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about Y's Words for parents
YMCA Youth & Family Services' professional staff and trained parent volunteer leaders provide workshops and classes that help parents to be more effective in parent-child and/or parent-teen relationships. We offer our workshops at libraries, PTA meetings and school sponsored programs that are tailored to fit the needs of the community. Workshops and classes are available for parents of preschool through high school age children to explore such topics as bedtime/morning struggles, lying, chores and sibling fighting.
Parents will learn to identify the purpose of a child's misbehavior and develop effective discipline and encouragement strategies for positively redirecting these behaviors. These programs offer parents an opportunity to become familiar with the concepts of logical and natural consequences, mutual respect, encouragement, and goals of misbehavior. The group discussion format teaches skills to help improve parent/teen relations, develop teenage self-esteem, and promote responsible teenage behavior at home, in school, and in the community.
For registration and information, call us at (301) 229-1347 or email us.
Click here for a PDF of our spring parenting schedule
February Parenting Classes
Parenting Children (six sessions)
Parents will learn to identify the purposes of a child’s misbehavior and develop effective discipline and encouragement strategies for positively redirecting these behaviors. Skills include: Developing effective consequences, structuring choices, and ending power struggles.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person. No one will be turned away!
Thursdays, February 2 – March 8, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. United Church of Christ, 9525 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring
Parenting Teens (six sessions)
A down-to-earth and practical way to meet the challenges of raising teenagers. The group discussion format teaches skills to help improve parent/teen relations; develop teen self-esteem and self-reliance; and promote responsible teen behavior at home, school and in the community.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person. No one will be turned away!
Wednesdays, February 8 – March 14, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
YMCA Ayrlawn Program Center, 5650 Oakmont Ave., Bethesda
YMCA Youth & Family Services Parenting Programs: Spring 2012
For registration and information, call us at (301) 229-1347 or email us.
NEW!! Website with schedule and newsletter www.ymcadc.org/social/edYouthParents.cfm
Library Workshops
(Free, but Donations are appreciated!)
Mastering the Art of Encouragement
Are you looking for alternatives to threats and bribes? This program will help parents develop positive strategies for building cooperation and setting limits with respect.
Thursday, March 8, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Davis Library, 6400 Democracy Blvd., Bethesda
Dealing with a Strong Willed Child
Do you sometimes feel your child is more determined, more sensitive, more argumentative, more volatile than others? Come and learn how to turn these strong characteristics into positive attributes and make day to day family living more tranquil.
Monday, March 5, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Bethesda Library, 7400 Arlington Rd., Bethesda
Monday, March 12, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Silver Spring Library, 8901 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring
Why Family Meetings?
Looking for a way to improve communication and cooperation in your family? This workshop will explore the whys and hows of creating a family tradition around family meetings.
Thursday, March 15, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Long Branch Library, 8800 Garland Avenue, Silver Spring
Sex vs. Sexuality: Sharing your Values
Preparing to talk to your child about sex? But are you prepared to talk about sexuality? Explore ways parents can help their children develop healthy attitudes, self concept and positive choices as they express their sexuality.
Monday, March 26, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. White Oak Library, 11701 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring
What to Do When Kids Fight: Sibling Rivalry
Get into your kids’ heads to understand their feelings of competition and jealousy. Parents will learn strategies to lessen the intensity of the conflicts and the unhappy feelings.
Wednesday, March 28, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Potomac Library, 10101 Glenolden Dr., Potomac
Parenting Classes: new fee policy
Parenting Children (Six sessions)
Parents will learn to identify the purposes of a child’s misbehavior and develop effective discipline and encouragement strategies for positively redirecting these behaviors. Skills include: Developing effective consequences, structuring choices, and ending power struggles.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person, no one will be turned away
Tuesdays, April 17 – May 22, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. YMCA Ayrlawn Center, 5650 Oakmont Ave., Bethesda
Parenting Teens (Six sessions)
A down-to-earth and practical way to meet the challenges of raising teenagers. The group discussion format teaches skills to help improve parent/teen relations; develop teen self-esteem and self-reliance; and promote responsible teen behavior at home, school and in the community.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person, no one will be turned away
Thursdays, April 26 – May 31, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. United Church of Christ, 9525 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring
For registration and information, call us at (301) 229-1347 or email us.
