Covering All Bases parenting program

• “My influence in my kids’ lives seems to be fading fast. How do I get it back?”
• “Can I be friends with my kids if I’m also the one who disciplines them?”
• “Why do my kids try so hard to annoy me?”
• “How can I get my son to stop acting like the world revolves around him?”
• “How can I get my daughter to actually care for other people?”
• “Quality Time seems to always turn into Poor-Quality Time! What gives?!”

For 14 years, I’ve worked with teenagers and families in pastoral care, coaching and mentoring roles, while raising two sons of my own. I’ve heard questions like these from frustrated parents over and over again.

More positively, I’ve observed several strategies that many parents employed successfully from early childhood. These achieved open communication, healthy boundaries, real rapport and effective behavior management with their kids. And they made life a lot happier for everyone!

The Covering All Bases Program is built on the premise that parenting scores more ‘home-runs’ when it moves through 4 Bases (representing skills or habits).

Whereas in many seminars, you are expected to “download” some information into your skull and be magically transformed by it, I believe that it’s better to take a small bit of information, apply it, use it, tweak it, then review it before adding the next bit.

For that reason, the Covering All Bases Program runs across five consecutive weeks, each session building on the one before. Each session runs for 75 minutes.

Sessions are conducted via “teleclass” (or conference call) and registrants will be given an international number and PIN code to attend each class. (If all participants are Skype-users, of course this is a welcome and cheaper option!)

In exploring these timeless concepts with other parents, you will develop deeper relationships with your children while making supportive friendships with other adults growing through the same things as you.

Full Program Fee: $125 Australian (includes a 1:1 free coaching call upon completion of program)

For more information, contact me, or…

Kool & Unusual

With Christmas fast approaching, it’s always a challenge to come up with new gifts that bring oohs and ahs from the mouths of your children, nieces and nephews, rather than complaints.

Freakedout Fathers offers Kool & Unusual (gifts for kids), as part of an online shop for Dads.  This is the place where we’ve done the hardwork of trawling the marketplace for gifts that won’t break the budget but will still be a winner at Christmas and birthday times.

There you’ll find gifts like Flingshot Flying Monkey  (left) and The Amazing Nose Flute, as well as more substantial things such as the Monkey Business Surefire Compound Bow (above).

Why not check it out today?

You are Getting Sleepy…

O sleep! O gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

If you’re the father of a young one, you’ll know the feeling that Shakespeare so eloquently describes. I remember wondering if I’d ever get a good night’s shut eye again. (In fact, I think I’m averaging one good night’s sleep a year now, so that’s an improvement).

The reason I bring this up is because of some great info

• newborn sleep
• baby sleep
• toddler sleep
• preschooler sleep
• school-age sleep.

Also on the site is great article on Toward Independent Sleep.

Here’s hopin’ you get some tonight. Sleep.

Free Teleforum

We will be running a free discussion via conference call over the Christmas-New Year period called Big Bad Wolf. This one is for Skype-users only so if you don’t have skype, it’s worth a look!

What threats and challenges do your kids face in the 21st Century?  Talk to live people in real time about your concerns, share your strategies for protecting your kids and hear the strategies which other parents employ.

Big Bad Wolf runs for one hour and is an opportunity for you to think and talk through one aspect of life as a parent. To find out more, contact Pete Aldin. Places are limited.

A Happier Home-life?

So you hate feeling so stressed in your own home and you’ve realised that micro-managing your family’s lives isn’t actually improving anything. Truth be told, you

• nag your kids, your partner, yourself

• suspect that your behaviour alienates your kids and loses their respect

• sometimes find yourself working yourself into a lather, lying awake for hours at night fretting, having little meltdowns

• suspect you waste valuable time worrying about what others think

• find yourself caught in nasty daydreams about how badly things are going to turn out for your family…

… but what else can you do?? Family life is just so stressful!! Right?

It doesn’t have to be like that. What if you had some options? What if the stress could start to dissipate? What if you could break out of these patterns and begin to enjoy your home life again?

I’d like to give you THREE alternatives to all the behaviors described above, alternatives which diminish parental stress. For a few minutes a day over 5 days, you can interact with these short modules and regain your composure, your power of choice and your rapport with your family.

And if you listen carefully, you might even hear your heart and your adrenal glands sighing with relief!

If your reality is not so great, why not explore the kind of “alternate realities” parents like Theresa (below) are discovering?

