ParentsCare www.ParentsCare.stilllearning.org
is the copyrighted parenting and family life management education curriculum developed by Jim in 1996 and continues to be the foundation of his parenting and family life workshops, classes, seminars and private conferences. It continues to be a work in progress and is being updated as new research and information dictate changes.
It is also in the second year of being the core of the Parenting and Family Life Management Education Facilitator certification course at Horry Georgetown Technical College. 18 students received certification in 2008 followed by another 28 in 2009 and are now applying the ParentsCare strategies in their particular areas which range from child care faclities, to public and private schools, to domestic abuse shelters and faith organizations. In two counties the department of social services and family courts have designated ParentsCare a recommended class for clients being required to attend parenting classes, and several of the certified facilitators are now conducting those classes.
still learning, inc. and ParentsCare have also developed COEP, Co-Operative Effective Parenting for parents who are parenting apart, co-parenting in divorce or separated situations and who might be referred by family courts or legal advisors.
Workshops, classes and conferences can be arranged by contacting Jim at ParentsCare@sc.rr.com If you would like to learn about the philosophy of ParentsCare and the areas we cover, please let us know.
Jim recently started serving as the resident parenting and family life consultant for a Moms 2 Moms blog which is a new offering from the regional McClatchy newspaper The Sun News. Go to www.myrtlebeachmoms.com to check out the mothers to mothers discussions.
Since 1994 Jim has been writing a column, ParentsCare, in the speciality newspaper Parent News, with a distribution of over 20,000 in a four county area. He has discussed countless issues including corporal punishment, high energy children, discipline and punishment, family management skills and accessing community resources among the seemingly countless challenges and rewards that come with raising children in our world today.
Selections from columns follow here, and other concerns of parents and families could be addressed with your simply requesting it.
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ParentsCare By Jim R. Rogers
The dictionary defines a “parent” as “a father or mother”. That’s it. No more than that. No details, no embellishments, no explanations. We sure know better, don’t we? There are as many ways to define a “parent” as there are parents almost, since every one who calls him or herself “parent” is unique in that no one else “parents” exactly the way another does.
We all have our reasons for being a parent, and we all have our own ideas about what kind of a parent we want to be. We are from the start either ready, willing and able to handle the job, eagerly looking forward to every frustrating and joyful day in the lives of our children, or we look at the little ones as being necessary only to carry on the lineage and they are most often more trouble than they are worth and keep us from doing the things we had planned to do with our lives before they came. Either we do not look forward to that day when they say “good-bye” and move to some far distant state on their own building their own futures, or we do look forward to that day when they finally get out of the house, give us back some peace of mind and leave us to our own selfish pursuits. Then, of course, there are all of those other combinations of being a parent that I can’t possibly mention here. Heck, I can’t even think of them all.
Here’s one possibility that I do hope for. I hope when parents think of themselves, they do so with pride, knowing that they are engaged in the most important job, no, make that “profession”, that they will ever have and that they are doing it to the best of their ability, and their ability is constantly being upgraded with new ideas and new ways to be a parent and new ways to help their children grow up to be the people we all want them to be. I hope parents remind themselves every day that their roles are vital to the future of their children. I hope daily that they rededicate themselves to their role and giving of the best of themselves to the health and welfare of their children.
This expectation on my part is too much pressure I have been told. I have read where some people are writing and saying that parent educators, like myself, are being too tough on parents today, what with all the other stuff they have to do, like work, and work, and work, and do stuff, and make lists, and stay busy, and do more stuff, and take on more stuff. No one knows more than I how true that is. Parents today are indeed leading hectic lives. And, they do need to do a lot of other things that don’t concern the children directly. But, the fact remains that the children exist and they are in the lives of the parents and these parents have the awesome responsibility of performing the second most important role in life and that is to take good care of their children. (The first most important thing is to take care of one’s self, creatively and in a healthy way). This is not to say that parents should strive to be perfect. Not possible. Nor should parents make themselves nuts over “what to do” at just the “right time” when working with the children. We are going to make mistakes, and we are going to cause some conflict and problems.
