Do Parenting Courses Help?++#16
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“Instead of developing the child’s own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other people.”- Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th Century German PhilosopherHi, this is the GenWise team – we bring out this newsletter to help parents and educators to complement the work of formal schools and associated systems. We can help our children thrive in these complex times only by exchanging ideas and insights and collaborating on this.
In this week’s main post, Sowmya Jatesan, GenWise mentor and Lead – Parenting Programs, lays down her arguments for why it makes sense to also focus on parents for improving childhood/ education outcomes.
You are invited to be an early member and beta-tester of the GenWise Club (ages 13-90), a community of interested students, parents, and educators. Check out the upcoming events section on how to join the club. It is open to all in the current beta phase.
Join this conversation on learning, by commenting on our posts, or joining our club community for more regular and closer interactions.
Contents
Do Parenting Courses Help?
Last week @The GenWise Club
Upcoming Parenting Courses @GenWise
Upcoming External Events (Free & Paid)
Do Parenting Courses Help?
All parents wish to ensure the well being of their children – physical, emotional, intellectual, financial, social. For parents through the millennia, raising children was a community-scaffolded responsibility. Parental expectations and limits were provided by clear familial and social norms.
Today however, the rules of the parenting game have suddenly changed; it feels like we are on a slippery slope.
“It takes a village to raise a child”
Extended families, with grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins are scattered all over the globe these days and even those that are not, remain isolated in these Pandemic times.
For many of us at GenWise, and parents we interact with, Western lifestyles, homes and salaries have meant a plush existence – inside a bubble?
As parents, we do not seem to be able to relate to our own parents, and thereby the inter-generational learning of the “hows of parenting” seem lost to us.
Add to this the potent new dangers of being addicted to (the now ubiquitous) gadgets, the internet, and the known dangers of alcohol and substance use.
It suddenly feels so easy to get Parenting wrong and so difficult to get it right. Parents are left with a sense of so little authority (but enormous responsibility), while children seem to have so many demands (and so few duties)!
How then can parents reclaim effective and empathetic parenting? Given the realities of this day and age, how can they ensure the well-being of their children?
At GenWise, we believe we have a greater impact in helping Parents cope with these dramatic sociological changes, thereby allowing children to navigate their growing/ learning years more effectively. Benefits of Parenting Courses (including outcomes from this study, and borne out, anecdotally, by the GenWise experience set of 250+ parents over the past 12 months. See here for testimonials from GenWise parenting sessions participants) include :
Parents becoming more aware of themselves, and the relative Parenting styles of both parents
More effective Parent-Child interactions, with greater empathy, understanding, clarity of communication
Improvement in Parental mental health and well-being
Improvement in Parental self-esteem and feeling of self-mastery with regard to parenting
Improved behaviors in Children – both prosocial (e.g. empathy, sharing) and reduced negative externalising behaviors (e.g. aggression, delinquency, hyperactivity) of children
Reaching parents early, through skilled parent educators, via frequent sessions over several months, has been found to be consistently associated with positive outcomes for families.
GenWise offers 3 courses, all facilitated by Dr Bhooshan Shukla, Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist and Parenting Coach:
Parenting Teenagers: Driving through the Storm – A 5 hr, 5 session course with one hour each on:
Parenting styles
Communication
Discipline
Self Esteem
Sex, drugs and other difficult issues
Here is a 5 min intro to the course:
Course dates: 26 -30 July; 8- 9 pm IST.
Gadgets and Screen Time: Parenting Capsule – A two hour, 1 session course on:
The gadget in the life of a child
The three kinds of heavy Gadget users
Monitoring and regulating usage at different stages
Being effective and empathetic
Course dates: To be announced
Register your interest in attending this course, here:
Parenting Capsule: Motivating our Teens – A four hour, 2 session course on:
Examining your motives as a parent
Mindful communication
Supporting your child through the different stages of Change
Course dates: To be announced
Register your interest in attending this course, here:
Last Week @The GenWise Club
We share how quaintly we learned about the origins of Galois Theory, and the poignant, courageous, yet, brief life of Evariste Galois.
RehaanLGR, a student, shared this message in the “Deeper-Discussions” channel:
Not your typical good student of today, this Evariste Galois?
Aayush Soni, a Teaching Assistant, responded with the purported story of his death: a duel over love? Aayush also shared one of Galois’ big findings – that his work widely generalizes the Abel-Ruffini Theorem – there is no solution in radicals to general polynomial equations of degree five or higher with arbitrary coefficients. (whatever that means:-)). Well, if you are Grade 8 and above, you can understand most of that preceding statement!!
Navin Kabra, GenWise Mentor and GenWise Club Leader, shared a broader context, which I reproduce below.
One would never had had the opportunity to learn about Evariste Galois, about how much math a teenager can grapple with, about how to express courage to stand for something, about how much one can achieve in life by the age of 20, about how repeated rejections at Ecole Polytechnique didn’t stymie his output/ creativity (yes, I was inspired enough to do some Google Search to learn more about him!), but for an innocuous message from a prolific RehaanLGR. Thanks Rehaan!!
How do I join the GenWise Club?
Check out this link for more about the club. To join-
Get an account for you and/ or your child on Discord
Use this invite to join the GenWise server. If you face difficulties, please send a whatsapp message to Vishnu on 9342247734 (Or email vishnu@genwise.in).
Direct Message (DM) Vishnu with your full name and details (child/ parent, grade, school) once you slide into The GenWise Club. You will be assigned the appropriate role after that and can start interacting with us and other members!
Upcoming Parenting Courses @GenWise
GenWise mentor, Dr. Bhooshan Shukla’s highly popular course on parenting is coming up soon.
Upcoming External Events
Biodiversity in my Bengaluru Backyard Contest, for students of grades 9-12 based in Bengaluru. Details of the contest are available here.
Camp HSS from Jul 30- Aug 1,2021 is for students in grades 8-12 and is brought to us by the fantastic folks at IIT Gandhinagar (coordinated by Jaison Manjaly with faculty from Univ of Colorado, Yale, IIT Delhi etc.). Check out this page for details and to register. (Free)
The camp write-up is very exciting- “If whales and elephants have bigger brains than humans, why aren’t they smarter? Why do you love the taste of a particular chocolate brand and the sight of a specific colour? What is the possible setting in which a 75 out of 100 in an exam may feel better than a 90? What are the probable thoughts going on in the mind of a batsman when he has to score a 6 in the last ball to win the match? ……..Discover the intricacies of your gender, body, creativity, origins of thinking, and several other aspects of human intellectual and social life through various interactive sessions and talks.”
The Veritasium Science Communication Contest- We love the videos Veritasium puts out! If creating a science communication video excites you, take part in this contest and have fun. You may win up to US$ 5000 too! The sooner you upload your video to YouTube, the better your chances are…though the deadline is Aug 31, 2021 .