“I found this course great. It really didn’t take much of my time yet it gave me a fresh approach to my parenting concerns.” (Theresa, mother of 3 Teenagers)

The Stressed-out Parent’s Guide to a Happier Home-life at only $8.50 costs less than the price of a cup of coffee per day! (And it’s better for you…)

Click here for a sample…

More Work-Life Balance for Dads (the Australian Scene)

Following yesterday’s post about father-friendly workplaces (and Jonathan’s helpful info for U.S. Dads that under the Family Medical Leave Act Family Medical Leave Act there is provision for paternal leave with pay and job security), I did a little digging into Australian policy on the subject.

Because I’m Australian.

And ‘a little digging’ means squeezing in some googling and reading a couple of papers online between dinner, keeping the kids from each others’ throats and talking tax returns with Lady Ninja…

One report from the Work-Life Association here in Oz (dating back to May 2008) basically decried the fact that it’s only the occasional enlightened Aussie company that makes provision for new Dads to have paid leave to be home with newborn and their partner, or flexibility around their parenting commitments.

But it’s not common and it’s not backed by government.

Citing their research, they say

A consistent and strong theme among almost all of the responses that informed this submission is that respondents believed Australia should no longer be out of step with the majority of countries globally where paid parental and paternity leave is the norm.

Which means it is out of step. A Manager from one company responded

“Most fathers that I know have taken annual leave when their child is born. Some are entitled to unpaid parental leave, but don’t take it as the family would have no income for that period of time. The important thing to remember here is that the birth of a child is not a holiday. It is not a time that you have to relax, spend time at the beach, travel interstate or overseas. It is a time of hard work, lack of sleep, stress, joy, and exhaustion.”

Amen, brother.

So maybe what I was writing about yesterday is more a symptom from the country that I live in. I certainly sounds from Katy’s comment in yesterday’s post that in the States, Dads are embraced and expected to be a part of learning about parenting and doing the job. Or perhaps American readers will have other experiences with and perspectives on that.

Mind you, as I said yesterday, even in Australia, things are much much better these days than they were even five years ago.

Supporting Dad

Been skimming through a report called Fatherhood and Fatherlessness. Albeit 5 years old and often based on research that is now nearly a decade old, it had some worthwhile points to consider. Here’s two of the strategies that Michael Flood (research fellow with the Australia Institute) poses as vital to both promoting the positive role that fathers play in kids’ lives and empowering Dads to get in there and be present with those kids:

 

1. Establishing father-friendly workplace practices and cultures. “Employers, with governmental support, must create more flexible workplaces free of penalties for involved parents of either sex, and must promote equal economic opportunities for women” (because this makes way for mothers to work at higher pay grades lessening the pressure for Dads to still be main provider)
2. Supporting fathers through family and parenting services. No, actually supporting them.

About the first strategy: last week, I asked a fellow Dad what stopped him attending groups that supported parents with the particular challenges his child faced. He replied “They’re all during office hours”. That makes it pretty difficult for a working Dad to get involved.

I also wonder if it’s possible (and I fully understand the current economic climate) for more bosses who are Dads themselves to empower employees who are also Dads to have more flexibility around parenting issues. (I heard of one workplace where they had “Go home on time days”. I like that.)

 

About the 2^nd strategy: My experience over nearly 14 years of parenting (if I include the time my oldest son was gestating), is that things have been slanted toward mothers in the past. This is certainly understandable in most respects, because I don’t breastfeed and I don’t give birth. But occasionally service providers have made fathers feel irrelevant. I remember turning up to a parenting event – the only guy in the room – and being told “how nice; we have a Dad” in a most condescending fashion. I still don’t get why I wasn’t simply a “parent”. I’ve also been left out of communication about my kids presumably because of assumptions that Mum does all the parenting stuff. The report also sites the dearth of educational and other programs aimed at male parents.

 

Earlier this year, I went to local government to enquire about a grant to set up an 8-week parenting course for Dads. “Great idea!” the lady said, fully supportive of what I was proposing; “I’ll get you to talk to Jenny … oh. She deals with males under 25. No, I’ll get Wendy to call you … oh. She deals with males over 55 … actually we don’t have any department that serves men between those ages.” The light dawned for her that though there was an awareness of the importance and even the needs of families with respect to male parents, there was no infrastructure around promoting and supporting those needs. (Eventually, I got the grant under a community health auspice).

I have to say though that – thank goodness – things are rapidly changing in these respects.

 

So there’s a couple of strategies and my off-the-cuff thoughts about them. What are your thoughts?