SUBURBAN HOSPITAL Seminar:
The Healthy Use of Technology with Edward Spector, Psy.D.
Technology can enhance our lives in many ways. It can make us more effective, productive and efficient. It also can entertain us and can help us connect with others. Unfortunately, when used to excess, technology can negatively impact our lives. Some individuals are unable to effectively limit their use of electronic media. The excessive use of electronic media can be an attempt to cope with psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, or social skills deficits. Dr. Spector will present on the healthy use of technology, including common forms of electronic games (computer, video, phone apps), the Internet (including the use of social networking sites and online communities), and the use of cell phones. Dr. Spector is a licensed psychologist with expertise in helping children, adolescents, and adults in individual and group therapy. He has presented on this topic to high school students, school counselors, doctors, secret service agents and other parent and professional organizations.
Parents and students are invited to attend.
April 19. Registration at 6:30 p.m. Presentation 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. 8600 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda
To Register: www.yfstechnology.eventbrite.com $15/person, $25/couple, $5/students.
Proceeds fund the prevention services of YMCA Youth & Family Services.
Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners: 2 Continuing Education Credits, Category 1, $10 fee
Sleep, glorious sleep
Winter is a great time to develop good sleeping habits. There’s a lot of press coverage of how sleep deprivation is affecting children’s and teen’s academic performance, weight, behavior, safety, mental health. We all know they need to sleep the problem is helping them get the
sleep they need.
www.helium.com/items/1627943-effects-of-sleep-deprivation-on-children
The National Sleep Foundation recommends these basic daily sleep requirements for children, adolescents, pre-teens and teens:
PRESCHOOLERS: 11-13 Hours
ELEM. SCHOOL STUDENTS: 10-12 Hours
PRE-TEENS: 9-11 Hours
TEENS: 8.5-9 Hours
Here’s something I hadn’t considered: Put some thought into finding your child’s ideal bedtime. In the
evening, look for the time when your child really is starting to slow down and getting physically tired. That's the time that they should be going to sleep, so get their bedtime routine done and get them into bed
before that time. If you wait beyond that time, then your child tends to get a second wind. At that point they will become more difficult to handle, and will have a harder time falling asleep.
Hoban’s 5 tips for healthy back-to-school sleep habits for children and teens:
Keep a regular wake-up time and bedtime: If a child is having sleep problems, oversleeping or missing school, it’s important to create a regular sleep routine for them that will work seven days a week. “But
children who only have occasional sleep problems may not require an extremely rigid schedule, and sometimes tolerate slightly greater flexibility of bedtime and wake-up time,” says Hoban.
Establish a bedtime routine: A bedtime routine can help promote an easy and quick transition to nighttime sleep, he says. For younger children, try 15 to 30 minutes of quiet activities before bedtime, such
as reading. Activities parents should discourage before bed include watching television, exercising, and using the computer or video games.
Create a balanced schedule: Identify and prioritize activities that allow for downtime and sufficient sleep time. Help students avoid an overloaded schedule that can lead to stress and difficulty coping,
which can contribute to poor health and sleep problems.
Don’t use the weekends to catch up on sleep: The effects of going to bed late or sleeping in on the weekends can create sleep problems, especially for adolescents, says Hoban. “Children who are weekend night owls or sleep in on the weekends will often have a very different sleep pattern than they do on weekdays, increasing the likelihood for insomnia during the week and making it more difficult for them for them to fall asleep at an appropriate time on school nights.”
