The art of parenthood

DEENA LEVENSTEIN

It is a world in which the Internet provides our children with access to information on topics we never dreamed they'd access at 12, 13 or 14," said Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt at the first session of Parents Inc. on Nov. 12.

Parents Inc. is a new program that was "born out of the realization that we will not build a wall high enough, the asylum has not been invented that will protect our children from everything that's out there." Continued Rosenblatt, "What we're left with is to make them the strongest and best decision-makers we possibly can."

Rosenblatt, the rabbi of Congregation Schara Tzedeck, initiated Parents Inc., five monthly sessions that are open to Jewish parents of the Greater Vancouver area. Around 20 families have signed up, meaning a maximum of 40 people and, said Rosenblatt, it is hopefully growing.

The first half of each session is a lecture given by different experts on parenting and the second half is a group discussion with facilitators who are purposely not Jewish, in order to create a more comfortable setting.

Sheldon Franken, an elementary school counsellor in the Delta School District, is the clinical coordinator for the project. At the meeting, he stressed the importance of receiving feedback from participants so that the program could be as successful as possible.

The speaker at the first session was Dr. James Skinner, a man whose "passion is parenting." He has been working as a parenting educator for 31 years, using Adlerian principles. He spoke about these principles, which focus on "democratic parenting." He explained the concept in an example.

Your child's "cranky because he didn't have his lunch. If you choose to take any view other than, 'Children choose their behavior,' you're letting them off the hook and you're raising children to be irresponsible." He continued, "We can all choose to be more pleasant."

Michelle Jackson, a Parents Inc. participant, is originally from South Africa and has two teenage children. She works in real estate and construction with her husband. Jackson's 13-year-old son is studying at King David High School and her daughter is 16, studying at Point Grey Secondary School. Jackson liked the idea that the program is multidisciplinary, bringing in professionals of different backgrounds. She said she got a lot out of Skinner's lecture. "He opened my eyes up to thinking differently about certain things, as in pampering and spoiling my children," she said. "He pinpointed some areas where maybe I could work on trying to improve my behavior so that ultimately I'd have a more positive reaction from them."

Jackson said the lecture was a lot more helpful to her than the group discussion. "I wouldn't be comfortable talking about my children in depth," Jackson explained, "though I'm quite happy to talk about just general things that would help to improve my relationship with them and my parenting skills and their feeling of independence as young people on the verge of becoming young adults."

Tanis Goldman also signed up for Parents Inc. She works in marketing and is a mother of one son, age 13, who goes to St. George's School. She came in with, "eyes wide open." She has a new teenager and is finding there is a new kind of interaction with him. Goldman said it's necessary for her to shift the way she's currently parenting. "What's nice about it [Parents Inc.] is that there is an interactive component," said Goldman. "You can apply your more personal issues to them [the topics covered in the lecture]."

Goldman said that "Dr. Skinner suggesting that praise ends up garnering spoiled and self-indulged children" was hard to accept. But, "I'm open to it," she said.

Franken said that the goal of Parents Inc. is to "make people feel that they are in more control over the raising of their kids. And to give them tools to be able to do that."

Rosenblatt explained the long-term goals of Parents Inc.: "The hope is that we begin to engage a discussion with each other and I'm hoping that that discussion can expand outward, that we can grow circles of investment out from the core that we have here this evening. And hopefully, as this project continues and grows, we continue to bring more voices and more ears to the table, to the discussion, to the learning and to the investment."

Parents Inc. is supported by Vancouver Talmud Torah School, Vancouver Hebrew Academy, Congregation Schara Tzedeck, Richmond Jewish Day School and King David High School. For more information, contact Shelley Karrel at [email protected] or 604-736-7607. Or read more at www.scharatzedeck.com. The cost is $25 per session or $80 for the last four sessions.

Deena Levenstein is a freelance writer from Toronto, Jerusalem and now Vancouver. You can read her blog at www.deenascreations.wordpress.com. She also works at L'Chaim Adult Day Centre.

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