Local News - June 2003

Coalition plans parenting classes

Published June 25, 2003

By JEREMY ASHTON, LTN Staff Writer

The Lincoln County Coalition Against Child Abuse’s Education Committee moved a step closer Tuesday to setting up “master parenting” classes.

The committee met in the Citizens Center and established a general framework for the program. The classes would “train the trainers” who could then help parents learn new techniques for raising their children.

“It’s a lot of information … , but hopefully if we work together, we can make a difference,” said Kathy Vinzant, the coalition’s coordinator.

The curriculum for the master parenting classes comes directly from a similar program offered several years ago by Melinda Houser, a committee member, and the Lincoln County office of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service.

The program will consist of a series of six, three-hour sessions taught by Houser and Fran Senters, director of the Sunrise Family Resource Center. Specialists in certain areas would be brought in to assist with the training.

The first five sessions in the program will cover various topics on raising children at different developmental stages: babies, toddlers, small children, big children and teenagers.

The final session will examine basic family financial management. Houser pointed out that a lot of problems, including divorce and abuse, can occur because people have mismanaged money and are frustrated.

Houser said she could easily go in depth on several subjects within the curriculum. But Dawn Wilson, Pathways’ planning and community collaboration coordinator in Lincoln County, said just teaching parents about how children develop should help.

“A lot of parents don’t think they need information about developmental stages, but they really do,” Wilson said.

When the extension service ran its program, master parents would work one-on-one with people, sometimes for as long as two years.

The committee generally decided a better course of action for the coalition-sponsored classes might be to have the trainers host group sessions where parents could share problems.

The committee will try to start with a pilot program through area churches to see how effective the classes are. Two classes, one on each side of the county, will likely be set up with between eight and 12 trainers in each group.

A definitive target date for starting the classes has yet to be set, but committee members agreed they would like to have something ready by September or October.

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Staff Writer Jeremy Ashton can be reached at 704-735-3031 or jashton@ltnews.com.

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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