Be a role model: Parents can be role models for school-aged children by establishing their own regular sleep schedules and a home environment conducive to healthy sleeping habits.
University of Michigan Health System Pediatric Sleep Specialist
Timothy Hoban, M.D.,
www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=981
www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/sleep.htm
Pleasant dreams!!!
Assessing the impact of homework on your FAMILY
Is it time to assess how homework is going in your house? Is it still a nightly tug of war – or have you had some success in handing off responsibility and prioritizing your child’s use of out-of-school time?
Do you feel like homework is having a negative impact on your relationship with your child?
What are the needs of the situation?
Assess what are the educational benefits of the work he is being asked to do. What would really happen if she didn’t do her homework? Would her schoolwork suffer? Would his grades suffer because of the failure to turn it in or because of the missed opportunity to review the material? Read Alfie Kohn’s The Myth of Homework to consider other perspectives.
Talk to your child’s teachers to be sure you understand their homework policy. What is the teacher’s goal with the homework? What happens if no homework is done? What happens if it is incomplete? How is homework helping your child learn the material?
Assess what is getting in your child’s way of completing homework – okay, I bet you’ve thought about this for hours. She just hates doing it, he has other things he really wants to do, it’s tedious and discouraging, she says no one really looks at it, he says he doesn’t learn anything from it, she says she doesn’t care about college... Sit down with a school counselor and get another perspective. Is the homework serving an educational purpose? How can you advocate for your child so that she is being helped by homework and not just frustrated or tormented?
How can you change your role?
Take a timeout from the role of enforcer. Ask someone else to spend time supervising your child with homework: grandparent, hire a local teenager to come in, hire a tutor (depending on the age of your child and the subjects that are causing the most difficulty). Ask your child what would happen if for 6 weeks you said nothing about homework. Does he or she want the responsibility? If the grades suffer would your child care? Rotate the job with your spouse, every other week.
Have a family routine that limits homework time and creates shared time for fun activities. Make sure you find ways to get involved in your child’s interests. Read the sports page, listen to rap music, play the video games, get your own facebook page – whatever they love develop a knowledge and capacity to share. You do need to be careful to respect their privacy. This concept looks different for an 8 year old and a 13 year old.
Look at your long range goals for your child. Do they share your dreams? How will you feel and what will you do if your child takes a different path? What is your worst case scenario and how would you deal with it? Consider different paths to the same goal: who do you know that found a successful career after floating around aimlessly for years?
Talk to parents of underachievers who have made it out of high school and out into the world. What do they wish they had done differently?
One rationale I hear for the importance of homework is having the parents engaged in their child’s education. Think of other ways to be involved. Volunteer in the classroom (elementary school), keep up on what they are studying and augment it with online research, visits to museums, family discussions with people you know in the field, documentaries or PBS shows, books from the library. Demonstrate the love of learning at all ages.
Take a class. It’s always interesting for me when people in our parenting classes fail to keep up with the reading and then talk about how frustrating it is that their kids aren’t doing their homework. What got in the way for them?
Bring home work from your office or pull out home tasks when it’s homework time. This can be a good way to demonstrate what you want to see in your child, to give you something that limits your capacity to become too involved in your child’s work and to help you empathize with trying to do tasks when you are home and ready for some down time.
Check out the Race to Nowhere website. They are currently focusing on a Homework Pledge: your promise to work toward homework-free weekend and holiday breaks in your school. “The research on homework is clear and unanimous. Most homework does not increase learning, raise scores or prepare students for the future.”
By pledging to work toward homework-free weekend and holiday breaks in your school, you support a cultural shift that values balance, family time, sleep and health for our students.
So turn that tugging into hugging. Develop a sense of perspective so that you can find joy in your child’s childhood and enjoy a relationship with your child that is not overwhelmed with negative interactions over homework.
