The Breede Centre – South Africa

PROJECT TITLE : Parenting for Lifelong Health
PERIOD : July 2023

The two local PLH trained facilitators, Emmerentia and Brigette, started in the week of 24 July with the preparation for the 8 sessions:

Marketing the new course via social media, the creches, schools and word of mouth.
Visiting interested parents to introduce the course and completing the sign-up process.
Preparing the documents, equipment and materials needed for the sessions.

They signed up 20 people of which only 10 attended the first session on Tuesday 1 August. The session starts at 6.00 and is completed at 8.30.
Refreshments (sandwich and coffee) are served when participants arrive as most of them come straight from work to the session. There is childcare as all of them have children but not all of them can leave their children at home to be looked after.

People in this community are in the habit of saying yes to something even if they do not intend to keep their word. It is a deep-seated habit that is hard to break.

The presentation of the sessions is in Afrikaans as all parents belong to the Afrikaans speaking community. Each session has the same framework.

Time Allotment	Outline of Core Session Activities
10 min	1. Welcoming Activities • Welcome • Taking a Pause • Emotional Check-in • Physical Exercise
40 – 45 min	Discussion of Home Activity from Previous Session
10 – 15 min	BREAK AND ENERGIZER
60 min	3. Core Lesson • Illustrated Stories • Discussion about Parenting Skills • Additional Discussion and/or Activity • Assignment of New Home Activities
10 min	4. Closing Activities • Circle of Appreciation • Taking a Pause • Emotional Check-out

Each session has a relevant topic

Walls | Positive Parenting

Session 1: One-on-One Time with Your Child

Session 2: Talking About Feelings

Session 3: Sunshine of Positive Attention

Session 4: Helping Your Child Follow Instructions

Session 5: Things We Do Every Day

Roof | Positive Discipline

Session 6: Dealing with Tantrums and Other Negative Attention Seeking and Demanding Behaviour

Session 7: Using Consequences to Support Compliance

Celebration | Graduation Ceremony

The celebration can happen at the end of Session 8.

Facilitators visit the participants who are absent from the session at their home to catch them up, to answer any questions or to assist with the implementation of the new skills.

On Tuesday 19 September 5 parents graduated for having done the full course.

This is what some of them have to say about their experience:

“I feel happy and am very proud of myself. I am spending more time with myself and my child and I feel that what I learned made a difference inside me. I am excited about the future and all the new things I will do with my child.”

“I feel more at ease, happy and safe now. What I learned has helped me to be a better mother for my 2y old girl in using positive discipline. I also learned to talk about the stress that she might be feeling.”

“I feel happy and proud and am smarter. I am grateful for all that I learned and can implement in my work with the little children at the creche. I would welcome more information and understand positive discipline on a deeper level.”

“The course has helped a lot because I see the changes. My heart is glad that I have taken the first step to make a difference in my relationship with my child. I am grateful for all the skills I learned.”

“I feel very happy and am very proud of myself that I finished the course. I am grateful for all that I learned and I am ready to implement all that I learned and deal with whatever comes my way.

Conclusion

It is not easy to break habits, especially not the one of parenting style. Parents here in McGregor live in a small, closed community where everyone uses the same punitive parenting style. There is group pressure not to change and to keep to what one knows.

As an NGO we have learned that only by persevering can we gain the trust of people in this village and that takes a while.

So even though there are only 5 people who graduated from the sessions now, there are already 25 who have done the course in the village so we believe that the new way of parenting will slowly but surely spread.

The next sessions start on 10 October and end on 28 November. Thank you for your support!!

Katleen Verschoore

Manager Educational Programmes youth.coordinator@breedecentre.co.za

Tel. 023 625 1930 / 072 750 6186

29 July 2023

Each session has a relevant topic

Walls | Positive Parenting

Roof | Positive Discipline

Celebration | Graduation Ceremony

Conclusion

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