped me and I trust that they will continue to do so as I take on a new role: grandmother. I hope this book helps you to ask for and get what you need from other parents. We can help each other.
Chapter Three
From There to Here
It became clear, about halfway through my son's treatment, that the habits of emotional honesty learned in recovery were helpful to me as a person and as a parent in many ways entirely unrelated to alcohol and other drug abuse. It also became clear to me that these lessons could be useful to people who did not have any experience of addictions in their families. Why not a positive program for parents who simply want to improve their family lives?
As a former teacher of English and French, I realized that much of what I had learned was, in a sense, a new language. If I could learn it, I could teach it. Further, I saw that the lessons of recovery could be incorporated into a program that parents in any community could run for themselves. So I started writing the lessons down. Then I started a column in the neighborhood paper, The North Cambridge News, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I live.
Enlisting the help of friends and a college volunteer, I began organizing activities. The first event was a poster workshop for children held at a local library. Entitled “What do you like about your family?” the workshop attracted a few individual parents and kids, a group of children from an after-school program with their teachers, and a reporter from a local TV station. The energy we all felt that day -- and the media attention we received -- kept us moving forward. Next, we organized a book and toy exchange, again at the library. Soon after these initial successes, we developed workshops and found a school willing to host them. We did a “trial run” of our format, which was based on eight fundamental questions designed to evaluate our parenting skills and deficits.
Many sympathetic community members and leaders, librarians especially, encouraged and helped us in these efforts. In addition, I attended every parenting workshop and conference I could get to locally as well as several in other cities and a few in other countries. One good friend, another and then another, agreed to help us incorporate and seek non-profit status.
What should we call the program? “Positive-program-for-ordinary-parents-with-garden-variety-kids-and-day-to-day-run-of-the-mill-challenges” was good, but too long for a banner. After a careful search and much deliberation, we chose the name Parents Forum. At the start, we proposed two themes for our activities: parent support and family celebration. In our third year, we clarified our vision, mission, and goals, settling finally on three themes: networking, skill development and support. Some time after that, we chose the tag line “where the heart listens” to emphasize that listening, especially listening to expressions of emotion, is central to our program. That phrase became the title of this handbook and in 2008 we adopted the tagline “come share your strength.”
While Parents Forum takes inspiration from the recovery movement, it also draws on my experiences as a “room parent” for over twelve years at my sons' grammar school, on 25-plus years of hosting international visitors in my home and on my teaching abroad: a year in Tunisia and a year in Portugal. In addition, my youngest son's interest in American Sign Language opened the doors for me to the Deaf community, whose members have a special bond defined by their gestural language. They also face special challenges in family communication, I realized, as nine out of ten Deaf children are born to hearing parents.
In addition, I have been fortunate to have access to a variety of seminars offered at the university where I work. The advice and expertise of trained professionals on topics ranging from forming playgroups to financial planning has influenced me personally and has, in turn, influenced Parents Forum. In fact, perhaps surprisingly, some very useful perspectives on parenting have come from staff development courses I have attended at work.
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At an early Parents Forum meeting, a young mother decided the group was not right for her because no one else had a two-year-old. Certainly parents of older children could have given her some new perspectives on the misnamed “terrible twos” which can, in fact, be terrific! If my kids are boys, mostly grown, and yours are infant girls or pre-schoolers, does that mean we have nothing to say to one another on the topic of family life? Of course not!
Exploring our differences and finding common ground benefits all of us, whether we are interacting parent-to-parent within a shared culture or across cultures. Besides the individual differences that may get in the way of our supporting each other -- age, gender, personality, education -- there are larger differences, such as race, |
While our children are not our employees nor are we, strictly speaking, our children's “bosses,” our kids and our households definitely need managing. Management training can offer valuable insights on the dynamics of supervising and motivating others. What four-year-old doesn't need supervising? What eight-year-old doesn't need motivating? Even customer service manuals offer useful guidance. There will be times when the customer (your twelve-year-old?) cannot get the product or service he wants (movie money? a ride into town or to the mall?) and you, as “parenting service provider” have to say “No” clearly and effectively while retaining the “customer's” goodwill. All right, maybe that's stretching the metaphor, but I hope you see my point.
Still, as informative and helpful as professionally led seminars can be, they cannot replace the warm, personal support shared among parents -- for free! -when we get together to talk. Parents Forum claims a section of middle ground between informal waiting-for-the-school-bell conversations among parents and informative (but sometimes intimidating) presentations by professionals on child development and parenting strategies. We certainly don't want to replace either one, but strive to incorporate good elements from both. In any case, we offer an opportunity for unhurried and non-judgmental parent-to-parent conversations.
When I meet someone new at work or in a social setting and the conversation turns to family life, as it often does, I am struck by two things: the depth of our shared concern for the well-being of our family members -- children, siblings, parents -- and the many differences that stand in the way of our sharing that concern.
Because our concerns, and our conversations, often focus on problems we face, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that kids are fun! Raising children is difficult, but it can also be the most joyful and rewarding
