Parent Express for 08-Jun-2006

Welcome to Parent Express, the PCI e-zine! Here you will find updates on the Parent Coaching Institute, along with ideas and practical tips for the parenting journey.

Summer can be a wonderful time for play! This e-zine promotes the importance of play in all our lives and the need to relax and have fun.

The article below makes distinctions between video game playing and real play and provides some ideas for supporting children's imaginative play. The DVD listed under "Parenting Tip" is for parents and kids, ages 6-12. It is a joyful reminder about the power of play to support numerous cognitive and social skills.

This will be the last e-zine as we begin our summer. While the PCI is open (closed June 14 - June 27 for vacation) and we are in full swing the end of June through August with our summer quarter classes, we know you are busy with your children and with vacations.

We will resume in mid-August. Until then,

A safe and playful summer to you all!

Gloria DeGaetano, Founder and CEO

Check out our new Video About the PCI Parent Coach Training Program. If you are a forward-thinking professional with an undergraduate degree and a deep calling to work with parents, welcome home. We seek the “best of the best” for our acclaimed distance-learning Parent Coach Certification Training Program™. Please click here for more information. As a PCI Certified Parent Coach™ you’ll have the opportunity to create a parent coaching practice, working with moms and dads who want to take their parenting to the next level. Call today for an application packet: 425-401-1519 or email: info@thepci.com.

Working with a PCI Parent Coach is giving yourself the gift of time out for reflecting, re-grouping, and renewing. Check out our new Video about the PCI Parent Coaching Services.

To find a PCI Parent Coach in your area, please click here. Or call 425-401-1519 for a referral to a PCI Parent Coach selected especially for you. PCI Certified Parent Coaches™ are caring, thoughtful professionals with years of experience working with parents. PCI Certified Parent Coaches™ have successfully completed the PCI Parent Coach Certification Training Program™ —a comprehensive academic one-year, graduate-level program in collaboration with Seattle Pacific University.

Through a series of coaching conversations that can be either by telephone or in person, PCI Parent Coaches help you re-discover your dreams and design your life for more joy and satisfaction.

Moms and Dads, tune in every Saturday morning at 11 a.m. on 1150 AM for true understanding, authentic affirmation, and real-world solutions to parenting challenges while sharing laughter and conversation. We want to hear your stories too! So call us on Saturday!

In the Seattle area, call 425-373-5527. Out of town, call 888-298-5569. Listen to us on the web: www.1150kknw.com

Upcoming topics and guests:

Live and Play in Your World

by Gloria DeGaetano

Recent Play Station ads command us: “Live in Your World, Play in Ours.”

And what is that world they want us, and our children, to play in? A world artificially constructed by others to keep eyeballs glued on images that are also constructed by others. A world where game rules belong to distant strangers, who also dictate indicators of game success and what is currently “cool” if you want to be top dog. And what, pray tell, are we “playing?” in this world? We “play” at being bullies, sexist pigs, demeanors and dominators, laughing at others’ sufferings. We “play” at striking out violently, blowing things up for “fun.” We play at being sadists, rapists, and murderers.

So what’s the difference between playing violent video games and playing pretend, you know the old-fashioned way in the natural world—the world we live and still breathe in? After all, kids have always played violently, haven’t they?

Yes, but play in its human form, as opposed to its machine form, has built-in regulators. We may make guns out of our peanut butter sandwiches when we are seven, but that would be considered quite babyish when we are seventeen and in possession of a healthy self-identity with capacity for healthy emotional relating. Violent play in early childhood is to be expected and regulated. When it’s directed by loving adults, “OK let’s make that stick be a wand now with magical powers to heal instead of a sword to kill,” children learn more about the celebration of life than feeding an obsession with death.

Violent play in the real world diminishes with maturity because the reason for violent play in the first place is to come to terms with death, suffering, and our ability to harm carte blanche, as guiltless and gut-less low lives we all can be or become. Once we get that figured out, around age 9 or 10, violent play loses its allure. The glamour in making other people suffer leaves permanently. That’s the natural way. (For more information on how this works, see my book: Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill).

Isn’t it a great relief to know that if we support our youngsters in their natural play in the 3-D world and guide it to include more life-enhancing elements, that the likely course of events will be a waning, not a waxing of violent tendencies? In my book, Parenting Well in a Media Age, I devised a chart on the distinctions between imaginative play and imitative play. Children will imitate what they see on TV and hear on their iPod. What is crucial is that we make sure their imaginative play far exceeds their imitative play. Imaginative play may include images from the most recent movie, but it would also include bits and pieces of the child’s experiences. A tidbit from a visit to grandma’s, animals she recently saw at the zoo, a line from the song you sing before she goes to sleep. This is pure and wonderful play that is called generative play, because the child is generating something new, something unique, and something all her own. It is the essence of imaginative play and it’s essential for healthy development. Without it, our children are caught in the Play Station world and have no way of getting out.