Top
YMCA Youth & Family Services' professional staff and trained parent volunteer leaders provide workshops and classes that help parents to be more effective in parent-child and/or parent-teen relationships. We offer our workshops at libraries, PTA meetings and school sponsored programs that are tailored to fit the needs of the community. Workshops and classes are available for parents of preschool through high school age children to explore such topics as bedtime/morning struggles, lying, chores and sibling fighting.
Parents will learn to identify the purpose of a child's misbehavior and develop effective discipline and encouragement strategies for positively redirecting these behaviors. These programs offer parents an opportunity to become familiar with the concepts of logical and natural consequences, mutual respect, encouragement, and goals of misbehavior. The group discussion format teaches skills to help improve parent/teen relations, develop teenage self-esteem, and promote responsible teenage behavior at home, in school, and in the community.
For registration and information, call us at (301) 229-1347 or email us.
Click here for a PDF of our spring parenting schedule
- Free Library Workshops
- Parenting Classes
- The Healthy Use of Technology with Dr. Edward Spector
- Sleep, Glorious Sleep
- Assessing the Impact of Homework on your Family
February Parenting Classes
Parenting Children (six sessions)
Parents will learn to identify the purposes of a child’s misbehavior and develop effective discipline and encouragement strategies for positively redirecting these behaviors. Skills include: Developing effective consequences, structuring choices, and ending power struggles.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person. No one will be turned away!
Thursdays, February 2 – March 8, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. United Church of Christ, 9525 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring
Parenting Teens (six sessions)
A down-to-earth and practical way to meet the challenges of raising teenagers. The group discussion format teaches skills to help improve parent/teen relations; develop teen self-esteem and self-reliance; and promote responsible teen behavior at home, school and in the community.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person. No one will be turned away!
Wednesdays, February 8 – March 14, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
YMCA Ayrlawn Program Center, 5650 Oakmont Ave., Bethesda
YMCA Youth & Family Services Parenting Programs: Spring 2012
For registration and information, call us at (301) 229-1347 or email us.
NEW!! Website with schedule and newsletter www.ymcadc.org/social/edYouthParents.cfm
Library Workshops
(Free, but Donations are appreciated!)
Mastering the Art of Encouragement
Are you looking for alternatives to threats and bribes? This program will help parents develop positive strategies for building cooperation and setting limits with respect.
Thursday, March 8, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Davis Library, 6400 Democracy Blvd., Bethesda
Dealing with a Strong Willed Child
Do you sometimes feel your child is more determined, more sensitive, more argumentative, more volatile than others? Come and learn how to turn these strong characteristics into positive attributes and make day to day family living more tranquil.
Monday, March 5, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Bethesda Library, 7400 Arlington Rd., Bethesda
Monday, March 12, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Silver Spring Library, 8901 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring
Why Family Meetings?
Looking for a way to improve communication and cooperation in your family? This workshop will explore the whys and hows of creating a family tradition around family meetings.
Thursday, March 15, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Long Branch Library, 8800 Garland Avenue, Silver Spring
Sex vs. Sexuality: Sharing your Values
Preparing to talk to your child about sex? But are you prepared to talk about sexuality? Explore ways parents can help their children develop healthy attitudes, self concept and positive choices as they express their sexuality.
Monday, March 26, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. White Oak Library, 11701 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring
What to Do When Kids Fight: Sibling Rivalry
Get into your kids’ heads to understand their feelings of competition and jealousy. Parents will learn strategies to lessen the intensity of the conflicts and the unhappy feelings.
Wednesday, March 28, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Potomac Library, 10101 Glenolden Dr., Potomac
Parenting Classes: new fee policy
Parenting Children (Six sessions)
Parents will learn to identify the purposes of a child’s misbehavior and develop effective discipline and encouragement strategies for positively redirecting these behaviors. Skills include: Developing effective consequences, structuring choices, and ending power struggles.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person, no one will be turned away
Tuesdays, April 17 – May 22, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. YMCA Ayrlawn Center, 5650 Oakmont Ave., Bethesda
Parenting Teens (Six sessions)
A down-to-earth and practical way to meet the challenges of raising teenagers. The group discussion format teaches skills to help improve parent/teen relations; develop teen self-esteem and self-reliance; and promote responsible teen behavior at home, school and in the community.
