A Clinical Approach to Parent Mentoring
The Parent Mentoring Program of Project Y.E.S. is intended to be an enhancement to parenting - a way to parent even better by improving the
relationship between parent and child. The Parent Mentoring Program enriches the parenting experience for both parents and children.
True to the dictum, "success builds on success", mentors identify and build on parental success. Although the mentors do provide parenting
remediation when necessary, first and foremost mentors identify and build on the health and strengths parents already possess, but might not
even be aware of. Parent Mentors meet with parents for 12 sessions, one-hour weekly, giving parents a chance to discuss their specific concerns
and to help them improve their child's behavior and self-esteem.
Parents learn specific tools and techniques including:
- The impact of active listening and feeling identification so children won't say "I don't know" when asked a question;
- The power of self-awareness and shared-awareness to prevent and resolve conflict;
- The value of positive reinforcement to improve behavior, attitude, and self-image;
- The ability to increase frustration tolerance and reduce sibling conflicts; and,
- The nachas that comes from a stronger relationship between parents and their children.
Other topics addressed during the 12 week Parent Mentoring Program include:
- How much praise is too much?
- Stop bribing children
- Reducing frustration - for your child and for you!
- How to handle homework
- Identifying the at-risk child
- Overwhelmed
- Single and merged parenting issues
- Expectations - reasonable and explicit
- Non-compliance vs. incompetence
- The rules for important conversations
- Opportunities for eye contact
- What your child sees is what you get
- Working with teachers and principals
- Stress management
- Discipline for success
A ten year old child said to his mommy, "This person who speaks to you and Daddy every week, what does he speak with you about?"
His mommy responded, "We speak about what we can do to become better parents to you." To which her ten year old son responded,
"Thank you for caring about me." This powerful story illustrates both the impact that the Parent Mentoring Program has on the
family unit as a whole (although parent mentors never actually meet directly with the children), as well as the reality that
parents do not need to hide from their children the fact that they are working together with a parent mentor, because parents
work with parent mentors in order to increase their success as effective parents.
Become a Project Y.E.S. Parent Mentor today!
