A Common Sense
Response for Our Children's Needs: Parenting Support Groups
Mary
E. Roland
Supervisor, Juvenile Diversion Program, Minneapolis Police Department.
University
of Minnesota Children Youth and Family Consortium. Permission is granted
to create and distribute copies of this document for noncommercial
purposes provided that the author and CYFC receive acknowledgment
and this notice is included.
reviewed
2001
INTRODUCTION:
Today
many are casually discussing the changes that are apparent in our
society. We are increasingly aware that as our society changes it
effects us all. One aspect of this change shows up in the behavior
of our youth. Adults who have taught school or worked with kids for
years discuss the fact that our youth are gradually becoming more
amoral, detached and irresponsible. Those who have worked with parents
for years notice that for a variety of reasons, parents are becoming
less involved with their children's lives.
Over
the past 20 years I have worked with families from Minneapolis and
St. Paul. I have made some observations that I would like to present
in a generalized manner. What follows are the insights I have gained
over this time. These issues occur in all parts of the Twin Cities
and seem to have the most deleterious effects when combined with poverty.
My
professional training includes, Child Psychology BA, Licensed Chemical
Dependency Counselor, Licensed Social Worker, Masters in Public Health
-- Maternal & Child Health, and I presently work for the Minneapolis
Police Department as Supervisor of the Juvenile Diversion Program.
IDENTIFICATION
OF PROBLEM:
It
is apparent that a significant part of inner city problems lie in
the fact that many youth are not raised in a way which allows them
to become competent adults who can access mainstream society. This
problem does not appear to happen intentionally. It seems that somewhere
during the break down of a community, the relationships which would
normally strengthen parenting skills get lost. When adults raising
children most need to turn to neighbors for advise and support, they
find that they do not know or trust the people living around them.
Isolation has negative repercussions on parenting. When parents perceive
themselves to be alone in raising their children and are in an environment
they distrust, they often experience overwhelming negative emotions.
This leads to negative parenting behaviors, e.g., over reacting, withdrawing
from the children, hostile responses to everyday situations, erratic
fluctuations in parenting styles (e.g., from permissive to authoritarian),
lack of nurturing, etc.
It
appears that many parents today have not had the benefit of being
raised by supportive, mentally healthy parents. Also, it appears that
the last few generations of parents have progressively offered their
children less training in how to access ones' common sense and ones'
ability to have a high level of mental health or happiness. Young
parents, some even teenagers, have more adolescent ways of dealing
with their inadequate, unhappy feelings. These often include behaviors
that negatively affect their already fragile parenting abilities,
such as drug/alcohol abuse.
Pervasive
improvements in the inner cities will probably not be realized until
nurturing support is given to parents who can then, in turn, enable
their children to learn higher levels of functioning. These include:
impulse control, moral development, unconditional positive regard
for self and others, innate wisdom and common sense, peace and serenity,
happiness, etc. Those working with inner city youth or adults have
seen individuals when given a chance to improve, (e.g. given job)
quickly ruin the opportunity because of their lack of experience at
accessing their innate character strengths and prosocial skills. Destroying
a chance to make money or succeed strengthens self defeating beliefs.
Over time the process of losing opportunities evolves into confirmed
negative self perceptions, i.e., "I am a loser", "Why
try, I can't do anything right".
Some
well meaning attempts, of teaching children healthier levels of functioning
without involving the parents, have been tried. Commonly this has
put a tremendous strain on the family relationships because the child
becomes healthier than the parent. Greater harmony can be achieved
by allowing parents to remain in their God given position of being
able to train, raise, and provide for their own children. Healthy
parents know what is best for their offspring and feel a sense of
pride in assuring that their children receive proper nurturing.
Similarly,
society has through the years held the expectation that parents have
the obligation to raise children to become law abiding citizens. Raising
children to become competent adults is a stressful activity for every
parent. However, parents are expected to surmount their difficulties,
so as to help their children develop prosocial values, behaviors and
interpersonal skills. It has previously been the practice that other
adults (family and friends) assisted parents in raising children.
Today, more than ever, parents are in need of that peer support. As
society continues to oblige parents to rear healthy children, it must
attempt to provide those parents with access to the resources needed
to do the task. If instead of offering support, society comes to believe
that parents can not be expected to raise their children properly,
we will have moved away from the tenets our Nation has at its foundation.