Required text, available first night: $20, suggested donation $30/person, no one will be turned away
Thursdays, April 26 – May 31, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. United Church of Christ, 9525 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring
For registration and information, call us at (301) 229-1347 or email us.
SUBURBAN HOSPITAL Seminar:
The Healthy Use of Technology with Edward Spector, Psy.D.
Technology can enhance our lives in many ways. It can make us more effective, productive and efficient. It also can entertain us and can help us connect with others. Unfortunately, when used to excess, technology can negatively impact our lives. Some individuals are unable to effectively limit their use of electronic media. The excessive use of electronic media can be an attempt to cope with psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, or social skills deficits. Dr. Spector will present on the healthy use of technology, including common forms of electronic games (computer, video, phone apps), the Internet (including the use of social networking sites and online communities), and the use of cell phones. Dr. Spector is a licensed psychologist with expertise in helping children, adolescents, and adults in individual and group therapy. He has presented on this topic to high school students, school counselors, doctors, secret service agents and other parent and professional organizations.
Parents and students are invited to attend.
April 19. Registration at 6:30 p.m. Presentation 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. 8600 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda
To Register: www.yfstechnology.eventbrite.com $15/person, $25/couple, $5/students.
Proceeds fund the prevention services of YMCA Youth & Family Services.
Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners: 2 Continuing Education Credits, Category 1, $10 fee
Sleep, glorious sleep
Winter is a great time to develop good sleeping habits. There’s a lot of press coverage of how sleep deprivation is affecting children’s and teen’s academic performance, weight, behavior, safety, mental health. We all know they need to sleep the problem is helping them get the
sleep they need.
www.helium.com/items/1627943-effects-of-sleep-deprivation-on-children
The National Sleep Foundation recommends these basic daily sleep requirements for children, adolescents, pre-teens and teens:
PRESCHOOLERS: 11-13 Hours
ELEM. SCHOOL STUDENTS: 10-12 Hours
PRE-TEENS: 9-11 Hours
TEENS: 8.5-9 Hours
Here’s something I hadn’t considered: Put some thought into finding your child’s ideal bedtime. In the
evening, look for the time when your child really is starting to slow down and getting physically tired. That's the time that they should be going to sleep, so get their bedtime routine done and get them into bed
before that time. If you wait beyond that time, then your child tends to get a second wind. At that point they will become more difficult to handle, and will have a harder time falling asleep.
Hoban’s 5 tips for healthy back-to-school sleep habits for children and teens:
Keep a regular wake-up time and bedtime: If a child is having sleep problems, oversleeping or missing school, it’s important to create a regular sleep routine for them that will work seven days a week. “But
children who only have occasional sleep problems may not require an extremely rigid schedule, and sometimes tolerate slightly greater flexibility of bedtime and wake-up time,” says Hoban.
Establish a bedtime routine: A bedtime routine can help promote an easy and quick transition to nighttime sleep, he says. For younger children, try 15 to 30 minutes of quiet activities before bedtime, such
as reading. Activities parents should discourage before bed include watching television, exercising, and using the computer or video games.
Create a balanced schedule: Identify and prioritize activities that allow for downtime and sufficient sleep time. Help students avoid an overloaded schedule that can lead to stress and difficulty coping,
which can contribute to poor health and sleep problems.
Don’t use the weekends to catch up on sleep: The effects of going to bed late or sleeping in on the weekends can create sleep problems, especially for adolescents, says Hoban. “Children who are weekend night owls or sleep in on the weekends will often have a very different sleep pattern than they do on weekdays, increasing the likelihood for insomnia during the week and making it more difficult for them for them to fall asleep at an appropriate time on school nights.”
