Safe Healing and Learning Spaces
Parenting Skills Facilitator Training
Day 3
Disclaimer
The content and conclusions in the Safe Healing and Learning Spaces
Toolkit are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views
of United States Agency for International Development or the United
States Government.
Review from Day 2
Day 3 - Agenda
Energizer: Categories
Letter Name Place Animal Thing
A Ali Africa Ant Apple
Body mapping exercise
1. You have 30 minutes to complete this activity.
2. Draw a body shape on a piece of paper.
3. Remember some happy memories and some unhappy memories
from their childhood.
4. Make a dot on the drawings of the body where you felt good while
remembering a happy memory.
5. Make a cross on the drawings in the areas where you felt pain
while remembering.
6. Pair with a partner and discuss the following:
• Your happy and unhappy memories from childhood, if you
feel comfortable sharing.
• Whether adults around you in your childhood understood
your feelings.
• Whether adults around you in your childhood acknowledged
your feelings and offered to help.
Empathy
• A human characteristic that allows us to
understand and feel for our fellow human
beings
• It is the ability to perceive the emotions, needs
and desires of another person, to understand
and act with care.
• It involves being able to walk in the shoes of
another person and feel what it is like.
Stages of empathetic development
• Adolescents experience strong feelings that shape their personalities as
they grow up. That is, they build memories through experiences.
• Adolescents want and need their parents to understand and help with their
difficult feelings.
• Adolescents need their parents to be empathetic, loving and nurturing and
understand their feelings.
• Empathy helps adolescents feel safe and secure.
• As it relates to parenting, empathy is the ability to perceive the emotions,
needs and desires of a child, and to be able to respond in a nurturing way,
keeping the positive welfare of the child at the forefront.
• It helps adolescents become sensitive to other people’s needs, and to be
able to handle difficult feelings in acceptable ways.
Steps of empathy
Step 1. Identify the feeling
Step 2. Determine the reason
Step 3. Validate or honor the feeling
Step 4. Help the child with their feelings. Take action and
find a solution if appropriate.
Role play for skills practice
Scenario - The 13-year-old daughter is being
sexually harassed in the community by
teenagers much older than her.
Empathy for all adolescents
• Teenagers with disabilities need care and support just like any other
teen.
• Let’s imagine for a moment what it would be like to be a child who
learns more slowly than others, who is unable to walk or cannot
hear.
What assistance or understanding would we want from our
caregivers?
• There are different kinds of barriers in families and communities that
can get in the way of providing adequate educational, social and
physical opportunities for disabled teens. Can you think of some of
these barriers?
Think and share
What are situations for
adolescents that would require
adult help, and situations that
might just require listening?
Energizer: Who are you?
Group work: adolescents in crisis
• What is the impact of crisis on adolescents?
• What are the psychological symptoms that can be
observed?
The impact of crisis on adolescents
• Crisis affects adolescents in all the same ways that it affects adults, but also in
different ways.
• Childhood is already a difficult and stressful due to body changes and the
developing brain.
• adolescents are dependent on the care, empathy and attention of adults who
love them.
• Attachments can be disrupted in times of crisis.
• adolescents often feel what their parents feel, including their stress and their
emotions.
• adolescents are often exposed to very traumatic events during crisis.
• Research has shown that the earlier we start helping adolescents to cope with the
stresses of crisis, the more likely we are to prevent serious psychosocial problems
from developing later in life.
Ignoring symptoms of stress: A
vicious cycle
Talking and listening
• During a crisis, families are commonly split up and normal daily life
seems impossible.
• adolescents can become confused and scared about what is happening
around them.
• Although adolescents, like adults, need to have time to switch off from
thinking about crisis, they will not be able to forget what has happened to
them.
• Talking about what has happened in the past, and about their worries for
the future with someone they trust will help adolescents to make sense
of what is happening around them and their memories will become less
distressing.
What do adolescents need?
• To make sense of what is happening around them
• To express their feelings
• For caregivers to listen sensitively and actively
• For caregivers to accept their adolescent’s feeling
and let them talk when they feel like it
Discipline
• What is discipline?