These
are impressions of the current parenting dilemma and a response.
Impression
#1:
Group
behaviors are susceptible to the theory of "critical mass",
meaning when enough people are doing particular behaviors, others
around are more likely to behave in the same manner due to social
acceptability. Although the behavior change may have initially evolved
slowly, when enough people are engaged in the behavior, the rate of
others emulating it occurs quickly. Example: We went from a smoking
society to a non-smoking one. Now it is no longer acceptable to smoke
in some circles, so most quit smoking to stay in favor.
Impression
#2:
The
critical mass behavior in many inner city neighborhoods involves a
profound lack of parents training children how to relate to themselves
or others in a healthy manner. Until something is done to reverse
this, it will continue to worsen. This could result in negating all
other forms of empowerment for the community.
Impression
#3:
The
most successful way to influence something as personal as how parents
raise their children is to involve parents in the entire design and
implementation of the plan. Parents, then respected as agents of social
change, receive the message that they are significant in creating
a healthy community.
Impression
#4:
Parents
are most likely to benefit from social exchange with their peers,
similar to the backyard conversations of old. Although experts have
helpful information to impart, learning also occurs as peers discuss
and re-discuss issues. Groups like AA and AlAnon remain successful
because peers come together to support each other.
Impression
#5:
When
parents can come together for support without being stigmatized as
being "bad parents", positive growth can occur. If parents
who are concerned that their children are going in the wrong direction
and are unsure how to respond to their children's behaviors can come
to a parent's group for input, they can deal with issues before they
escalate into serious problems. At the same time parents with serious
problems can learn from others who have been successful with similar
issues.
Impression
#6:
When
parents have trusting relationships with their children's friends'
parents, they are more likely to have increased awareness of their
children's whereabouts and activities. They are also more likely to
be involved with the other parents in deciding what is healthy for
their children and what are acceptable and unacceptable attitudes,
behaviors and activities.
PROPOSED
SOLUTION:
FORMATION
OF THE PARENT GROUPS:
The
Twin Cities could benefit from a network of parenting groups that
are available as close to ones' home as possible. This ensures that
the participants are from the same neighborhood, which often indicates
concern for similar issues and familiarity with each others' children.
To
be successful, many groups would need available child care. This could
be accomplished by enlisting high school and middle school youth to
play with the children under the supervision of an adult, possibly
a senior citizen.
Interested
parents could be trained to initially facilitate the groups. They
could be found throughout the Twin Cities through a variety of solicitations.
However, in time, many groups would not need a facilitator due to
the group's ability to run itself. Interested parents could be found
from the existing groups, who would accept the challenge of facilitating
newly formed groups. In this way the proliferation of groups with
trained facilitators could expand in keeping with the community's
need for more groups.
The
decision whether all of this is done on a volunteer basis or if group
facilitators, trainers and child care help get a small stipend, would
be made by the availability of a funding source. The preference to
have only the child care help paid a small amount, while the rest
reach out on a volunteer basis, stems from the belief that all group
participants are benefiting in some way and no one is coming to the
group to get paid. This allows for the expansion of groups, similar
to the growth of AA and Al-Anon groups.
Groups
could be located in churches, community centers, parks, schools, libraries,
agencies, and possibly businesses.
The
initial formation of a parent group in a new area could be publicized
and promoted with a sharing of food, e.g., dinner. It would be a time
of bringing together wary parents, who are apprehensive of meeting
their neighbors. Also a time for presenting the benefits and format
of a parent's group.
Groups
could decide how often they wanted to meet, i.e., once a week or more
often, and at what time of the day/evening. They could also decide
how they wanted to handle treats and beverages. Unless a fund was
available to provide limited snacks for each meeting, the groups could
initiate their own method of having weekly treats/beverages.
A
Resource Center could be available to provide groups with requested
handouts, videos and books on a wide variety of topics. Speakers could
also present relevant information to large gatherings. Groups could
attend together so as to discuss content or practice skills later.
CONTENT
OF INFORMATION SHARED AT PARENT GROUPS:
The
content of the groups is as important as the fact that the groups
exist. It would be detrimental to have parents come together to complain
about how rotten their children are and as a response develop punitive
methods of punishment. The premise that there are proven, highly effective
ways for parents to relate to their children, while other less successful
methods exist; motivates the proposition that Psychology of Mind or
The Health Realization Model be used, (two different titles used interchangeably
for the same model).