Be a role model: Parents can be role models for school-aged children by establishing their own regular sleep schedules and a home environment conducive to healthy sleeping habits.
University of Michigan Health System Pediatric Sleep Specialist
Timothy Hoban, M.D.,
www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=981
www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/sleep.htm
Pleasant dreams!!!
Assessing the impact of homework on your FAMILY
Is it time to assess how homework is going in your house? Is it still a nightly tug of war – or have you had some success in handing off responsibility and prioritizing your child’s use of out-of-school time?
Do you feel like homework is having a negative impact on your relationship with your child?
What are the needs of the situation?
Assess what are the educational benefits of the work he is being asked to do. What would really happen if she didn’t do her homework? Would her schoolwork suffer? Would his grades suffer because of the failure to turn it in or because of the missed opportunity to review the material? Read Alfie Kohn’s The Myth of Homework to consider other perspectives.
Talk to your child’s teachers to be sure you understand their homework policy. What is the teacher’s goal with the homework? What happens if no homework is done? What happens if it is incomplete? How is homework helping your child learn the material?
Assess what is getting in your child’s way of completing homework – okay, I bet you’ve thought about this for hours. She just hates doing it, he has other things he really wants to do, it’s tedious and discouraging, she says no one really looks at it, he says he doesn’t learn anything from it, she says she doesn’t care about college... Sit down with a school counselor and get another perspective. Is the homework serving an educational purpose? How can you advocate for your child so that she is being helped by homework and not just frustrated or tormented?
How can you change your role?
Take a timeout from the role of enforcer. Ask someone else to spend time supervising your child with homework: grandparent, hire a local teenager to come in, hire a tutor (depending on the age of your child and the subjects that are causing the most difficulty). Ask your child what would happen if for 6 weeks you said nothing about homework. Does he or she want the responsibility? If the grades suffer would your child care? Rotate the job with your spouse, every other week.
Have a family routine that limits homework time and creates shared time for fun activities. Make sure you find ways to get involved in your child’s interests. Read the sports page, listen to rap music, play the video games, get your own facebook page – whatever they love develop a knowledge and capacity to share. You do need to be careful to respect their privacy. This concept looks different for an 8 year old and a 13 year old.
Look at your long range goals for your child. Do they share your dreams? How will you feel and what will you do if your child takes a different path? What is your worst case scenario and how would you deal with it? Consider different paths to the same goal: who do you know that found a successful career after floating around aimlessly for years?
Talk to parents of underachievers who have made it out of high school and out into the world. What do they wish they had done differently?
One rationale I hear for the importance of homework is having the parents engaged in their child’s education. Think of other ways to be involved. Volunteer in the classroom (elementary school), keep up on what they are studying and augment it with online research, visits to museums, family discussions with people you know in the field, documentaries or PBS shows, books from the library. Demonstrate the love of learning at all ages.
Take a class. It’s always interesting for me when people in our parenting classes fail to keep up with the reading and then talk about how frustrating it is that their kids aren’t doing their homework. What got in the way for them?
Bring home work from your office or pull out home tasks when it’s homework time. This can be a good way to demonstrate what you want to see in your child, to give you something that limits your capacity to become too involved in your child’s work and to help you empathize with trying to do tasks when you are home and ready for some down time.
Check out the Race to Nowhere website. They are currently focusing on a Homework Pledge: your promise to work toward homework-free weekend and holiday breaks in your school. “The research on homework is clear and unanimous. Most homework does not increase learning, raise scores or prepare students for the future.”
By pledging to work toward homework-free weekend and holiday breaks in your school, you support a cultural shift that values balance, family time, sleep and health for our students.
So turn that tugging into hugging. Develop a sense of perspective so that you can find joy in your child’s childhood and enjoy a relationship with your child that is not overwhelmed with negative interactions over homework.
Top
