Empowering Parents is the Key
As an educator or therapist, you recognize that empowering parents and caregivers is the key to supporting the families you serve. They’re the ones that are “doing it” everyday.
Maybe you work primarily with children, and you want to expand to serve the family more holistically.
Maybe you’re a therapist who believes in the parent coaching model and routines-based intervention. You’re curious to expand into serving families in a resource and support role.
The idea of serving families in a new way in a parent education or parent support role can be daunting! To make a whole curriculum, to teach parents language (and other) strategies, to work with the whole family unit, outside of a classroom or therapy setting.
You know this work is needed, and is an amazing expansion of your own skill set and knowledge. In my work both delivering caregiver/baby classes and training other professionals to create these programs in their own communities using the Learn With Less® Curriculum, I see 3 myths that tend to get people stuck, holding them back – often before they even get started.
Now, before I get into these 3 myths and why they’re just false assumptions, I want to encourage you to fill out the short application form over at learnwithless.com/certification right now. You’ll gain access to my private training, which will teach you all about the ways to create lasting impact leading “caregiver & me” classes with a high quality, evidence-based, plug & play program that will have families coming back again and again. When you do, I’ll review your application, then I’ll send you limited time access to this training! In addition, I’ll be gifting you free Caregiver/Baby Classes Roadmap, wherein you’ll discover all the pieces to help you become successful with a family enrichment program that every infant/toddler family can access.
3 Myths That Are Holding You Back From Leading Caregiver/Baby Classes
I find that many people believe you have to have children of your own or be an “ideal caregiver” yourself to lead Caregiver/Baby Classes in your community…
First of all, I personally would pack up my baby and things, and leave the room if I walked into a group where the facilitator claimed to be the best parent ever or to know everything there is about early child development. Of course parents and caregivers want to be led in community by a facilitator who has knowledge, someone who has experience…
But let’s stop for a second and think. Do you like learning from a perfectionist? Especially in one of your most vulnerable states (i.e., early parenthood)??
When parents and care givers come together in a group setting like this to gain support, education, and ideas about how to help their child thrive… they’re often not looking for a rigid parenting philosophy. They’re looking for a place where they can feel heard. Where they can connect with each other, with their babies, with a community that understands what they’re going through.
So it doesn’t matter whether you have kids of your own, or whether you regularly fall short of being an ideal caregiver yourself.
What matters is: do you love being around kids? Do you interact well with kids? Do you love empowering and coaching parents? Because when it comes to wearing your teacher hat or therapist hat OR a family enrichment facilitator hat… what you’re doing matters… but it doesn’t matter as much as how the parent feels their child is doing. The goal is to help the parent or caregiver feel supported, empowered, and curious about discovering something new about themselves or their child.
What matters is whether you have empathy, whether you can learn to create community so that you can help parents and caregivers feel empowered to try new strategies or new ways of playing with their kids.
Myth #2: You have to perform for the parents & caregivers or expend energy so they’ll participate & engage with your “caregiver & baby” classes
I find that many people considering leading parent education and support classes believe that you have to perform for the parents and caregivers or spend a lot of energy to get them to participate and engage with your classes.
Professionals with whom I’ve spoken often share with me that getting adults to participate can be difficult, or that they seem conditioned to approach the class as if you’re doing a service or performance for them.
Now, I have certainly seen this happen.
And I think a lot of it comes down to a few things. First, the primary objective is to lead with trust building. Parents are often confronted with divisive topics and opinions on every single topic, whether it’s how they choose to feed their babies, hold their babies, or put their babies to sleep… The primary objective when building community for parents and caregivers is to ensure that you are creating a place where everyone – regardless of the social identities they hold – can feel included and heard.
Now, that’s no small order.
That’s why I highly recommend that you ensure you are in a practice of understanding more about the systems that uphold certain social identities over others, and where you fall in terms of the identities you hold. I also recommend that you stop looking at these groups with a “therapy” or “teacher” hat on. You’re not leading them. You’re not telling them how to parent. You’re not telling them what to do. You are facilitating.
That means that you need to be modeling, you need to be sharing, you need to be asking them what they need, you need to be setting the tone. You don’t need to solve their problems. You don’t need to give them “one-size-fits-all” solutions.
I also think there is a lot here to do with the fact that often, when leading a group of parents and young children, the greatest challenge for you as the facilitator is actually meeting the needs of the group versus the needs of the curriculum. This is why ensuring that the content you share needs to be flexible. It needs to allow for and accommodate the needs of the group.
As a facilitator, you may not know how to address everyones’ questions. Please know: you don’t have to. The knowledge of other families in the room may be useful, and when you are the person in the room with access to more resources, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “let me look into that and share some information with you later.”
Myth #3: You will have to spend lots of money and time on marketing, ads, logistics, etc. that may or may not work
I hear from many, many professionals who believe they’ll have to spend lots of money and time on marketing, ads, logistics, etc. that may or may not work.
While this absolutely CAN be true, it doesn’t have to be.
When you have a plan, when you know how to address the challenges your families are sharing – within your marketing…
When you make time to create systems around logistics like finding spaces, communicating with your potential audience through things like email and social media, building relationships in your community, and build self-reflection measures into your entire process…
It all becomes much simpler.
When you know the value of your program, know what you’re presenting, have a plan for promotion, create partnerships with existing organizations and businesses in your community… you have a roadmap.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
You can create a system that works.
You can be intentional about where you put your energy. You can do more of what you enjoy – which, of course, is the actual service to families.
Don’t Reinvent The Wheel
So if you want to discover how to show parents and caregivers what play is all about: helping them learn to let their infants and toddlers explore, experiment, fail, and persist.
If you want to find out how to get parents to try new things – even if they haven’t been willing in the past.
If you’re looking for ways to establish a relationship quickly and get buy in for your families.
If you want to logistically enroll for economic diversity in a fiscally responsible way – even if you’ve considered various avenues before.
If you want to discover new ways to offer your knowledge to young parents in your community – even if you don’t have a clear plan!
If you want to figure out what to present, how much to charge, how to promote, and how long to make your workshops…
Start by registering for my FREE on-demand training,
Then head over to learnwithless.com/certification and fill out the short application so I can share with you the private training helping you create that lasting impact on new families in your community.
Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.