It can be seem overwhelming to steer children to make up their own play scenarios and help them enjoy being in those scenarios given the pressure to be a cookie-cutter kid of a counterfeit culture—a culture that continually bombards youngsters with distractions away from their world and with enticements into this un-natural, nihilistic nightmare. So what’s a parent to do? At the Parent Coaching Institute we emphasize several important parent actions:

Read More

Video Clip About PCI Parent Coaching Services

Check out our new Video About the PCI Parent Coaching Services. Featured in this five-minute video are PCI Certified Parent Coach™ Debbie Wiedner
( www.ParentEaseCoaching.com) and two of her clients and PCI Certified Parent Coach™ Karen Bierdeman
( www.ParentWiseCoaching.com) and one of her clients.

Time to Transform™ Workshop Series begins in September This series of 3 weekends (September 22-24, Nov, 10-12, and Feb, 2-4, 07) offers teachers, administrators, directors, or parents a comprehensive plan to radically revamp their school, entire district, or non-profit organization. Exciting, new research is shared, powerful assessment tools given, and practical ways to catalyze profound positives changes, the end result. Why not wake up next spring knowing you have entirely transformed your current challenge? For more information, please call Gloria DeGaetano at 425-401-1519 or 1-888-599-4447.

Podcasts of Parent Appreciation Radio are now available.You can find them in itunes by entering Parent Appreciation Radio. You can go to www.ParentAppreciation
Radio.com and download them that way. Or you can visit the PCI Blog. New podcasts are put up regularly. Let me know what topics you would like discussed on Parent Appreciation Radio by emailing me: gloria@thepci.com and PCI Coaches will address them. I will let you know when the interview on your topic will air.

Your Parenting Coach column for June is on the topic of "Taking Care of Ourselves While We Take Care of the Kids."

July 7, 8:30 AM- 4PM, Bellevue, WA Your Vocation Identity: Blessing Your Calling
A workshop with Diane Dreher Ph.D., Professor of English and member of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University. Diane has credentials in spiritual counseling and holistic health, is the author of The Tao of Inner Peace, Inner Gardening, The Tao of Womanhood, The Tao of Personal Leadership, and a forthcoming book on vocation, and leads workshops on leadership, callings, and personal growth throughout North America. Each season of your life offers new opportunities to develop your calling, to:

• Discover your personal strengths,
• Detach from energy drains and distractions,
• Discern the values that inspire you with joy and purpose,
• Direct your life with meaningful goals and vital strategies for success.

Drawing insights from Renaissance lives and the latest research in positive psychology, this workshop will help you affirm your vision, overcome obstacles, uncover hidden stepping stones to success, and create powerful new possibilities in this season of your life. Please call 425-401-1519 to register for this workshop. Cost: $129.95 (includes lunch)

August 5, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm, Mindful Parenting Workshop, with PCI Certified Parent Coach™ Bridgid Normand who specializes in mindfulness for parent .

Feeling pressed for time, chronically preoccupied, and stressed by the realities of raising children in these times? Give yourself the gift of a day. This workshop will slow you down, replenish your inner resources, connect you with what is truly important, and show you how to be truly present for yourself and your children.

The workshop is being held in her studio on Vashon Island and includes healthful snacks and a home-cooked lunch. There is an optional day camp for 5 – 11 year olds. Childcare for younger children can be arranged as requested.

Cost is as follows:

• Individual $100 and couple $170
• First child $35 and second child $30

For more information contact Bridgid Normand at 206-463-6234, or email her at imaginefamily@gmail.com . Registration is limited. A few reduced fee places are available.

Read Bridgid’s article on mindfulness.

Bridgid also offers Family Days. Come as a family and through art, play, outside activities and dialogue reinvigorate your life as a family. Contact Bridgid for more details.

To engage Gloria DeGaetano for a keynote or workshop, contact her at 425-401-1519 or 1-888-599-4447.

Play Time Every Day Film maker, Jules Oosterwegel from Amsterdam has created a wonderful DVD that shows children all around the world, playing! The Playtime Project was initiated by the Dutch National Olympic Committee and UNICEF. Over 2,500 schools in the Netherlands participated. Playtime: 50 Street Games from Kids Worldwide can be a catalyst for hours of fun this summer. For more information on how to purchase this inspiring DVD, visit www.2ukids.nl. Jules wants us to, “Organize play hours and teach children skills for games. Go outside and play!”