Parent Exploratory Group...

Parent Exploratory Group Meeting
March 8, 2002

Dauphin County Technical School, 6001 Locust Lane, Harrisburg

Introduction --
After an absence of far too long, our meetings of the "Parent Exploratory Group"(PEG) resumed with our coming together on Friday evening in the auditorium of the Dauphin County Technical School. There was within our assembly a thorough mixing of parents and friends from the current Parent Seminar class with returning alumni from past classes. It seemed difficult to know just how to begin the meeting amid the anticipation of what was to come.

Connie Dembrowsky --
Larry Evans opened this informal, but very special session by introducing to us our honored guest, Ms. Constance (Connie) Dembrowsky.

Connie is an internationally renowned educator and lecturer on the topic of affective skills. She is the author of the “Personal and Social Responsibility” curriculum – which forms the basis of the DCTS Parent Seminar – as well as several other school aged and adult curriculums.

Connie has devoted her life and energies to educating teachers, students and parents in the values of working affectively to build personal relationships that maintain dignity and respect for self and others.

Background --
Connie began the discussion quietly with a brief profile of her life and background. Connie has herself been a teacher at all levels of our educational system from elementary school through university. She currently resides approximately seven miles outside of the small village of La Luz in south central New Mexico.

Connie mused that La Luz is indeed large enough to contain a single stop sign as its means of traffic control. Her home is a rather simple ranch where Connie diligently maintains her vast herd of three cows.

It is from this base that Connie, together with her assistant Annie Farmer, operates the Institute for Affective Skill Development and travels throughout the United States and the world teaching people to relate more effectively with one another through the use of affective skills.

Universality --
Connie portrayed that her curriculums center on self-esteem in the context of responsibility for self and to others. These lessons and the principles on which they are founded are cross-cultural and work for all. As evidence, the Ministry of Education in Singapore is working actively with Connie to place her “Personal and Social Responsibility” and “Managing Anger – Resolving Conflict” curriculums into practice at all of their schools.

It is important, says Connie, for all people to develop a balanced sense of dignity and value for themselves and to act in ways that invite these same qualities in others.

Parenting Within Responsibility --
Connie emphasized the need for parents to take a stand. “We are raising a needy generation,” she stated. By this Connie means that our youth are fast becoming the most material and egotistical generation in all of history. Our children, more than any others before them, feel they have an absolute right to the material goods and extravagances they deem to need and that they should have them now.

There are currently 6 billion people populating our planet earth. Compare that with only 2.8 billion inhabitants recorded in 1950. That represents an increase of over 200 percent in only 50 years. Over 3 billion of these people do not have access to even the most basic sanitary amenities that we take for granted every day.

Our children have no concept of these realities. As example of the consequence, it is estimated that the industrialized countries of the world represent approximately 20 percent of the total population, however this 20 percent of people consume 80 percent of the world’s energy resources and 72 percent of its goods. To allow for this same level of consumption by all the world’s population would require four earths to contain the resources needed to support it.

Our children face tremendous world problems as they grow into adulthood and they are not at all being prepared to handle them.

Living the Example --
But Connie is more than simply an educator with a message. She is also a believer in and a practitioner of the positions and lessons she promotes. As illustration, Connie spoke of the five children she has raised in her home.

This did not in itself seem unusual to us; that is until Connie noted that these children did not come to her by birth. Rather she received them through courtrooms and prisons, via gangs and by abusive and broken homes. It is from these dysfunctional relationships and situations that Connie, out of a heartfelt concern, adopted five deeply troubled youths into her growing family.

Connie has endeavored, by direct effort and personal example, to change the focus and life directions of her beloved though found children through the methods and outlooks she has developed and now shares.

Four of her children are now independent, adults in their thirties while one, her thirteen-year-old daughter Evelyn, still lives with Connie.

Lest we might think otherwise, Connie was quick to point out that not everything was or is rosy in her adopted family. Two of the older children can now be considered successful, one is coming to a level of success, but one is still struggling. Her youngest adopted daughter, a severely abused child, continues slowly to improve at home.

Connie told us of thefts and many other severe difficulties that were brought upon her at the hands of her children. She related that, as in all families, the process to growth with her kids has been through a succession of small gains and backward slides. In general, the final directions have been towards improvement.

Connie illustrated the parental stand she believes in through her own home example. There is no television in the Dembrowsky household and little if any extravagant clothing. Homework and study occurs daily from 7:00 to 9:00 PM and chores are done without need of allowances.

Family is considered precious and time together is made for playing games, such as Scrabble, and to build jigsaw puzzles.

The family rules are basic and fairly developed and administered to all.

Family Rules, Family Involvement --
Connie went over with us how rules and consequences were set with her family. These rules, developed by Connie, are few in number (no more than four of five), simple, and tend to be universal in nature rather than item specific. One rule, for example, states that, “There will be appropriate care of your property.” A bottom line was also created for use if a consequence is not fulfilled.

