Effective Parenting in Challenging times - The EPIC Program
On July 29, the Love to Share Foundation held a Parenting Workshop, exploring how to effectively parent children in challenging times and situations. The goal of this workshop was to illustrate the various factors involved in the relationship between parents and their children and how to enhance the connection and bond between both sides of a family.
Although there were a plethora of topics and ideas covered, one of the main points made was the role and importance of parental communication in building a strong and long-lasting connection with the child. Communication is an extremely broad term, and this workshop went into detail about the systematic
process of communication that is necessary from the parents to the child so that the message reaches the child in a way that does not impact the child’s self-image or confidence. The main steps to communicate in a way that builds healthy relationships within families are as follows: observing actions/words, recognizing the feeling with regard to the observations made, identifying what the ultimate need is, and communicating the need through these observations and feelings in the form of a request.
As described in the workshop, being able to communicate in such a systematic, compassionate, and empathetic way will foster the relationship between parent and child while also resulting in the child responding in the proper way, as opposed to an argument that damages the connection within a family.
Although we all enter this world as infants, it is essential to realize the importance of strong familial relationships and connections, as these connections are the building blocks for the future of the family, especially the child. Not only did the workshop contain the blueprint on how to maneuver through the intricacies of effective parenthood, but also provided hands-on exercises for the audience to employ each of the methods and processes described throughout the presentation for all of the topics such as Children’s Challenges and Parental Roles, Compassionate Communication, Connecting Empathetically, Goaded by the Past or Guided by the Future, Focusing on Strengths and Praising Wisely, and Keeping an Eye on Purpose and Valuing Values. This workshop was a huge success and was extremely rewarding and useful for all parties involved.
Love to Share Foundation focuses on self-improvement and personal development, which led to the emergence of the EPIC Parenting Workshop which focuses on building a congenial environment for positive, honest exchanges in a household leading to the all-round development of a child. This EPIC Parenting Workshop falls under the Building EPIC Relationships Module(registration link at end of article), which consists of in-depth sessions (extending till Fall) revolving around building strong interpersonal relationships at home, work, or a nonprofit one volunteers for. One of the many ideas demonstrated in these sessions is the PERMA model of happiness which conveys how positive relationships are key to one’s happiness. Mr. MK Ramanujam and Ms. Poornima Kumarasami have been working tirelessly on training and guiding the speakers of these workshops.
