Week 1 Preparing the Ground for Family Life

How to run a Family Time: New Parents Course

You will need:

Two leaders, ideally one male and one female
2 copies of the Leaders’ Handbook
Course Handbooks – one for each participant
Publicity material – You will need to advertise your course in your church and local area
Suitable venue: if there is just one group a home may be best. If you have more groups or are concerned about who will attend, a church or other public setting may be a better option.
Explicit support of your church leaders.

Talk/DVD:

Talk scripts are given in this handbook. In the future, Will and Lucinda will be filmed delivering the three talks, and course leaders will either be able to use the films, or deliver the talks themselves. We hope that the DVDs will be available from Summer 2014.

Leaders’ prompts:

Sections in italics are designed to help leaders direct the course and group discussion exercises. You do not have to stick exactly with what is suggested in the leaders’ prompts as you may have a question more apropriate for the group at a particular time. However, please be sure you understand the various exercises so you can clearly expain and introduce them.

Exercises:

Some group work will be done around the table. This will be low-key and not too personal. However, the exercises are intended to challenge people – they are not just academic tasks. Although group work can be hard for some people, remember to challenge the idea that they are the only person with these problems or questions. Note, however, that no one should be pressured to give answers where they do not want to.

Prayer:

Praying together as a team before participants arrive is important. It is God’s strength we are relying on, not our own. You should also set aside time to pray for the course and participants during the week. Remember that the course is open to everyone, so be as inclusive and non- religious as possible.

Facilitating well

Running the Family Time: New Parent course needs sensitive facilitation. If you have never led in a church context before, try to make sure you lead with someone who has done so.

Please take the time to discuss these questions with your co-leader before the course starts. We think they will help you understand your roles better. Remember that the principles of good facilitation are a Christian context, a sense of community and our personal stories. Other useful tips are:

A good facilitator is welcoming – encouragement is so important. This includes your body language.
They are also non-judgmental and relaxed – people have come to change but this will take time
Avoid being patronizing. People may be new to Christianity or this type of discussion, but they are not new to life. Treat others with gentleness, respect and interest – new parents tend to be nervous and sensitive to any implied criticism.
You are not required to be a parenting expert or share too much personal material – this is why we have provided talk scripts. A good stance is to be like a fellow learner – and ‘try to work it through together’. You should be familiar with supplementary questions in the New Parents Course Handbook and also use questions like, “does anyone else have anything to add to that?” or “are there any other ways of looking at that?” when gaining feedback.
You do not need to finish every discussion point – it is better to end on time!
How will you deal with these types of people:
The know-it-all who answers every question?
The person who is silent all the time?
The angry person who criticizes answers other people give?
The person who always goes off on a tangent?
The person who gives an unhelpful answer?

Feel free to tweak the talks and questions into your own words, but also remember we have put a lot of thought into them. Use your own illustrations if you wish, or stick to the ones that we offer within the grey boxes in the Talk Scripts. Don’t forget that if you change things too much, the course handbooks will not make sense.

Timings

Each of the three sessions is designed to take approximately 1.5 hours. The timings we suggest are:

Main talk (which includes group exercises): 1 hour
Coffee break: 5 minutes
Discussion groups (use the Discussion Questions for each session, given in the Course Handbook): 25 minutes

A note on using the participant’s course handbook:

The exercises in the participant’s course handbook correlate to the exercises given in italics in the leaders’ handbook. Those on your course can use the handbook as much or as little as they like, but you may like to supply them with pens so that they can make notes in their handbook during the sessions. You might also like to point out the ‘Take it Further’ section at the end of each session, which offers a few ideas for participants to further explore the topic.

When to run your course

We run our course over three weekday mornings during school term time, with a crèche available for those with pre-school aged children. You could also run the course over three evenings.

Feedback

Please ask your group to fill in feedback forms at the end of session 3, and please fill in your own leaders’ feedback form. You will find your form in Appendix 2, and the participant’s feedback form is in the course handbook. You could fill these in manually and post the forms back to us at:

Will and Lucinda van der Hart, St Peter’s Church office, St Peter’s Church, Sumner Road, West Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 4BX.

