Wanna know what happens after you go to a parenting class?

Yesterday we attended our first of 9 sessions of Empowered to Connect Parent Training at a local church.  The training is specifically for adoptive and foster parents (generally who have had their child/children home at least 1 year) but it covers some amazing material that is absolutely applicable to biological children as well.

Here's a description of the course:

ETC Parent Training equips parents with a holistic understanding of their child’s needs and development while empowering them with the tools and strategies to effectively meet those needs, build trust, and help their child heal and grow. The training is taught from a Christian perspective and focuses on a wide range of topics and issues relevant to adoptive and foster parents, including helping parents understand the impact of their child’s history, what they themselves bring to the parent-child relationship, the fundamentals of attachment, the impact of fear, and the importance of meeting their child’s sensory processing, nutritional and other physiological needs. Ultimately, ETC Parent Training integrates this holistic understanding with the insights and skills parents need to effectively and consistently employ a balanced parenting approach that allows them to provide compassionate discipline that both connects and corrects.

I summarize all that and just refer to it as our "parenting class".

Exactly 1 hour after returning from said parenting class, three-fourths of my kids did this to our playroom:

I did NOT yell.  There was a casual, "Hey guys, what happened in here?"  To which they replied, "We are pretending it snowed!"  And then they had to clean it up (shredded Kleenex), which they did.

So I guess just signing up for parenting class and attending one session doesn't give us perfect children.  Maybe by week 9?


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