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MEMBERSHIP AND NEW MEMBER BENEFITS
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When You Become a Hand in Hand Member You
Receive:
* Our quarterly video Raising Them by Hand, focused on current and perennial issues in parenting.
* Members-only access to audio archives of the Hand in Hand talks and teleseminars recorded throughout the year.
* Your choice of our Setting Limits presentation on DVD or a copy of Playful Parenting.
Supporting Membership, $250
Supporting Membership includes all Basic Member benefits. You will also receive:
* A complimentary 30-minute one-on-one consultation with a Hand in Hand professional.
* Plus participation in our live Members Q & A Events.
Institutional Membership, $300
Institutional Membership includes all Supporting Member benefits and a 15% discount on classes for up to five individuals.
Sponsoring Membership, $1000
Sponsoring Memberships make our work available to families in need through the Hand in Hand Scholarship Program. In addition to all Supporting Member benefits, Sponsoring Members enable Hand in Hand materials and services to be delivered to low-income families, homeless shelters, child abuse prevention programs, immigrant communities, and many others who would not otherwise receive support for building connection in their families. |
| The CONNECTED PARENT |
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Manipulation
This month's article on CleverParent.com addresses the question, "Do children manipulate their parents?" |
| ALIGNED PROFESSIONALS |
Rx for Adolescent Body Issues - Connection, Not Diets or Steroids
"Feeling supported by one's immediate social network may serve as a protective factor from the myriad pressures that are hypothesized to foster [adolescent] body dissatisfaction. One prospective study found that a supportive maternal relationship was associated with increased body satisfaction (Baker & Galambos, 2003)*. Another found that feeling close to either parent was associated with fewer concurrent weight and eating concerns among girls (Swarr & Richards, 1996)."
* Baker and Galambos' reaserch paper said that, "Perceived mother acceptance and father acceptance were the only significant resource factors for girls."
About the authors: Katherine Presnell, Ph.D., is Director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Research Program at SMU. Her research focuses on understanding sociocultural, psychological and behavioral risk factors that contribute to eating disorders and obesity. Sarah Kate Bearman, Ph. D., is a postdoctoral fellow at the Judge Baker Children's Center, Harvard Medical School. Mary Clare Madeley, B.A., is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Southern Methodist University. |
| CONNECT NOW |
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Online Discussion Group for Hand in Hand
Do you ever want to connect with a warm, supportive and knowledgeable community - at 3:00 in the morning? Just in case you feel the need, the Hand in Hand discussion group is there for you, twenty-four hours a day.
Join the conversation! |
| STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT |
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| A Winter Play Tip from Bay Area Discovery Museum
It gets dark early enough that even younger children can go outside after dark and look up into the sky. Try to choose a location where your view is not blocked by trees or diminished by streetlights. Look for shapes in the sky and make up a story about what you see. If you can identify a constellation, point it out. Tell a story about the constellation or go back inside and look up the story. You will find different peoples have different names and different stories for the most prominent constellations.
Young children are fascinated by the sparkling pinpricks of light in the night sky. Although the science that explains light years, nebulae, and galaxies may be beyond their comprehension, hearing stories about the stars connects them to the larger universe. In addition, stories about constellations can provide an entry to the world of mythology. Children delight in and are very familiar with stories made up to explain the unexplainable. |
| EVENTS |
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| Feelings in Public Places
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| PARENTING TIP |
Holiday Special Time
In spite of all the holiday focus on family, it can be a hectic time of year! It's challenging to fit in the kind of relaxed, warm, fun and focused together time that really helps children thrive. And the pressures of disrupted schedules, unfamiliar relatives, travel and children's high expectations create stress for children and adults well beyond our comfort levels.
What we suggest to make this time of year as close and workable as possible for you and your family is to schedule in some Let's-Do-Nothing Time and some extra Special Time before those holiday events that are likely to take their toll.
It can be tough to do this with all the business of the holidays, but there are some encouraging stories on the Hand in Hand website, and there's a Special Time booklet you can read in the Listening to Children series. The important things to remember about Special Time are pretty simple:
Tell the child it's going to happen-even if you just say, "In five minutes, we're going to have Special Time." You need to name it and allow the child to anticipate it.
Mark off the end of Special Time-"I'm setting the timer for 10 minutes and that's how long we have for Special Time right now. Go!"
Give Special Time at a time of day that works for you. You need to be able to give that child your full, undivided, if-the-phone-rings-voicemail-will-get-it, I'm-not-going-to-pick-up-the-house-as-we-go, enthusiastic warmth and attention. You need to be at least somewhat rested and open to your child in order to do this. It may help to rattle off a list of all the things that are on your mind before you do Special Time so you know you've jotted them down or told them to someone, so that you can put them all out of your mind. (The timer also helps-you can do just about anything for five minutes!)
Now that the stage is set, tell your child, "OK, we're going to have some Special Time. This is time when I'm going to play just with you, without any interruptions, and you can be in charge of whatever we do." Then, whatever they come up with, short of killing one or both of you, is a great idea. You're up for finding a fun way to make it happen. You are still in charge of safety monitoring for both of you, but otherwise, the child leads and you follow with warmth and appreciation for whatever piece of their world they choose to show you.
This is where the magic comes in. Once you do this a few times and they understand that you are determined to be pleased and loving with them, whatever they share in the bounded Special Time you have together, they will start using that time to work out the stresses of their day or the bigger issues that are plaguing them.