The forms can also be emailed back to us at

We pray that this course will be a blessing to you and all who you serve.

Thank You

Week 1:Developing a Parenting Mindset

1. Welcome

Welcome to the Family Time: New Parents Course. We want to start by congratulating you just on getting here. We are aware of how, as a parent-to-be, or a parent of young children, you will have many things on your mind. You may also be very tired if you are pregnant or caring for a new baby. Getting out to a course like this is a real achievement. We hope you find that it was well worth the effort.

2. Introducing ourselves and considering our hopes for the course

We want to start by telling you a little about ourselves.

Note to speaker(s): As part of your introduction you may like to tell a lighthearted story which indicates that you too are a ‘real’ parent who gets it wrong. Here’s ours…

Every head in the café turned our way as our two year old let out an almighty yell of frustration. She had tipped her drink down her front and was dripping inchocolate milk. Trying to ignore the stares, Will whisked her out of the café and into the shopping center, hoping some window shopping might distract her.

I breathed a sigh of relief and cuddled our newborn on my knee, hoping for a quiet moment to enjoy my coffee before we began our family Christmas shopping expedition. A minute later I was rushing towards the nearest toilet facilities, attempting to conceal the mustardy baby-poo stains all over my jeans. I wondered how I was going to clean up the explosion when I had forgotten to bring any baby wipes.

On my way I spotted a desperate Will, chasing our sticky toddler out of the Early Learning Centre as she attempted to make off with an armful of toys that hadn’t been paid for. Half an hour later we were in the car heading home, Christmas present-less and exhausted.

Exercise 1: Introduce yourself to the person you are sitting next to. Share your expectations for this three-week parenting course. What do you think may be the benefits of attending?

Speaker: You could now ask the groups to give some feedback on hopes and expectations for this course, as well as which questions people most want answered.

3. Our goal for this session

Our goal for this session is to help you to develop a ‘parenting mindset’. This is a strong outlook that will equip you to be the best parent you can be. What we will cover today is not so much about finding out the right things to ‘do’ with your baby, but finding out better ways to ‘be’ with your baby, partner and wider family.

4. Your preparation so far

Excitement, exhaustion and anxiety were the overwhelming emotions of new parents polled in 2013 by online care destination, Care.com. A further 47% said they felt proud and 40% ‘blessed’ following the birth of their first child.

When people have a new baby, be it their first, second or third, they often prepare hard in particular areas, and forget to consider others. The following exercise will help you take stock of your outlook and preparation for baby so far:

Exercise 2:

Circle the three things from the below list that you have given the most time/ attention to in recent months:

Getting informed about the birth
Purchasing things for the new baby
Your emotional health
Your relationship with your partner
Discussing what support you will have available when baby arrives
Making your home ready for a baby
Sharing your thoughts on parenting with your partner
Planning how to sustain your faith in the season ahead

5.Managing expectations and fears [put in infographic on screen/ in booklet here?]

A recent survey by the NSPCC found that three quarters of new mums would have liked more professional advice before their baby was born. Key areas that mothers said they needed more information on included how to deal with anxiety, fear, depression and sleep deprivation, and how to cope with their baby’s crying and sleeplessness.[1]

Many of us will have been dreaming of becoming parents for many years, maybe not in a wholly conscious way, but we will have had moments of seeing other people pushing prams and wondering how that feels. You may have formulated strong ideas about what sort of parent you would like to become and what sort you wouldn’t. Now that becoming a parent is an imminent possibility – or even a present reality – it will feel even more important to turn your dreams into some sort of coherent plan of action, and that is what this course is all about.

Becoming a parent is a big step into a place of responsibility – we are bringing another human life into the world and this can feel daunting, or even frightening, at times.

Exercise 3:

Take a moment to think to yourself now – At the moment,what is your greatest fear about becoming a parent, or about your family’s future. How is this fear holding you back? We hope that you will feel more resolved about this fear by the end of the course.

My greatest fear about parenthood is:………………………………………

6. Reflect on your own childhood

If we want to face up to our negative expectations of becoming a parent, we need to reflect on how we ourselves were raised.

