What is the portrait of a modern family? Parents under financial and time pressure – working long hours, sometimes multiple jobs, to pay the bills. Children living their lives on social media – constantly worried about keeping up with their peers, seeking validation from online sources, facing online threats including cyberbullying, grooming, cat fishing, to name a few. Direct communication is at a minimum as the modern family is just too busy to check in with each other. And what are the consequences of this modern family portrait? We don’t yet know, but we do know the vital role that parents should play in the development of their children, and the negative developmental impact that poor parenting can have on children. With the advances and pervasiveness of digital technologies today, parents and children are increasingly living their lives online – parents through email and Facebook, children through SnapChat and TikTok. In this way, parents and children are so consumed with reaching out to people beyond the borders of the family unit; that they often forget the importance of connecting with the individuals in their household. In times gone by, family time meant sharing meals, playing board-games, taking drives together and stopping for picnics, etc. However, in today’s reality, these activities have been replaced by individual activities that are driven by technology. A 2018 study by Childwise in the UK found that 54% of 3- year old children own their own smart device. While this project does not wish to reverse time or to infringe on the advances of technology, it does call into question the behavioural, attitudinal and communicative impacts that these devices are having on young children if they are not monitored. An earlier report by Childwise in 2018 found that with the increased popularity of voice-activated tools in the household, children were learning to speak aggressively and rudely by responding to the voice-activated technology which was not correcting their inappropriate language or communication style. This shows there is a need to also invest in parent-child communication so that today’s children develop with the communication skills they need to be active members of the society of tomorrow. How a parent communicates with their child not only impacts the parent-child bond, but also effects the self-esteem of the child, the child’s ability to understand and interpret emotions, their empathy, their willingness to share with others, their ability to listen and understand, their capacity to process negative emotions such as anger, frustration and grief, appropriately, to name but a few. This is why the Inside-Out project will address the communication skills and styles of parents so that they can forge strong parent-child bonds through effective communication. In research conducted to support the development of this application, partners discovered that many of the issues pertaining to poor parent-child communication stem from a lack of coping skills of parents. When parents cannot cope with the modern-day stresses of life, their communication with their children is impacted. Through the proposed Hybrid Curriculum the Inside-Out project aims to build the stress management, self-care and resilience of parents so that they can develop the skills and competences required to fully invest in quality parent-child communication, for the betterment of their child’s development. We further aim to support parents to assess and refine their communication style so that they can practice positive parenting, positive discipline and can respond to their children, rather than react to their behaviour. To address these objectives, the Inside-Out project will develop a wide range of educational resources to support parents, families and front-line educators who support them to address the issues of self-care among parents and which also provide parents with the guidance they need to adapt their parenting styles and behaviours to nurture positive relationships with their children. Envisaged resources include the following: IO1 – Inside-Out Hybrid Curriculum for Parents IO2 - In-service training for Adult Educators IO3 – Inside-Out MOOC
The Inside Out project had three clear objectives: - Support parents to invest in quality parent-child communication - Build the capacity of adult educators through the appropriate in-service training and development of new training materials - Develop an accessible learning platform (MOOC) to host the educational material developed as part of the project
Meath Partnership applied for the Inside Out project to develop resources and materials that respond to the needs of parents that we have worked with over the years through our SICAP programme and other health and wellbeing programmes. The parents we worked with highlighted time and time again the various pressures they are increasingly under eg. time pressure, financial pressure, multi-tasking, paying bills etc. and now more commonly, the constant worry that they face in respect to their children spending an increasingly worrying amount of time online. Parents, children, resource workers and educators shared the need for improved and updated resources that focus on improving communication within the more modern family structure. These resources attempted to address topics such as mental wellbeing, communication skills, social media as a social support and stress management – to name but a few. The Inside Out project addressed the need of parents that wished for more quality time with their children through the increased ability to effectively communicate. In addition, the Inside Out project recognised the need to build the capacity of adult educators who work within the area of parenting support. The Inside Out project developed a new range of innovative training materials which were tailor made to be delivered in various contexts that educators find themselves in. The ‘train the trainer’ so to speak materials, resulted in a unique opportunity for educators to increase their resource pool and provide new, modern courses to their parent groups. Finally, the Inside Out project attempted to develop a highly interactive and user-friendly platform for educators and parents to use when they wish and continually engage with in the years to come. The Inside Out project delivered numerous trainings across Europe to ensure the materials developed addressed the initial needs of the project and to ensure educators were capable of using the materials long after the project has ended.