Parents face challenges: how to help them?

Generation gap exists all over the world. The current events in our country show that parents lack psychological knowledge how to communicate with their children. They do not know the peculiarities of a certain age period, how to behave in stressful situations, how to control themselves. The government introduced new legislation concerning children's rights but there is little help i. e. trainings, seminars for parents how to behave with their own children. The target group of our project was parents having difficulties in communication with their children. We observed that there are similar trainings for foster parents or patrons in our district, but we lack training programs for our target group. Usually training courses are organized for those parents whose children are withdrawn from the family because of e. g. violence or alcoholism. In such cases parents are obliged to courses of improving communication with their children. These courses are oriented to the families of social risk. The families who are not obliged to this type of courses but have difficulties with their children lack trainings. We can find lots of information on the net but still it is quite complicated for parents to choose the most suitable and useful one. Furthermore, it is much useful to learn in groups to study the situation and find out the best answer or a solution. The trainings of positive parenthood are usually organized in the cities and the parents from small towns and villages can't afford it. The project partners shared their experience and knowledge in this field. Each country sent 2 staff members for transnational meetings. The hosting country involved more participants in the project activities. The good experience was shared among 20 participants of the project. It was a great experience to find out a good experience of other countries. A good experience was brought into practice by us and our partners. We will use a good experience in future to encourage parents to gain knowledge and be active in this field. The experience brought from our partners diversified the forms of trainings. The trainings improved parents' competences on the cognition of the child, on positive parenthood, development of emotional intelligence and self-cognition, coping with stress etc. The project helped us and our partners to develop our own competences in program writing and organizing trainings and seminars. The Project was implemented by partners form Lithuania, Italy, The Czech Republic and Greece. The partners were chosen after long correspondence, checking their profiles and experience in project writing, discussing the idea and the way it should be developed and implemented. Main criteria were the field of similar activities i. e. organizing trainings and seminars, their experience in project writing and implementation. All the partners involved are cooperating for the first time. The activities of the project included the discussions of the project’s objectives and overall plan of the project; meetings with the specialists of child's rights, psychologists and pedagogical workers to clear up the nature of the work in these institutions, to show the importance of the trainings for the parents to forestall problems occurring in the field of communication between parents and children; participating in experiential learning where parents and their children and psychologists were discussing real problems; practicing different methods in parenting coaching; sharing the best practical experience; the discussion of the results and future cooperation. During the time of the project there were organized two lectures of families' psychologist and two different practical activities with arts and nature for Project target group.The knowledge and practice acquired during the project were the basis of our training program for parents. The participants of the project, i. e. the selected workers for the project from our department are competent in writing programs for adults. The gained knowledge allowed them to work cooperatively with our partners to create the training program. During the parents meetings at schools when our project was presented the parents were given the questionnaires to know the scope of the possible target group, the most important problems parents see to be solved during the trainings, what psychological help is the most essential for them.