Mukti Participated in Child Counseling and Parenting Workshop

From 23-25th June 2022, a 3 days residential workshop on Child Counseling and Parenting has been conducted by Prajaak, one of the resource partners of ACV (Amplifying Community Voices) at Diamond Harbor. From Mukti, ACV project staff, Mr. Pinaki Naiya, Mr. Shibu Das, Mr. Apurba Karan and Ms. Nandita Jayraman participated in this workshop. With Mukti other hubs like ISWS and BTA have also joined.

The objective of the workshop

The aim of this workshop is to motivate the parents to create a positive family atmosphere, belief in the concept of listening to their wards and effectively meet up to any parenting challenge. The workshop has also emphasized the importance of setting a routine for children and striking the right balance between disciplining a child and giving into his or her emotional needs. It has helped the parents refresh their parenting skills, learn some wonderful new ways to positively parent and to develop some strategies for dealing with challenging behavior. The session equipped parents to deal with all the confusing doubts, puzzling moments, and contradictory emotions that parenting entails.

Adolescence is the time of transition when a boy or a girl passes from adolescence to adulthood through physical and mental changes. Through different workshops of Mukti, adolescents have built the gender perspective and they have been aware of the CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child) act. From their perspective, they have started questioning their parents. The lack of proper information and awareness is creating a huge gap between the parents and their children. To short out the issue and to fill the gap with love and affection the workshop has been organized.

In the three days workshop, the perspective of the parents has been built. Parents are provided knowledge on how to build a relationship with their children, what is parenting, how to apply it and the 3 layers through which a successful parenting ship should be achieved.

Parents are role models to their children. So, the role of parents towards their children is an important issue to be discussed. Parents need to understand that their decisions may not always be right, which can have a detrimental effect on their children’s lives in the long run. Parents should learn to practice active listening to understand the act of a child. This can be acquired by following the three layers – behavior, emotion and cause of the act. Generally, parents act on the behavior being totally unaware of the cause. For the bridging between parent and child, the parents must get aware of how to reach the child’s emotion, find out the cause of the activities their child and by trying to make the child realize the emotion/ concern of the parents too, For a healthy relationship emotional exchange is important. Parents need to understand the difference between conversation and communication – conversation is an exchange of words, while communication is the transformation of thoughts and words into meaningful action. Without being judgmental the parents need to obtain an empathetic mind to solve the problems of their child.

Troubleshooting the issues may fill the gap between parent and child irrespective of age, experience, knowledge and formation.