• Can you describe your idea of discipline?
Discipline means to teach:
- Values and principles
- Behaviours to be a good community member
Discipline with dignity v/s corporal
punishment
Corporal punishment:
• teaches the use of violence
• creates fear in adolescents
Disciplining with dignity:
• respects adolescents
• nurtures life lessons
Having clear roles and expectations
When all members of the household have appropriate and
clear roles and expectations:
• adolescents tend to have their needs met appropriately and
equally.
• adolescents are allowed to express developmental needs.
• Parents take ownership of their own behavior.
• Parents are not solely dependent on emotional support from
their adolescents
Family rules and agreements
- Co-create the rules
- Communicate the rules clearly
- Make sure rules are age-appropriate
- Encourage the following of rules with
praise
- Involve the adolescents, in creating
the rules
- Adults must also follow the family
rules
Skills practice: Creating and
explaining rules
• Break into 3 groups
• Create 3-5 rules for the following age groups
(one per group):
• 12-14-year-old adolescents
• 15-17-year-old adolescents
• Specify if some rules are different for boys and
girls.
Guidelines for effective rules
Rules are effective when:
• They tell adolescents what they can do as well as what
they should not to do.
• They are developmentally-appropriate.
• They are few and expectations are clear.
• Adolescents have more freedom and rules are
reviewed often.
• Parents use rules to guide new behaviors and keep
adolescents safe and healthy!
Think and share
What are some consequences you would suggest if
adolescents break the rules for each of the age groups?
Establishing effective consequences
• Consequences are non-violent and fair
• They are proportionate to the misbehavior
• They have a beginning and an end
• The duration should be limited to few days
or one week
Family meetings
• Regular family meetings are a great way to keep the lines of
communication open between parents and adolescents.
• During family meetings, parents can get updates on how
adolescents are doing in school, divide up the household chores,
and have fun together as a family.
• Family meetings gather all the family members.
• The idea behind family meetings is to give adolescents a space to
voice their changing developmental needs, discuss household
responsibilities as they get older, and find solutions to improve family
life.
Effective family meetings
Family meetings are more effective when:
• They are regular and not only set up to manage a
family crisis.
• You keep an open discussion until family consensus is
found, even if it takes more than one meeting to find a
solution.
• All concerns and questions are welcomed, as common
or extraordinary as they may be.
• The meetings are not too long – 30 minutes is a good
average time.
• Adolescents are genuinely able to talk and be listened
to.
Family meetings in 4 steps
Step 1: Start with a round of positive feedback
on family life.
Step 2: Follow up on solutions adopted from the
last meeting
Step 3: Give everyone has the chance to add to
the agenda items
Step 4: Enjoy family time together, have fun!
The effect of violence on adolescents
• Witnessing violence has similar effects on adolescent’s
brains and development as actually suffering violence.
• Witnessing violence can disrupt the development of a
child’s brain, increase the risk of illness and interfere with
a child’s ability to think and solve problems, well into their
adult years.
Let’s practice!
Groups 1 : Session 6: Communication and Empathy with Adolescents
• Activity 5: Showing Empathy the 4-Step technique
Group 2: Session 11: Understanding adolescents’ psychosocial needs / Providing psychosocial support to
children
• Activity 2: The Impact of War (shorten to 20 minutes)
Group 3: Session 11: Understanding adolescents’ psychosocial needs / Providing
psychosocial support to children
• Activity 2: The Impact of War (shorten to 20 minutes)
Group 4: Parenting Skills Curriculum for caregivers of adolescents – Session 7: Encouraging
responsibility and problem-solving
• Activity 5: Family meetings and agreements
Debrief
Step 1: Self-evaluation
• What went well?
• What they could have done differently?
Step 2: Whole group debrief
• Positive feedback
• Suggestions for improvement
Step 3: Feedback from trainer
• Positive feedback
• Suggestions for improvement
Thoughts about today’s session
• What did you learn today?
• What did you like best about the session?
• What did you like least? Why?
• What would you have liked to discuss that was not
covered?
• Suggestions or comments?