So, we don’t have to go around second guessing ourselves all the time. When we have a confident sense of self and that natural or developed confidence is fueled and enhanced by additional knowledge, we then will be more comfortable with almost all of the decisions that we make regarding our children.
I like the physician’s oath which paraphrased says “do no harm’. Most “real” parents have a sense of when they are doing harm. They can feel it deep down inside themselves somewhere. If they feel it there, then they can be pretty sure that the child involved feels it too.
The way parents are as human beings, as women and men, will teach the children who they should be and how they should behave in the world into which they are moving. We parents can’t take that responsibility too lightly. The day-to-day boo boos are not the stuff of which failure is made, rather it is the attitude, the philosophy, the environment , the actually being in the world (role modeling) in relationship with the children that make the difference toward finding the best chance of parental success.
Examine how you truly “feel” about your children and about yourself as parent. Feel OK? Wouldn’t it be nice if all parents could truly “be in love” with their children and actually cherish every single moment of that journey together called sharing a life? Keep trying, and
Don’t lose heart!
ParentsCare in the year 2007
VIOLENCE IN OUR SOCIETY
by Jim R. Rogers
Recently I received a statement and a set of questions for my response from a local newspaper reporter. Since only a small piece of what I sent back was used, I wanted to share the rest with Parent News (and now still learning, inc.) readers since I feel the subject is important and critical to these times.
Parents are barraged with news of school shootings, Internet predators, children snatched from their beds while they sleep, politicians preying on young people, etc. With all of that, we are asking the questions:
1. Are parents raising their children differently today than the way they were parented because of increased violence against children or are today's parents just more aware of the violence because of more thorough media coverage?
Most parents I would venture to say are definitely raising their children differently today, but not because of the violence, since we have always had isolated occurrences of violence, shocking and scary to the public. It’s the other way around...the epidemic of violence is being caused by the way we parent and raise our children and the weakness of homes and families. We are now a larger population, there is more of everything including unhealthy people, mental illness, reactions to being a member of the “have nots” population, and the seemingly uncaring power wielding of those in the “haves” population ...(a gap that seems to be getting wider and wider) and all of these incidents can be reported almost instantaneously to the entire world especially the “news worthy” ones. We are such a reactionary society that even after a violent episode hits our neighborhood it doesn’t take a long time for a return to normalcy and being close to complacent again. We hurry to “fix” the symptoms of deeper problems, ignoring the root causes. The media definitely needs to be more responsible and accountable; entertainment and news media. There are so many media outlets today, all competing for audiences to increase their profits and staying power. Not only do they simply report a news event, but they also banter it all day and night long making it much more important than it truly needs to be...and some media actually create news from the news. Look at what the media was doing to two young women who battled (and are battling) internal demons of some kind that create for them sad and confused lives, and the media uses them to sell themselves, calling it news. And I also believe that media exposure can and has created violent events by unhealthy persons wanting the notoriety the coverage provides. Media fuels terrorism. The perpetrators live and die for the publicity they get. Media also fuels social violence...from the images of “professional” wrestling to “in your face” athletics, juvenile sports, players, coaches and fans, to Spike TV fist fighting and macho stereotypes. Is it any wonder that our children and our adults accept and practice violent behavior as “the way it is”? We have changed the way we parent for lots of reasons. Mostly it’s due to corporate control and money/survival driven lives. We live in a 365 24/7/world. It is always open for business and we all find ourselves running to just keep up. Parents spend less time in the home, less time with children, less time developing vital relationships with their spouses and sons and daughters and community; less time for self reflection, personal growth and learning. Family members all drag themselves home at the end of the day and it’s sometimes all they can do to be civil to each other. The duties are endless and the times for just being together in good and healthy ways have greatly diminished. Too much parenting today is done on the run, hurling snatches of guidance and direction at their confused and needy offspring with few interactions that are often not well thought out. Parents too often “react” to their children’s needs, with what I call “response-disability”, rather than being effectively responsive to their needs, which is “response-ability”. We are often too harsh, too insensitive, too rigid, too inconsistent, too impatient and not willing to stop, listen and attempt to understand and guide. We don’t even try to develop true relationships with each other; we just order, dictate, command, criticize, complain and talk...all the traits that undermine the purpose of effective parenting, which is to prepare a child for adulthood. How do we think we get to be adults? We adults teach our children how and who to be. Who do you want your children to be? What kind of lives do you want for them? What kind of memories do you want them to have? We are creating childhood memories for adults now.
