In June we sponsored workshops on consecutive Saturdays to train mature couples how to reach out and help other couples and families. We were sponsored by grants from both the Federal Government and the State of Ohio through Beech Acres Center.
Before the month of September is over we are going to have a dynamic reunion for all the original attendees. We will answer questions, find out what the trainees have been doing or are planning to do to support committed couples and happy families.
Stay tuned for the exact day, date and time as well as the place.
Showing posts with label Help is on the Way. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Help is on the Way. Show all posts
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
A TRIP TO BOY HEAVEN
Time Magazine has a great article on raising boys to men. Here is a small part of it.
If The Dangerous Book were a place, it would look like the Falling Creek Camp for Boys in North Carolina--a rustic paradise complete with a rifle range, nearby mountains to climb and a lake complete with swimming dock and rope swing. The choice of activities at the camp is dizzying, from soccer to blacksmithing, from kayaking to watercolors, but no pastime is more popular than building forts of fallen tree limbs and poking at turtles in the creek. Leave your cell phones, laptops and iPods at home.
There I met Margaret Anderson, a pediatric nurse from Nashville and a member of the faculty at Vanderbilt University. She works in the infirmary while her 11-year-old son Gage discovers the woods on multi-day pack trips. "I call this place Boy Heaven," she says.
Falling Creek subscribes to a philosophy of "structured freedom," which is essentially the same philosophy paying dividends among boys at the opposite end of the economic ladder at the Frederick Douglass Academy. It works across the board, says Anderson, and she wishes more of the boys she sees in her busy Nashville practice lived lives of structured freedom too.
"Whether it's urban kids who can't go outside because it's too dangerous or the overscheduled, over parented kids at the other end of the spectrum--I'm worried that boys have lost the chance to play and to explore," Anderson told me. Our society takes a dim view of idle time and casts a skeptical eye on free play--play driven by a boy's curiosity rather than the league schedule or the folks at Nintendo. But listen to Anderson as she lists the virtues of letting boys run themselves occasionally.
"When no one's looming over them, they begin making choices of their own," she says. "They discover consequences and learn to take responsibility for themselves and their emotions. They start learning self-discipline, self-confidence, team building. If we don't let kids work through their own problems, we get a generation of whiners."
That made sense to me. As I watched the boys at Falling Creek do things that would scare me to death if my own son were doing them--hammering white-hot pieces of metal, clinging to a zip line two stories above a lake, examining native rattlesnakes--I didn't notice many whining boys. Yates Pharr, director of Falling Creek, seemed to read my mind. "It's the parents who have the anxieties nowadays, far more than the boys," he said. "We've started posting photographs of each day's activity on our website, and still I'll get complaints if we don't have a picture of every camper every day."
Worrying about our boys--reading and writing books about them, wringing our hands over dire trends and especially taking more time to parent them--is paying off. The next step is to let them really blossom, and for that we have to trust them, give them room. The time for fearing our sons, or fearing for their futures, is behind us. The challenge now is to believe in them. [This article contains charts. Please see hardcopy or pdf.]
Find this article at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1647452,00.html
If The Dangerous Book were a place, it would look like the Falling Creek Camp for Boys in North Carolina--a rustic paradise complete with a rifle range, nearby mountains to climb and a lake complete with swimming dock and rope swing. The choice of activities at the camp is dizzying, from soccer to blacksmithing, from kayaking to watercolors, but no pastime is more popular than building forts of fallen tree limbs and poking at turtles in the creek. Leave your cell phones, laptops and iPods at home.
There I met Margaret Anderson, a pediatric nurse from Nashville and a member of the faculty at Vanderbilt University. She works in the infirmary while her 11-year-old son Gage discovers the woods on multi-day pack trips. "I call this place Boy Heaven," she says.
Falling Creek subscribes to a philosophy of "structured freedom," which is essentially the same philosophy paying dividends among boys at the opposite end of the economic ladder at the Frederick Douglass Academy. It works across the board, says Anderson, and she wishes more of the boys she sees in her busy Nashville practice lived lives of structured freedom too.
"Whether it's urban kids who can't go outside because it's too dangerous or the overscheduled, over parented kids at the other end of the spectrum--I'm worried that boys have lost the chance to play and to explore," Anderson told me. Our society takes a dim view of idle time and casts a skeptical eye on free play--play driven by a boy's curiosity rather than the league schedule or the folks at Nintendo. But listen to Anderson as she lists the virtues of letting boys run themselves occasionally.
"When no one's looming over them, they begin making choices of their own," she says. "They discover consequences and learn to take responsibility for themselves and their emotions. They start learning self-discipline, self-confidence, team building. If we don't let kids work through their own problems, we get a generation of whiners."
That made sense to me. As I watched the boys at Falling Creek do things that would scare me to death if my own son were doing them--hammering white-hot pieces of metal, clinging to a zip line two stories above a lake, examining native rattlesnakes--I didn't notice many whining boys. Yates Pharr, director of Falling Creek, seemed to read my mind. "It's the parents who have the anxieties nowadays, far more than the boys," he said. "We've started posting photographs of each day's activity on our website, and still I'll get complaints if we don't have a picture of every camper every day."
Worrying about our boys--reading and writing books about them, wringing our hands over dire trends and especially taking more time to parent them--is paying off. The next step is to let them really blossom, and for that we have to trust them, give them room. The time for fearing our sons, or fearing for their futures, is behind us. The challenge now is to believe in them. [This article contains charts. Please see hardcopy or pdf.]
Find this article at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1647452,00.html
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Free Couple Counseling
Available for Clermont County Residents
§ Improve your communication skills
§ Learn to resolve conflict effectively
§ Understand your partner better
§ Coordinate your parenting efforts
§ Establish realistic expectations
§ Improve your budget planning
§ And more…
Family Service-Eastgate Center and Beech Acres Parenting Center have teamed up under a new federal marriage grant to provide a relationship assessment and four follow-up counseling sessions for Clermont County residents in committed relationships.
Whether you are married, living together, engaged, previously divorced, or remarried; whether you want to work on pressing issues that are challenging your relationship or just make a good relationship better, please call:
Maggie Hallam, CT or Mary Le Gouellec, CT with Family Service at 513-354-5671 to schedule your first session as soon as possible. Space is limited. First come. First Served.
Funding for this project was provided by the Beech Acres Parenting Center & United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant: 90-FE-0100
§ Improve your communication skills
§ Learn to resolve conflict effectively
§ Understand your partner better
§ Coordinate your parenting efforts
§ Establish realistic expectations
§ Improve your budget planning
§ And more…
Family Service-Eastgate Center and Beech Acres Parenting Center have teamed up under a new federal marriage grant to provide a relationship assessment and four follow-up counseling sessions for Clermont County residents in committed relationships.
Whether you are married, living together, engaged, previously divorced, or remarried; whether you want to work on pressing issues that are challenging your relationship or just make a good relationship better, please call:
Maggie Hallam, CT or Mary Le Gouellec, CT with Family Service at 513-354-5671 to schedule your first session as soon as possible. Space is limited. First come. First Served.
Funding for this project was provided by the Beech Acres Parenting Center & United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant: 90-FE-0100
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