Welcome to the Family Education Training Center of Hawaii

1. Welcome to the Family Education Training Center of Hawaii • 4:15 sign-in; take children to classrooms • 4:30 buffet dinner &“paired sharing”* • 5:00 welcome & fill in forms • 5:45 parent discussions in two groups • 6:15 open-forum counseling of family • 7:00 join children for Family Together activity • 7:30 goodbye until next week • *”Paired sharing”: While you eat, please tell the person next to you about a time when you were a child that you most enjoyed being with your own family. Then, listen to that person’s description. What were our parents doing right?

2. Welcome to the Family Education Training Center of Hawaii Back row: Tiare Knewson (Teen’s); Jenelle Saribay (Children’s); Courtney Mizufuku (Children’s); Sharesse Castillo (Intermediate’s); Front: Uakea Egami (Teen’s); Lara Stark Wickman (Teen’s) Annalyn Mesina (Intermediate’s); Michelle Santiago (Intermediate’s)

3. Back row: Sharesse (Intermediate’s); Kristi Kauwe (Young Children’s); Claire Hirota (Children’s); Linda Turnbull (Children’s; & Hoala Principal); Front row: Michelle Santiago (Intermediate’s); Janice Gabriel (Teen’s)

4. Family Education Training Center of Hawaii (FETCH) Our purposes and methods

5. In some families, members are at war with each other. Some parents and children spend their time fighting each other rather than helping each other cope with life challenges. Problems we address:

6. Problems we address: • Often, parents are taught that responsible parenting consists of: • Carefully guiding our children’s every move • Helping them avoid mistakes • Protecting them from painful consequences • shocking them into listening to us, if necessary, by showing them that this is serious

7. The problem with these methods: • Children may come to distrust their parents • They may resent being shocked or talked to disrespectfully • In revenge, they may disrespect back. • They may come to rebel and to avoid the family • In extreme cases, they may seek to get back at parents by damaging their own lives and futures, through high-risk behavior (promiscuity, underage drinking, drugs, violence, suicide)

8. The problems: • Parents and children almost always WANT to be close, to trust and to help each other. • But they may operate according to the belief that in order to be significant in this family they need to show each other that they cannot be pushed around.

9. If left to smoulder • This discontent may deteriorate into life-threatening problems if adolescents rebel • At best, it may result in life-long alienation of family members from each other.

10. Our purpose is to: • Assure families are in harmony and balance • by assuring mutual respect and trust.

11. How do we do this: • First, in separate parent and children’s groups, we help members build a supportive, safe community

12. How do we do this? • we want people to feel good about themselves and to focus on their positive strengths

13. How do we do this? • We also emphasize how we are similar to and connected to others. • Our goal is to help us all return to our non-defensive, constructive, trusting selves—how we were as young children

14. Secondly: • We want everyone to be clear about what they REALLY want • We encourage everyone to reflect on their own wishes, goals, interests

15. We also: • encourage everyone to get clear about their already significant number of skills • And we reinforce these goals as worthy

16. Thirdly: • We expose participants to constructive ways to reach those goals • We give lectures on constructive communication methods, conflict resolution, group organization, goal-setting and problem solving • We engage in exercises to role play these

17. Fourthly: • We help participants reflect on how they are currently approaching their goals • We help participants clarify their current operating procedures • We ask IF these methods are working for them

18. Fifthly: • If participants want advice, • We recommend they use the more constructive methods that we have modeled, demonstrated and explained