Once the rules were written a family conference was convened to explain each rule and set the consequences for infractions. The kids had full responsibility to suggest what each consequence would be. Connie reviewed their inputs and eliminated consequences that would not work or were too harsh. Children, she says, will develop much tougher punishments than adults will.

All family members then discuss and reach consensus on the selected consequence for each rule. In this manner, the kids are provided involvement in the discipline process and actually own the outcome.

From this point on each action taken is the result of individual choice. You may choose the rule or you may choose the consequence, but you are responsible for and will receive exactly what you have chosen.

The Rules at Work --
To demonstrate the power of this environment Connie went back to the rule, “There will be appropriate care of your property.” She related to us this true experience.

Her older daughter came home one day a few years ago and proceeded to drop her clothing in her room however it landed as she undressed. Most parents would likely have nagged at their child to pick up her clothes, to the exasperation of the parent and possibly to the detriment of the child. But under rules and responsible consequences things are different.

Connie calmly informed her daughter that, “You obviously have chosen not to have your clothes, but to have them taken to the Goodwill.”

This delivery was not Connie’s invention, but rather a simple restatement of the consequence the children themselves had decided upon for a violation of this rule.

Her daughter cried and apologized, but there was no relaxing of the choice she had made to exercise the agreed upon consequence. The clothes were packed up and delivered to Goodwill.

One for All --
A few days later Connie came home exhausted from a hard meeting. She proceeded to lay her best silk jacket across the back of the couch and sat down to read the paper. She was suddenly interrupted and looked up to see her daughter standing before her and holding in her hand the white jacket.

With very exaggerated tones and movements she exclaimed, “Mom, I see you’ve chosen not to have your white silk jacket, but to send it to the Goodwill.”

After some initial thoughts, Connie replied, “You know…You’re right! I have chosen to give my white silk jacket to the Goodwill.”

Her daughter laughed, explaining that she knew it was Connie’s favorite jacket and very expensive. She offered it back to her mom. But Connie did not relent.

The same rule, she reasoned to her daughter, applies to every member of the family, even to me, and I did choose to give my jacket away.

That night Connie and her daughter drove together to Goodwill and turned in the jacket.

Questions --
Our discussion then turned to questions for Connie from those of us in the group.

The very first question concerned how Connie ever decided to adopt into her family juvenile delinquents and gang members. Connie related how, in the middle of a California court proceeding involving her first adopted son, at which she was a character witness, she suddenly blurted out that she would be willing to adopt the boy and take him to her home (then in Nebraska) rather than see him do hard time. The judge, not wishing to face this troublesome teen again, readily agreed to the proposal.

After getting over the shock of what she had said and the realization that she now had a young boy in her charge, Connie set to work with her new son to invite in him into a new outlook and slowly to instill in him a sense of self worth. From this beginning the other children came to her by various routes through the prison and legal system.

Larry Evans told us how, as the new facilitator at DCTS and responsible to work with the school’s 25 worst kids, he, several years ago, came across Connie’s PSR curriculum through an ad delivered in the mail. He convinced the administration to purchase the course and began the effort that has changed his life.

When asked by Larry how she came to develop her curriculums, Connie replied that, while working with kids, particularly in special education, she had the opportunity to observe again and again their problems and mistakes. Always she would ask herself, what skill is it that he or she lacks?

Connie related that she too was a special ed student. She didn’t read until the sixth grade when a willing and resourceful teacher sought her out, encouraged her and changed the picture for Connie. Out of the difficulties and pain of being considered dumb and a problem child, Connie grew to feel the pain in other broken and damaged children and to seek relief for them as her special teacher had done for her.

“Parents,” she said, “do not want their children to fail, but they are frustrated and don’t know what to do. That is why I work so hard.”

Conclusion --
Connie answered several more questions on subjects ranging from teenage overconfidence, to respect for women, to the trials of step-parenting and broken homes. Throughout it all she emphasized the need for us parents to work carefully with our kids.

We must help to reverse their predilection to assess themselves around purely external values (looks, clothes, money, popularity, etc.) and instead focus them internally, on realizing and developing their own unique qualities and talents.

As parents, we too must recognize that our dignity and worth is not based on the attitudes, actions or success of our children. We are responsible to our kids, but not for them. Our children, and especially our teens, are ultimately responsible for themselves.

Parents, like their children, often tend to filter incorrectly the messages they receive. We need learn to see with different eyes. When a son or daughter appears to be doing everything wrong it is a good sign that our focus is not accurate. It is time to take a break, step back, refocus and try again. And if you blow it with your child, acknowledge it and apologize for it.

We parents do not have to be perfect, but we may always choose to do it better.

The meeting reluctantly adjourned.

-- John Borland --

Affective Skills Web Site

Last Modified: March 21, 2003

Parent Exploratory Group...

Parent Exploratory Group Meeting March 8, 2002

Parent Exploratory Group Meeting
March 8, 2002