People often tell me I have a wonderful job, and I agree with them – I am very blessed to be working for such a great charity and working with parents running parenting courses – people are so interesting!

Things about my job I love:

• Meeting lots of lovely parents
• Helping to make small (and sometimes very big) differences in families lives
• Getting to work alongside lots of amazing professionals and volunteers
• Being creative in working out ways to communicate ideas clearly
• Every day is different!

Things about my job I don’t love:

• Fundraising
• Trying to find new ways to publicise courses so that we reach parents who want to come
• Having to cancel parents where not enough parents have signed up

The difficult stuff is hard some days, but it is far outweighed by the good days.

Does anyone have any ideas for publicising our courses to parents.....?

You know that horrible prickly feeling after a row?

You don’t want to say sorry because you DEFINITELY  ARE NOT GIVING IN and you still feel indignant!

Yet on the other hand - you want to be friends and recover the ease and the comfort of your good relationship.

How can we do this well?

Some people just apply the principle “least said soonest mended” - in other words they ignore the issue and behave as if nothing is wrong. Sometimes it works - but usually only in the short term.

When we row, we nearly always damage our relationship and sometimes we damage the other person. Hopefully not physically - but we might bruise their self esteem, we might crush their creativity or hopes, we might demolish their foundations, we might make them feel hopeless.
If we want our relationship to last a lifetime - if we truly want to grow old together we need to learn the art of repairing the damage.

When clothes were ripped they used to be darned. This is an almost forgotten art see below.

To repair the hole you need to start by making a series of threads across the hole attached to the other side and looping back again.
The next stage is to weave threads in between these rows. Gradually you can build the fabric again.

When our partner “throws across a thread” towards us after a row - we need to grab it and anchor it. We do this by welcoming the gesture not blocking or rejecting it even if it seems silly or irrelevant.
Perhaps our partner asks if we want a drink - better not to say “No thanks I’m not thirsty”
Better to say “ Thank you that’s just what I need”
If our partner says “There’s a good film on TV tonight “
better not to say “I’m going out” Better to say “Shall we have a night in then and watch it together”
This is how we start the repair. If we reject the offer it’s like cutting off the thread. By accepting the gesture, we begin the process of repairing the damage.
However, it needs more than this. The second stage of darning is not just a series of threads at 90 degrees to the first. These threads must be woven in between the first threads. In other words our actions and reactions need to reestablish intimacy and trust.
As we continue to “receive each other’s words and actions and respond favourably to each other” the gap is bridged, the tear is darned and the fabric of our relationship gradually recovers its resilience and elasticity.
 

Rows, differences of opinion often cause damage - that’s because we get heated and are rude to each other. If we do not learn how to mend matters and mend each other the relationship will eventually be in tatters.

But the good news is that repairs and mends seem to make the fabric stronger over time. That’s because “mending” in relationship terms is a powerful demonstration of commitment  to each other. It works for couples and it works for families!

 

I am looking forward to two new grandchildren this year… for my daughter in law, parenthood is not new territory as she has a five year old daughter and has cautiously waited 5 years before launching into a second pregnancy. She knows what to expect!

However, it will be my youngest daughter’s first child and she has no real idea of the levels of disruption she and her husband are about to experience!

At FMY we call this Baby Shock!

A new baby is a joy and the early days are really exciting and momentous, however most new parents also find it chaotic, draining and a major challenge as well.

Before babies arrive  couples usually are focussed on each other!. They  meet each other’s needs and expectations most of the time  so levels of couple satisfaction are probably quite high. The arrival of a baby challenges this status quo big time. The change of focus and having to give priority to the baby’s needs, affect the identity of the couple and changes them into “parents.” In addition, tiredness from broken nights, along with physical and hormonal changes affect the likelihood of successful love making. By the time the baby is three months old, a lot of new parents are beginning to struggle a bit in their relationship. This is not surprising since life has changed hugely and irreversibly, and the time  to talk at depth will have been in short supply.

Some relationships have the resilience to get through this testing time and the couple manages to re-define themselves and incorporate their new roles. Other couples are less fortunate and sadly some relationships do not recover.

FMY is offering a new course around the city called Building Family Bridges. This 6 session course concentrates on reinforcing the skills of communication and negotiation that lie at the root of couple relationships. One session helps couples to look at parenting styles and gives the couple tools which equip them to build parenting strategies. It enables them to discuss options effectively and take their parenting decisions together. Another session enables them to work through the skills of creating a family budget together.

Once the baby arrives, there is no time to attend a course; so we are keen to encourage couples to invest in their family future before baby arrives. Pregnancy is a good time to prepare for family life. The course will prove to be a huge investment in the family future.

Lynden Askew

 

Building Family Bridges will be running twice more in York before the end of July – these courses are free at the moment – don’t miss your chance to book your place!  Enquire here.

It seems an unlikely statistic but counselling services report that they are most busy with requests for help  from couples early in January. 

We think there are probably 3 reasons:

• First reason: Every one was looking forward to Christmas - hopes were high. It was going to be so good having the family together. This would be the best yet. My Mum and Dad are staying over.... It’s the first time we’ve cooked the Christmas dinner.....The children are so excited..... we got them what they asked for and can’t wait to see their faces when they open their presents! Etc Etc. But perhaps it didn’t quite work out the way we imagined! Perhaps some things were a disappointment? Perhaps we ended up blaming each other and having a row! It’s part of life when our expectations, hopes and dreams come tumbling down. But don’t underestimate disappointment! It can really get under our skin and sometimes the person who gets the brunt of our hurt and anger is our partner!

• Second reason: Perhaps it all went brilliantly but someone overspent and now we are worried about the bills and blaming each other! This is a very common problem. Sometimes we get carried away with Christmas and other expenses can get overlooked. It’s terribly easy to blame the other person 'You always.......!' 'You never.....!'

• Third reason: Underlying strains in a relationship come to a head when we have more time. Over the holiday period having more time together can lead to us raising issues that we have shelved while we have been busy with work. Now that we have raised the issues, we are struggling to work them through. This problem looks worst of all,  yet it is probably really positive. All couples have issues that need sorting BUT we are so busy! There is never a good time to discuss it sensibly and so we put it off till later. Or we don’t want to “rock the boat”. We know our partner might get angry so we avoid the issue in the hope that it will just go away by itself. Actually the fact that we have argued can be  healthy. It’s a  very clear sign that we need to discuss and understand each other’s point of view.

Family Matters York helps couples to work through issues and build stronger relationships. We do not offer counselling but concentrate on practical solutions and effective communication tools.

 

Contact us for more information about how we can help.
www.fmy.org.uk or phone 01904 639767
 

Parenting courses translated for Farsi families.

I have been running a four-session course in Leeds this month for a Farsi-speaking church. Using an interpreter is very interesting, and it is a real challenge to use short sentences and to make things clear enough to interpret across language and culture. However, one of the things this experience has shown me is that the principles we are sharing in running parenting courses are true irrespective of language and culture.

Of course, there will always be differences in the way we work things out in practice.  This would be true of any group of families as all families are different and have their own ways of doing things, but the important principles of spending time with our children, catching them out doing the right thing (or not doing the wrong thing), saying positive things to them which raise their self-esteem and setting and keeping reasonable boundaries hold true for all families in all cultures!

It has been a delight to see the difference the course is making in the lives of the families attending.