Group Counseling

[Nomad]

In a related topic (see my other post...)

I have thought of starting group counseling for mothers/parents of difficult children.

Has anyone been to a group like this? What are your thoughts? I have been to Families Anonymous and liked it, but it was 99% about drug abuse and our difficult child does not engage (thank G-d) in this. Al Anon would be about the same.

Of course, NAMI does a good job...and I have thought of working with- them. My local chapt. is somewhat limited (don't want to go into details).

I am thinking of something more therapeutic.


Do you think it would work? Do you think it would need to be divided by illnesses/health problems or do you think this is not of great significance?

What about just parenting support....and then divide it by the age of the child/teen, etc.?

Thank you.

 

[susiestar]

I have thought for years that something like that would be an awesome resource for parents of difficult children. I had thought about reaching out through the sp ed teachers and guidance offices at the schools but I could never seem to find a place that would let us meet AND a professional to help run the group. I have no "real" qualifications other than being a parent of a difficult child, so I felt having someone with some training would be very helpful.

One of the problems that I think would be a huge handicap, at least in MY area, is that so many of the kids at school who are difficult children have parents who are at least as bad. There was one of Wiz' classmates who's mom RAN a 3yr old Head Start program and was scary crazy. I actually ended up in meetings and in court with husband's ex-fiance because the kid kept calling us for help late at night when his mom wasn't home. Most of the parents of special needs kids in our schools do not participate in any way - not IEPs, birthdays, conferences, totally nothing. Our sp ed teachers often have to drive all over town to get even IEPs signed. So here it can be almost impossible to have a workable group of parents.

When we lived in OH most of the parents of difficult children that I knew were not like that. It would be far easier to get a group going in a more metropolitan area because there is a wider range of parents to reach out to.

 

[Nomad]

Point (s) well taken. Thank you.

 

[shellyd67]

I would definetly love to participate in a support group ! I live in the Philadelphia area.... anyone out there who is close by let me know ....

 

[nvts]

There is definately a need for this sort of thing, but I caution you...

I was involved in a training seminar (10 weeks - 1 day a week) for parents called "C.O.P.E." I didn't get to finish because I pulled difficult child 1 out of the school before the training was done - but: we did very little of the training syllabus...most of the time was spent venting. I would suggest having a very loose agenda that brings out the things that people NEED to discuss. It allows for suggestions from other parents who may have already "been there done that".

A great idea!

Beth

 

[DammitJanet]

As you probably know I am involved in a support group right now. I wanted to start a group for parents only about a year ago but the agency just never let me run with it. I was going to call it Parents Supporting Parents. Oh well...lol.

Right now the group I am working with is fairly small and we do one "topic" a week that I attempt to steer the group around. We try to talk about that for at least half the meeting and then we can have open time for people to talk and get off their chests what they need to vent. Now that wouldnt work for a large group.

 

[ThreeShadows]

Nomad, I would have killed to be part of a group like that when we lived in Maine but I experienced the same lack of parental involvement as Susie did.

 

[KTMom91]

I tried several times to get something like this going, and ran into roadblocks each time. We were a small cow town with a strong school district, and because of that have grown to nearly 100,000 people. Our district is spread over something like 100 square miles, incorporating two cities and county islands. Mental health services around here are pretty much non-existent. Trying to coordinate something with the powers that be was frustrating, to say the least. At the time, our nearest CHADD chapter was three hours away, and I couldn't even get that going.

Lack of parental involvement/interest was a huge factor, and many of the parents were difficult child's themselves, as Susie said.