Spring 2016 Community Highlight: Jewish Family and Children's Service
Catherine Jackson’s fifth- and third-grade children have attended Blaine Academics Plus School for the past three years, and while she has certainly paid attention to goings-on at Blaine with a close eye, she never found a way to connect with the school in a positive way until she joined a parenting class in the spring of 2016. Engaging parents is a struggle in schools across the District, but it’s particularly difficult in neighborhoods that have a high concentration of poverty, like the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood where Blaine is located. Parents in high poverty areas might work multiple jobs, manage single-parent households, or simply prioritize putting a meal together over attending a parent meeting during dinnertime. Lynnette DeShields seems not only to have given Blaine parents a good reason to come into the school, but helped them realize how important they are to the school’s success. Through Jewish Family and Children’s Service, Ms. DeShields runs free parenting courses for mothers and fathers in North Philadelphia neighborhoods. Over a 12-week period, parents meet on-site at their child’s school to learn about topics such as positive discipline practices, the importance of play, and childhood behavioral development.
The theory behind the course called “The Incredible Years” is that by developing a strong parent-child bond early in the child’s life, the parent will be able to have a more successful, healthy relationship with the child through difficult times like adolescence and early adulthood. But how do you teach parenting to parents? “A lot of it has to do with how you present it,” Ms. DeShields explains. “No one’s coming out and saying, ‘You’re a bad parent.’ We teach each other.” Participants learn by doing, both in and out of class: they act out scenarios and do role play exercises with the support of classmates and keep a “play log” at home, which promotes intentional, positive parent-child interactions. Of course, teaching parenting involves more than just encouraging parents to play with their children. “Parenting goes deeper than just you and your child,” says Ms. DeShields. “It’s your whole self.” Indeed, class topics can lead to heavy, emotionally triggering, and sometimes contentious discussions. Talking about harmful parenting practices can bring up long-buried memories of participants’ own traumatizing childhood experiences. It is in these difficult discussions that parents learn the most about themselves and their parenting styles. Ms. DeShields often sets aside ten minutes at the end of class for “support group time,” where parents can vent their frustrations to one another and take time to reflect on their personal lives. In addition, Ms. DeShields serves as a case manager upon request, providing one-on-one support and resources to class participants. By the end of the 12-week course, Ms. DeShields sees real changes. She watches the parents project “confidence—not even just in parenting, but in themselves,” and even shyer participants begin to speak up during class. One parent said that the class helped repair her relationship with her husband. Another parent, Patricia Williams, described how the class taught her to how to confront difficult situations in a way that avoids escalation. Ms. Williams has a son who struggles with behavioral issues, and the parenting class has given her concrete skills to work productively with him. According to Ms. DeShields, many parents go on to be leaders at their schools, feeling “empowered from being in a group setting.” The JFCS parenting course gives parents the confidence to advocate for their children and for themselves. The goal of the program, Ms. DeShields says, is to emphasize to parents: “I’m a parent, my child’s first teacher.”
Interested in joining a course or bringing The Incredible Years program to your school? Ms. DeShields is currently recruiting members for her 2016 - 2017 parenting courses. Email her at LDeShields@jfcsphilly.org, or call her at 267-256-2243.
