The Chronicle, Friday, 25th February 2005
ADVISOR OFFERS TO HELP PARENTS CHANGE 'CHILDREN FROM HELL'
Sandbach parents are being offered the chance to hone their skills with the help of a positive parenting programme recently featured on national television. The programme is the result of 25 years of research and aims to make parenting enjoyable and rewarding by instilling more confidence in parents and children.
Local parenting advisor Joy Hazlehurst was asked to appear on I.T.V.'s “Granada Reports” to give parent tips on getting through the half term holiday and to share her thoughts on television’s many parenting programmes, tying in with the launch of a research project by Manchester University.
Coincidentally, the parenting approach is currently the focus of the “Driving Mum and Dad Mad” series, in which originator Prof. Matt Sanders takes four families through the programme.
She said that while she found such programmes a support, in that they show parents that they could bring about a change, she believed television lacked the individual fine-tuning of family requirements that allowed such schemes to succeed. She said “Parents try what has been shown once or twice and them complain that it doesn’t work and conclude that their child must be the one from hell.”
Now, Mrs. Hazlehurst is offering local families the opportunity to benefit from the ‘Triple P’ approach through either one-to-one sessions or working in small groups.
She is accredited at six levels of the Triple P Positive Parenting Programme, covering ages 2 to 12 and 12 to 16years, as well as Special Needs. She also has 21 years’ experience working with families and is an accredited counsellor for children, teenagers, adults and couples.
She said: “Parenting is a very sensitive issue. As a parent myself I wanted to be seen as ‘good’ and would have been demoralized at the thought of needing help in parenting my sons.
“However, while training to be a Triple P Provider, my toes curled on many occasions at what I saw and heard on the video we were shown, particularly when relating it to my own experiences as a mother”.
The positive parenting programme was researched by the University of Queensland in Australia and is described as “comfortably crossing cultures” and used in many Social Services care plans.
It focuses on quickly re-establishing esteem in the parent-child relationship.
Mrs. Hazlehurst said “I have now been delivering the programme for two years and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly change occurs once parents start putting the programme into action”.
When parents realise I am assisting them, rather than criticising them, they begin to relax and enjoy the sessions and with consistence and perseverance their ‘child from hell’ soon becomes compliant and adorable.
The programme is delivered through video and workbook, with the parent remaining as the expert on their child while their family standards and values retain paramount importance.
Parents set their own goals for change in their child and themselves and are supported through the programme while they put into practice simple but effective strategies.
Mrs. Hazlehurst will be running the programme from the Hope Street Centre in Sandbach. Anyone seeking further information should contact her on 0788-196-6122 or email her at: joyhazlehurst@hotmail.co.uk
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Joy Hazlehurst is a Counsellor at The Hope Street Centre.
If you would like to book an appointment with her please call: 0788 196 6122.
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