Help for Parents

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The role of parent is a challenging, very demanding and creative position for which we generally have little or no training. It is a more than full time, 24 hour, lifetime commitment that allows no breaks even when we are sick, sleep deprived, financially unstable, isolated or dealing with crisis's or issues. A little training, someone to talk to, a book, a community centre program or some tips and pointers can make parenting tasks simpler. If someone stuck a scalpel in your hand and asked you to perform surgery, you would probably laugh; yet as parents we assume our instincts and intuition will guide us though a job that is constantly changing and requires an incrediblely varied skill set.

Dr. Michael J. Bradley writes the following:
"No one questions the evolutionary process of learning, except when we talk of parenting. With a near-religious fervor, we often enshrine (and thus cripple) parenting as something sacred and beyond our routine functioning. We love to support the romantic delusion that, unlike other skilled jobs, we should intuitively and permanently know how to parent based on how we were raised, either by doing just what our parents did or the exact opposite, but always as some form of reaction to what we experienced decades ago. We attribute the problems of our children to liberalism, conservatism, godlessness, godfulness, evolutionism, creationism—anything that seems to make sense, except the quiet notion that contemporary parenting is a complex set of learned skills, many of which seem counterintuitive to us. It’s not religion and it sure ain’t politics. And it can be learned from good and bad sources, so we must constantly question and upgrade our learning. Successfully parenting in today’s world requires levels of skill, endurance, wisdom, and strength that make piloting an aircraft pale in comparison."

There are many resources within our community and surrounding area that can help make parenting a little easier when you have concerns, need some reassurance or parenting advice. We have tried to supply some of the ones we know about in this section of our site.

When parenting becomes too overwhelming and there is little support from family or friends, when parents are very young and are not prepared the responsibility or when a drug or alcohol abuse problem makes it more difficult to be a good parent , we are here to provide guidance and help.
Please call us:

• If you need help regarding a pregnancy;
• If you find the stress of being a parent becoming overwhelming.
• If you are aware of a child or youth who may be abused or neglected;
• If you know or suspect that another child or youth is exposed to domestic violence;