Kathy Goetz Wolf - Living the Protective Factors: How Parents Keep Their Children Safe and Families Strong

Inspiration from Parents Learning to Live the Protective Factors

A few words of inspiration from parents who are working on building the protective factors in their families:

Working all day, you get tired of getting depressed. I know the things I need to do to make me strong and healthy. Go take care of yourself, exercise, eat right. [Be Strong and Flexible]

I need to be able to step back and be me, to separate. You need to have a life of your own, and your own social life. [Parents Need Friends]

Someone else has experience. Dont be afraid to ask. [Everybody Needs Help Sometimes]

There is no pattern to raising a family. [Being a Great Parent Is Part Natural and Part Learned]

My parents were really strict. I had no voice. But my daughter and I communicate. [Social and Emotional Competence of Children]

I do the things my son likes to do. I even caught a frog with my bare handseven though Im a girly girl! I know hes his own individual. [Give Your Children the Love and Respect they Need]

Copyright 2012 by Kathy Goetz Wolf

Editing and design by Yodelpop, Inc.

ISBN: 9781618429964

Published by:

Strengthening Families Illinois

www.strengtheningfamiliesillinois.org

and

Be Strong Families

www.bestrongfamilies.com

For more information, contact:

Strengthening Families Illinois / Be Strong Families

310 S. Peoria St., Ste. 301

Chicago, IL 60607

Acknowledgments

This book would not exist without the collective that intentionally and unintentionally laid the foundation upon which it builds and on which it dances.

A big and sincere thank you

To Nilofer Ahsan, Judy Langford, and the Center for the Study of Social Policythe Strengthening Families Mothershipfor the protective factors.

To Bryan Samuels for his vision, leadership, and support in getting us started by convening the original Strengthening Families Illinois Leadership Team and introducing a strengths-based, trauma-informed approach to child welfare practice in Illinois.

To Erwin McEwen for keeping the focus on protecting children while strengthening families during his tenure as director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and for putting his leadership vision on the line with courage, heart, wisdom, and passion to do much more than rescue starfish.

To Jeffrey Scott for inspiring the Love Is Not Enough To Keep Your Family Strong campaign and parent cafs with his challenge to Give it to us straight and dont dumb it down and to the Strengthening Families Illinois Leadership Team for hearing him and going with that flow.

To the 7,000-plus parents who have participated in Love Is Not Enough Parent Cafs and contributed their wisdom to this book.

To Lina Cramer, Lisa Lee and the Illinois Family Partnership Network parent leadersWarren Holmes, Stephanie Stuckey, Inez Mackey Ague, Anis Butler, Kim Hubbard, Marquese Martin-Hayes, Celina Orozco, John Hamblet, Robert Evans, Elaine Reeves-Haywood, and Michelle Smith, who as Strengthening Families Illinois partners created the Love is Not Enough Parent Caf process.

To Letechia Holmes, Jamilah R. Jordan, and Lina Cramer for distilling our spiritual journeys and common valuesand coalescing our vision to create Awaken to Your Potential. And to Dara Long-Griffin, Celina Orozco, Tarcisio Ornelas-Gomez, and Luvenia Sims for continuing adaptations, refinements, and improvements.

To Jackie Lalley for being there along the way with patient, careful, compassionate, wise, and skillful word and graphic magic that makes whatever we want to say resonate and pop.

To Guy Schingoethe for holding it down and to all current and former team members of Strengthening Families Illinois who strive every day to maximize positive energy and live the protective factors.

To Ruben Mahboobi (GuRubee) for being guide, muse, and partner on so many important journeys, including this one, and for always standing (not to mention delivering).

And finally

To my familyby birth and by choice, extended and nuclear, ancestors and descendantsfor experiences both building and tearing down protective factors and for loving and strengthening me. I am who I am because of you.

Foreword

We all want to awaken to our potentialto show the world the best of who we are. Strengthening Families Illinois and Be Strong Families are committed to assisting all family members with awakening to their potential as people, parents, and leaders. We do this by offering workshops, webinars, events (such as Love Is Not Enough to Keep Your Family Strong Parent Cafs), tools (such as Caf Talk: Lets Get to the Heart of Family), and published written materials (posters, calendars, books, and articles).

This book is about how living the Strengthening Families protective factors can assist you in awakening to your potential as a parent. It is written to be simple and accessible. The ideas in it are ones you can take action on immediately. This book can be read cover to cover or you can do what I like to do with books: when youre dealing with something and feel like you need some wisdom or guidance, just flip it open to a page and read that page. Dive into it anywhere and soak up what you need. As you do that, I encourage you to follow what the Buddha says:Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

The wisdom in this book is not my own. It comes from many places. Perhaps the most important place is from people like you, the reader. The ideas suggested in the body of this book for living the protective factors come from the more than 600 Love Is Not Enough Parent Cafs that have been held in Illinois over the past four years. At these gatherings, parents have come together and shared wisdom and ideas for keeping their families strong and their children safe. Ive collected it and synthesized it so it can be useful to people who have not been able to attend cafs. (For more information on Love Is Not Enough Parent Cafs, see page 92.)

For Strengthening Families Illinois and the parent leaders whose work made this book possible, there is nothing more important in life than our families. Keeping them strong, safe, and healthy is our top priority. Together we are learning how to do that better and better. We are also becoming one family. We understand that we are all connected and what happens to any one of usor any one of our childrenhappens to all of us. We also know that if we are strong and healthy as individuals and families our communities and our society will also be strong and healthy. If you agree with these ideas and are committed to keeping your own family strong and making a difference in your community, we invite you to join us by going to www.strengtheningfamiliesillinois.org or www.bestrongfamilies.com and filling out our parent leader recruitment form. Or you are welcome to attend one of our many open events. Enjoy!

January 2012

Contents

Introduction:

Protecting Your Family

KEEPING YOUR FAMILY SAFE

A parents most basic responsibility is to keep his or her children safe. As parents, we know this and we work hard to do it. What do you think of when you think of keeping children safe? Most people think of things like keeping them away from dangerous people and things. We start early by putting car seats in our cars, telling people who want to hold our baby to wash their hands and make sure they support the babys head, covering electrical sockets, and installing safety locks on cupboards where we keep products that could be poisonous to our children. We bundle up our babies when its cold outside. We are careful who we ask to babysit. And we continue this effort to keep them safe as they grow. We help them to protect themselves by teaching them to avoid talking to strangers and never let people touch them inappropriately. We keep them indoors if its dangerous to play outside, and we warn them to look both ways before crossing the street. We also protect our children by providing for their basic needsfood, clothing, shelterso they dont get sick. And we take them to the doctor when they do get sick. A lot of our effort to be good parents goes into keeping our children safe, and we do thousands of things each day to protect and provide safety for our kids.