The Parenting Journey is a 12-week program for parents who are at risk of losing, or have lost, their child to foster care. The program is also available to all parents facing the ordinary yet daunting task of raising children. The Parenting Journey helps parents become aware of past and present experiences that influence their parenting styles, learn and practice self-care, enhance their parenting skills, and utilize their strengths to support their children and build nurturing family relationships.
Participants engage in highly structured activities and discussions that are designed to help parents who were not adequately parented themselves as children. The Parenting Journey is based on the premise that a parent cannot give from an empty vessel, or understand what it means to be nurturing, if they have not experienced it for themselves. As parents participate in the program, they reflect on their own upbringing and are able to draw conclusions about how to be a good parent.
The program’s approach teaches that effective parenting does not happen all at once. In parenting, as with any process, some things may be easier than others simply because of one’s skill level or exposure to good role models in the past. Parenting is viewed as a lifetime process with constantly changing nuances and requirements that begin with a parent’s own childhood. The Parenting Journey also helps parents build a supportive network by providing access to resources for families to use during and after the program is completed. For more information, please contact us at mentalhealth@thevillagefs.org.
|
