By Lisa Carolin
There’s a workshop this summer in Chelsea that teaches parents how to connect with their kids and to empower them to make healthy choices.
It’s called Guiding Good Choices, and the deadline for registration is Friday, June 14.
SRSLY wrote a grant that is securing funding for this program over the next two years. Emily Griswold is coordinating the training of facilitators and the facilitation of workshops in Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester and Stockbridge.
Chelsea’s first workshop will be June 17-July 15 every Monday from 10 a.m.-noon in the Chelsea First United Methodist Church
“The goal of the Guiding Good Choices program is to prevent substance abuse among teens by teaching parents of preteens and younger adolescents the skills they need to improve family communication and family bonding,” said Griswold. “The program draws on extensive research that demonstrates the critical importance of bonding in reducing or inhibiting adolescent participation in antisocial behaviors.”
Parents will learn specific strategies to help their children avoid drug use and other problem behaviors and develop into healthy adults. The target age group is 9-14 year olds, but Griswold sees benefits for the caregivers of 6-8 year olds as well as 15-16-year olds.
Evidence has shown that the sort of education that Guiding Good Choices provides is key for helping parents reduce their child’s risk for drug use as a teen.
“The program skills could be applied to a host of relationships, not just those with youth,” said Griswold. “Knowing how to clearly define boundary and unhealthy behaviors, learning how to stand up to peer pressure (even as an adult), and learning how to effectively communicate boundaries are some of the other skills learned from the program.”
The program is free.
Anyone interested in registering should contact Emily Griswold at [email protected] or by calling 734-593-6806.
To register for the June/July session dates, go here.
This is not the “first” program in Chelsea. There are many graduates of this program from the early years of SRSLY, as well as some of the facilitators from those years. Likely some of them could help in recruiting current families to participate or in spreading the word.