They will often give you their problems to act out. "Mommy, you be the kid and I'm going to have to go to work now, so I'll see you later, sweetie!" they tell you, as they pretend to go out the door. "Now you say you are sad and tell me not to go." You beg them to stay, tell them how you can't live without them, and generally ham it up, giving them the upper hand on this issue for the moment. Small children may want to give you shots over and over again, while they gleefully insist you need more visits to the doctor. You try to escape, but of course they catch you every time and give you your "shot." It may work a bit differently with older children: here's a Success Story that's a wonderful example of Special Time with an older child.
One of the wonderful side benefits of Special Time is that you'll get a lot more cooperation from your kids once they know you're up for cooperating in whatever play they seem to "need" when it's Special Time. And that might go a long way toward helping everyone make it through the holidays happy and connected. |
| IT'S A WONDERFUL YEAR |
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 Progress and Growth for Hand in Hand
2007 has been a remarkable year for Hand in Hand. We certified new instructors and introduced new programs. We've benefitted from a dedicated community of volunteers who gave over 1,000 hours of their time to further our mission. We partnered with 46 different organizations to reach parents in all walks of life.
Use of our website doubled during 2007 to 10,000 visits each month. Most of these visitors are from the US, but there are many from Australia, Canada, Europe, Great Britain, and as far away as China, India and South Africa. Subscriptions to our newsletter have more than doubled this year. (This December issue was sent out to 5,072 of you!) We've distributed more literature, provided 40% more one-on-one consulting than we did in 2006 and taught 62% more classes.
What the work of Hand in Hand really comes down to is connecting with and supporting parents face to face, and this year we were able to provide 11,172 contact hours to parents in the Bay Area, Sonoma, Ventura, Pomona and Los Angeles, CA, Chicago, IL, Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA, and Houston and Austin, TX.
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| CHILDREN'S BOOKS |
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Deepening Emotional Understanding with Your Children
The most important lesson children learn about emotions comes through your willingness to accept their feelings, especially when you offer that acceptance in situations where you may also need to set limits. But there are many instances where you and your child can benefit from sharing books that present emotional content in a warm and caring way. We've included many of these books on our Suggested Reading list. When you make a purchase through the Hand in Hand Suggested Reading list, you benefit your family and Amazon.com makes a financial contribution to support Hand in Hand as well.
Some of the don't-miss books on our list include:
When I Feel Afraid, Hands Are Not for Hitting, Mommy, Don't Go and Be the Boss of Your Stress
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| HOW YOU CAN HELP |
| Apply for the Certification Training Class of 2008
We are continuing our Certification program again in 2008 for those who would like to nurture the parent-child connection by teaching classes, giving talks and leading support groups based on our materials and approach. If you have the skills, experience and motivation to teach, support and mentor parents, we would like to invite you to apply for our Certification program.
Three levels of certification will be available: Trainers, Teachers and Assistant Teachers. Specific training will be given for both our 3-week Tantrum Training and 6-week Building Emotional Understanding curricula. At the end of certification you will be qualified to work for Hand in Hand as an Assistant Teacher, Teacher or Trainer giving talks, teaching classes and leading support groups.
Candidates for certification will attend monthly training classes, and will be asked to attend our summer weekend workshop in mid-summer. They are also welcome to join weekly support conference calls, and trainings to teach Tantrum Training and/or Building Emotional Understanding. Certification candidates also have access to Hand in Hand workshops, teleconferences and other programs free of charge, as long as space is available.
Certification requires a time commitment of 4-6 hours per month. There will be monthly assignments, and you must commit to using Listening Tools for regular practice and experience. Using our assessment tool, experienced Hand in Hand staff will guide you one-on-one to develop the skills you need to be a credentialed instructor. We hold 4-hour classes on Saturday afternoons once a month, in Palo Alto. Each class is videotaped for distance learners and monthly conference calls allow distance candidates to ask questions and receive coaching.
Please submit a letter of interest that includes: a short summary of your relevant skills & experience, your current level of familiarity with Hand in Hand materials and methods, what it would mean to you to work as a certified Hand in Hand instructor, and three references. info@handinhandparenting.org |
| PARENT SUCCESS STORY |
Holiday Challenges
We had twenty-five people to our place for Thanksgiving! They were all in our living room after dinner, with at least five different conversations going at the same time. There were three young children in the group: two boys and a girl, ranging from eight to three. The boys were wild-making lots of noise, bumping into grownups, each other, their sister, and generally doing things that we needed to stop them from doing over and over again. After half an hour of "settle down" messages from the grownups but no improvement on their part, I took off my jewelry and shoes, got down on the carpet and took them on.
I wrestled them and chased them on my hands and knees back and forth between the living room and the dining room. I caught them, gave them many good tussles, and the boys and their sister began "rescuing" each other from me. We did several tugs of war: "I want him!" No, you can't have him!" "But you always get to have him, and now, I want him!" There was lots of laughter and cooperation between the siblings. They would laugh hardest when I tried to catch them by thumping after them loudly on hands and knees-I was much slower than they were. They were actually quite careful in the midst of it all, with me and with each other: wild as it looked, no one got hurt.
Finally, their mom wanted us to stop, and it took only a few minutes to slow things down. They were much easier to be with after that: just ten minutes of direct adult attention, and the chance to get a really good game going, was all they really needed. Next time they're over, I think I'll start the Playlistening and roughhousing earlier: it will cut down on the adult frustration, and will probably be more fun than sitting around!
--Patty Wipfler |
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Wishing families everywhere a peaceful New Year.
Sincerely,
Julianne Idleman
Hand in Hand | |
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