Lecture room: Oddi – 106. Click for a map.
Working institution
Familjemottagningen i Majorna-Linné, Göteborg
Abstract
Parent leadership training a program for parents to teenagers created in the meeting between parents’ needs and professionals experience, research, changes in the society as well as the meeting between professionals in Sweden and USA. The program has been evaluated in a national study.
This workshop focuses on concrete methods, the therapeutic process and the effects of the program and on how group based parental support and family therapy can enrich and supplement each other.
Inspired by a visit to Ramon Rojano, his team and their work on Community Family Therapy and empowerment in Hartford, USA in the end of the nineties, we started to build group based parental support together with some parents who experienced powerlessness in relation to their youths.
A red thread grew up in the conversation with our reference group. The parents wanted the mutual respect between parent and teenager back. In the conversation we brought in that the parent has greater responsibility than the teenager for the relation and for the atmosphere in the family.
As the parents became more aware of different tools for listening to the needs and feelings of the teenager to make it possible to create a communication that builds a positive interaction – you simply feel connected- it became clear that it´s always possible to interrupt an interaction that´s going in a destructive direction. It also became important for the parents to find strategies to handle unwanted outbursts, conflicts and depressed mood that often became a result of anger, loss of control and powerlessness.
The society is constantly transforming and so are leadership and maternity styles. Today you don`t automatically get respect as being someone´s parent. It`s about how you communicate and what kind of relation you are able to create. The new authority repose on strength and not on power.