You will have heard phrases such as, “like mother like daughter, like father like son”, used in the context of parenting. Perhaps you believe statements like this to hold some truth, and for good reason. There is no doubt that the greatest influence upon an unformed parenting approach is the style by which individuals have themselvesbeen parented. You may be delighted with the way you were raised, and equally you may not!

One of the greatest negative expectations is that we are on an inevitable trajectory towards becoming our mum or dad: that you are going to inflict the same mistakes and the same pain upon your precious new child as was inflicted on you.

We want to be clear that there are absolutely no inevitabilities to parenting, so long as you take an aware and intentional approach. Are we saying that there is no chance of replicating your parents’ mistakes? No, what we are saying is that you have the option not to.

7. What parenting language have you learnt?

As a child you learnt the birth language of your parent, maybe English, Tamil, Arabic, French etc. Since then, you have been speaking that birth language, but you don’t have to. Should you choose a new language, you could.

If you learnt the language of parenting from your mum and dad, you will be speaking that language at the moment, but this is the time to intentionally say that you want to learn new or revised vocabulary. Equally, if you are married or in a relationship with your child’s other parent, there will be potentially divergent languages of parenting that will need revision and translation into a new, shared language.

Exercise 4:

Write down two things you appreciate about the way that you were raised, and two that you don’t want to replicate.

I appreciate:

I don’t want to replicate:

8. Roles of parents

The way in which we were brought up is likely to have shaped our thoughts on the roles that mothers and fathers should take. If you are parenting as a couple, it is helpful to have a conversation with your partner, before baby arrives, about what they expect their role as ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ to entail. If you are parenting alone, you may want to seek support in certain areas in which your role feels too much for one person to handle alone, or which you never thought would need to be in your domain as a parent.

Exercise 5:

Place a tick by the following roles/ tasks which YOU feel are mum’s role. Place a cross by the roles/ tasks which YOU think aredad’s department.

Feeding the baby

Getting up at night with the baby

Earning money

Cooking meals

Disciplining your child/ children

Making decisions for the family

Being a spiritual guide to your child/ children

If you are parenting as a couple, show your partner your list (but make sure they have done the exercise themselves first). Discuss the differences in your lists. To what extent are your views shaped by what your parents did? How do you, as a couple, want to share out tasks/roles between you?

9.Avoid parenting to rules

DIAPER spelt backwards reads REPAID. When it comes to babies, it is true that whatever you put in, you usually get back again at the end of the day! But parenting isn’t a similarly simple equation…

You can’t apply a set of theories or rules to a baby or child and expect a certain ‘product’ to be produced. Instead, we are learning that I need to be constantly flexible and relaxed, especially with myself.

Rules are:

Concrete
Rigid
Often time-limited
Have a pass or fail measure

Parenting to ‘rule’ isn’t usually a helpful approach. It would lead us to say things like; “He should have put on more weight in this first 6 weeks, I am obviously feeding him poorly. I must be doing something wrong as otherwise this wouldn't have happened.”

Many more parents than you would expect fall into hard and fast categories of success and failure parenting. A professionalised culture and some popular parenting books (some of the strictest of which have been written by people who have no children of their own) have largely propagated this. Whatever your outlook, there will always be moments when parenting a baby or young children that you ‘feel’ like a failure. You do not need hard markers that will set you up to fail or reinforce negative new parent guilt.

10.Tuning your mind-set

In this first session we have introduced the idea of acknowledging our fears, developing healthy expectations, reflecting on our own childhoods and challenging unhelpful parenting rules.

All of these considerations are examples of what we might describe as ‘mind-set readiness’. Don’t worry if you are already a parent, yet this concept is new to you. You will already be using this idea unconsciously and can amend it in due course if you wish. Mind-set readiness for happy parenting is not earmarked by amassing huge volumes of information. It is about developing an attitude that helps you raise your child (or children) in the most positive, peaceful and love-filled way possible.

You will need:

Leaders’ prompts:

Further reading

Facilitating well