This
paradigm has been used around the nation to bring about high levels
of mental health. Past psychological models have grown mostly from
the Freudian theories where one focuses on problems to find solutions.
These theories have a lot of room for blaming one's upbringing, environment,
personality, emotions, etc. for one's existing behaviors. Health Realization
does not subscribe to any of this. Some of the tenets of this model
will be briefly listed here but for an in depth awareness of Psychology
of Mind discussion or another paper would be needed.
Principle
#1:
People
have the ability to solve their problems. All have direct access to
innate capacities for mental health which include: unconditional self
esteem, positive motivation, use of common sense and wisdom, ability
to access a high mood level, etc., regardless of their circumstances,
educational level, social economic status, family background, or past
history of deviance. In other words, people are basically healthy.
People have developed ways of thinking that hampers their mental health
but these can be realized and negated.
Principle
#2:
All
create their personal realities with thoughts. When people are unaware
of what they are thinking, they act on every thought as if it were
true with no evaluation of the thought's relevance or truth. Therefore,
past conditioning, ego needs to prove self and self limiting ideas
program the brain to believe insecure realities. Re-engaging in mental
health is possible at any time. People can learn to interact with
one another and to teach or coach each other, in ways that assist
all in gaining insights that engage and strengthen their innate capacity
for mental health.
Principle
#3:
All
are capable of being conscious of their thinking process, learn to
slow it down, and learn how to make conscious shifts away from insecure
thoughts to higher self esteem. They realize as their thinking changes,
so do their feelings and moods, as well as their resulting behaviors
and correlating habits. Mental health is seen to originate from inside.
All are helped to see beyond their perceived limitations.
When
each realize their strengths and experience mutual self respect, interactions
with others are much more enjoyable and successful.
Naturally
this all leads to a high level of parenting which results in happier,
more successful parent-child relationships. People are more open to
change when they are relaxed and happy.
The
proposal of training some parents in the tenets of the Health Realization
Model so they in turn could help groups get a positive start, does
not mean that all groups would have a resident expert. It also does
not mean that other helpful parenting information would be disallowed.
Instead, a group facilitator would offer to share the Health Realization
information with others. While other parents would share what works
for them. All taking bits from each other's wisdom.
EXTRA
BENEFITS OF PARENT GROUPS FOR THE TWIN CITIES:
Many
youth who are involved in truancy from school or committing crimes
have parents who have resigned from their parental responsibilities.
The reasons for this large scale parental "retirement" vary
but the negative results among unsupervised youth are quite similar.
It would be helpful to the school systems and county court systems
to have parent support or training groups to refer parents of youth
experiencing difficulties. If they did not willingly agree to participate
in the groups, the possibility in time exists that a parent could
be court ordered to group. This would be similar to the fact that
the far majority of AA participants are there voluntarily. However,
it is not unusual to have court ordered members present as well. Both
benefit from attending group.
In
time, a resource could be established to provide mentoring support
to parents who need more 'hands on' help than a parent group can offer.
When a parent receives mentoring aid, all the children in that family
benefit from the increased nurturing the parent can give them. Volunteers
of all ages, especially parents who have already raised their children
and therefore have more time and wisdom, could be trained to mentor,
sponsor or befriend other parents. Since the extended family members
are often not available today, supportive relationships are needed
as people substitute for missing family.
In
time, the resources may also exist to create similar youth groups
available in every interested neighborhood. Staff from parks, churches
and youth serving agencies could recommend mature adolescents that
maybe interested in receiving training to facilitate peer groups under
adult guidance. This option would give an alternative to the present
attraction of joining a gang to fulfill the desires "to belong"
or to be a contributing member of some peer group. Youth could learn
to support each other through the difficult stages of growing up,
with positive peer pressure. Youth of all ages need to be seen as
competent, particularly among their families and peers.
In
time, teachers, probation officers, youth workers, etc. around the
Twin Cities may see the benefits of learning to use the Health Realization
Model in their own interactions with youth/parents or the community.
High functioning parents are normally active in their children's lives,
especially their schools. Positive interactions are as contagious
as negative ones. In time we may achieve "critical mass"
with the majority of the community relating with mutual respect and
positive regard for one another.
When
community members unleash their healthy creative powers, what were
once problems become challenges and solutions are found in the renewing
pool of strengths.
