Termly Feature
Reflections on having children........
Welcome to Holland
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michelangelo, Gondolas in Venice etc - it's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland!?!? you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place - full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books and also learn a new language. You will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower placed than Italy - less flashy. After you have been there for a while you catch your breath, you look around......and you begin to notice Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But, everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy....and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there; and, for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
The pain of that will never ever ever ever go away....because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But.....if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things..... about Holland.
By Emily Kingsley
Thoughts about the future.
Cmon Everybody has had a very good success rate for many years working in all areas of the city. We believe that our programmes, particularly when we run our paraael Dinosaur courses with children of the parenting groups can have a massive impact. This is an area that we feel really needs to be developed.
We are also finding that we are having a rapid increase in fathers attending our courses, which is really reassuring. Many children rarely encounter good male role models. Healthy emotional development in early childhood ideally needs father figures who can provide this dimension.
This significant increase in male attendees, we believe, is down to a number of features:
- The grapevine - Most of our referrals are self-referrers! The high quality of our courses over many years has meant that any stigma traditionally associated with parenting programmes has dissipated. I guess it is now pretty cool to attend a parenting course.
- High quality staff - The nature of the relationship developed between our team and the parents is critical in supporting the parent to implement the programme strategies.
- Programme fidelity - There are a number of studies that show a positive connection between measures of fidelity and the level of success. We deliver the programme as it was designed, with all the right protocols and techniques.
At Cmon Everybody, we firmly believe that we can attract more fathers as well as other minority groupings. Having said that, the number of fathers attending has increased by 100% over the past 12 months. Cmon Everybody is a stigma free and effective learning environment. Parents, regardless of gender, who are seeking the best outcomes for their children will naturally want to attend.
In order to enhance our delivery, Sheffield should encourage investment into training and developing more Webster-Stratton practitioners. This enlightened direction will enable us to deliver better by enabling us to offer booster sessions to the groups; run parallel Dinosaur groups with parenting courses as well as promoting even more whole class Dinosaur classes.
In an ideal world our vision is one where Sheffield has a centralised Parenting Clinic where Children and Young Persons Service, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services as well as other caring agencies work together in order to get the best outcomes for children and families. By having a centralised clinic, it will promote a multi-disciplinary organisation to be created that can assess and support the whole range of family needs.
Are you a parent? Are you a dad? Have you any thoughts you would like to share with us on parenting? What do you think about running groups in the evening? Would we get more couples coming along? What do you think about groups for couples only? What about groups for just dads?
If you have any thoughts about any of the points raised here then please get back to me at:
Tel: 0114 2312731
Fax: 0114 2312819