We didn’t make the short list …sad face, but Parents Forum is recognized as an innovator in the Generation to Generation (Gen2Gen) campaign …happy face!
Gen2Gen offers an opportunity to spread the word and engage volunteers in parenting education and support at a local level. A particularly daunting element of the larger challenge that we and other parenting education initiatives face is the very human resistance to getting help. We all like to know what to do and how to do it in our daily lives, especially in something so basic as caring for the people we love. This resistance is coupled with a stigma arising from the fact that parents in difficulty and parents of children in difficulty usually seek and are sometimes offered help. The sad realities are that parenting services may not be available when and as needed and they are usually offered after problems become serious, even intractable.
Can we normalize parenting education? We can and must do this. We believe that Parents Forum can serve as an ‘ounce of prevention’, sparing young people and their parents considerable anxiety and unhappiness and helping them avoid many of the problems that result from ineffective communications and poor decision-making. The good feelings — the “helpers’ high” — that people get from helping each other is something we have bottled and want to give away!