2. Has this increased awareness bred paranoid parents at risk forcreating a generation of paranoid youngsters? Or are parents justified in their vigilance?Paranoia is running wild...and I believe the television, motion picture, cell phones and internet media help create it and fuel it. I say television, et. al. because it is always there and available and attacks most of our senses; sight, sound, emotions. It can dramatically tap into our imaginations and fears in an instant and the image can remain, maybe forever. The print media is also guilty, but we can put it down, read it in small doses, or not read it at all and there is very little visual and no auditory impact. And, the emotion has to be created by the reader. You don’t find many teenagers sneaking around to buy a newspaper. Mass media gives us something new to fear and worry about almost daily...hourly. If we allow ourselves to be a “regular” habitual user, there is no way that we cannot feel anxious, stressed, frustrated, worried and downright depressed and fearful when we try to close our eyes at night. It is all too much, and too constant, and too negative. We are not only raising a new generation of paranoid children, but anxious, hopeless, aimless and depressed ones as well. We can not possibly be our most effective selves if we are always looking over our shoulder or feeling like the sky is going to fall any minute. And if we aren’t our most effective selves, then we are not giving our best as a parent, a spouse, a child, a worker, a citizen.
3. We have parents equipping their young children with cell phones as a way to have immediate communication. Is this a good parenting tactic or are parents using today's electronics to baby sit their kids and avoid having to spend time with them?
Just like television, computers, video games, air rifles, and other potentially harmful popular commodities the cell phone is not bad in and of itself, but rather it can have good and bad characteristics or potential; it all depends on how it is used. Too much of anything is too much. Proper use, informed use, useful use, purposeful uses are all good. Cell phones are incredible tools for good, but can be misused and can be tools for illegal, inconsiderate and obnoxious behaviors. Used as a contact for children, it’s good. Used as a controlling and spying tool, it causes problems.
Many parents use many commodities, and schedules, and lack of time, and other distractions to avoid spending time with their children. Too many of them would rather be someplace else. Being with our children in positive helpful ways can be time consuming, hard, frustrating and boring. So can going to the dentist, but they are both necessary parts of our healthful lives. Nothing can replace the genuine “unhurried” time that we give our children. Nothing.
4. How should parents handle the bad news of the world (school shootings, Internet predators) when discussing this with their children? What's your advice for how to have that discussion? We cannot raise our children in a vacuum. We cannot pretend that bad things don’t exist. If we don’t inform them, someone else will. Of course they will be informed by others as well as parents anyway, but parents have to manage the information and relate it to how that family believes, what it values and how it feels about any given subject in the neighborhood and world. Parents have to design, manage, modify, and execute rules, and behavior expectations, discipline and structure and routines and how their family adapts to and lives in and with the world. There are many positive examples of living in this wonderful world and they need to be pointed out and emphasized as to what life can be. Help them understand that life is not what they see on television or in the movies. Help them sort out the difference between reality and make believe...in what happens there and what happens here.
Depending on the age of the children, be open and honest with them. Tell them what you think they need to know based on their age and maturity to handle and understand. Answer their questions, but don’t elaborate unnecessarily. Talk about events minimally. Try not to make it fill the day or time. Try to maintain normal schedules and routines. Above all, maintain your own cool and maturity about the events. Don’t go around all day hand-wringing and bemoaning the state of the world. Check your judgments, your reactions, your criticisms your conclusions. Remember that you are role modeling and teaching your observing and absorbing children how to handle emotions, to think, to consider, to wonder and to grow in self assurance and confidence. The more strength and courage you show and teach the better the children will grow into those healthy places and then they will be able to handle the inevitable events that will greet and bash them in their present and future everyday living of life.
I hope you will take the time to read all of this column again, and give it to others to read as well. We have to stop, and think, and be. It’s all very worrisome...so be aware, work at it, try to bring in some joy and Don’t lose heart!