The Center offering help for parents

Messenger-Inquirer - 4/17/2022

Apr. 17—The Center will begin its parenting classes Monday, April 18, to help parents develop better relationships with their children and learn more positive ways of disciplining.

The parenting classes offered by The Center is a five-week program that meets virtually once a week.

The classes offer both evening and morning sessions each week to make classes accessible to as many families as possible.

Megan Brannon, instructor and family outreach coordinator for The Center, said the classes help families set goals and give them the tools to achieve them throughout their time in the program.

Through parenting classes, Brannon said parents will first learn how to take care of themselves and address issues they may be struggling with.

"As a parent, you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others," she said.

Throughout the next four weeks, she said parents will learn about the brain, what their child's brain looks like and what might be happening in the brain if there has been trauma in the household and how to heal from that, healthy relationships and connecting with children, empathy and boundaries and, finally, discipline.

Many parents involved in the classes, she said, are either court ordered or just want to learn how to better connect with their children.

"It's just many parents that really need help," she said. "They're just at the point where they're struggling, and they don't know how to help their kiddos and a lot of times, they have to learn how to help themselves before they can realize what's going on with their kiddos."

Many parents coming into the class, Brannon said, are initially concerned with how to connect and appropriately discipline their children.

Before teaching discipline, however, she said it is important to give parents the tools they need to develop a healthy relationship with their children and potentially prevent certain behaviors before they begin by giving positive reinforcement.

Brannon said discipline comes last because parents should first learn how to connect with their children, develop a healthy relationship and empathize with them.

"We have to make sure we are feeling the way that our children are feeling, and also, to set boundaries for ourselves and for our kiddos," she said. "It helps the parents understand where their child's at, why they're having big feelings, why they're being emotional."

Brannon said the classes not only help parents understand and connect with children, but also create an opportunity for families to participate in its many other services as well, including supervised visitations, assistance, anger management and many others.

"A lot of the families we encounter are maybe not only struggling with parenting, but maybe they're struggling with utilities or they need therapy, or a lot of them need our visitation room," she said. "We really want to ensure it's a one-stop shop."

For more information or to register for the classes, call The Center at 270-684-3837 or visit the website TheCenterODC.org.

Christie Netherton, cnetherton@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7360

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