Welcome to the Family Education Training Center of Hawaii

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Welcome to the Family Education Training Center
of Hawaii

• 415 sign-in take children to classrooms
• 430 buffet dinner paired sharing
• 500 welcome fill in forms
• 545 parent discussions in two groups
• 615 open-forum counseling of family
• 700 join children for Family Together activity
• 730 goodbye until next week
• Paired sharing While you eat, please tell the
  person next to you about a time when you were a
  child that you most enjoyed being with your own
  family. Then, listen to that persons
  description. What were our parents doing right?

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Welcome to the Family Education Training Center
of Hawaii
Back row Tiare Knewson (Teens) Jenelle Saribay
(Childrens) Courtney Mizufuku
(Childrens) Sharesse Castillo (Intermediates)
Front Uakea Egami (Teens) Lara Stark Wickman
(Teens) Annalyn Mesina (Intermediates)
Michelle Santiago (Intermediates)
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Back row Sharesse (Intermediates) Kristi Kauwe
(Young Childrens) Claire Hirota (Childrens)
Linda Turnbull (Childrens Hoala
Principal) Front row Michelle Santiago
(Intermediates) Janice Gabriel (Teens)
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Family Education Training Center of Hawaii (FETCH)

• Our purposes and methods

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Problems we address

• In some families, members are at war with each
  other.
• Some parents and children spend their time
  fighting each other rather than helping each
  other cope with life challenges.

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Problems we address

• Often, parents are taught that responsible
  parenting consists of
• Carefully guiding our childrens every move
• Helping them avoid mistakes
• Protecting them from painful consequences
• shocking them into listening to us, if necessary,
  by showing them that this is serious

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The problem with these methods

• Children may come to distrust their parents
• They may resent being shocked or talked to
  disrespectfully
• In revenge, they may disrespect back.
• They may come to rebel and to avoid the family
• In extreme cases, they may seek to get back at
  parents by damaging their own lives and futures,
  through high-risk behavior (promiscuity, underage
  drinking, drugs, violence, suicide)

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The problems

• Parents and children almost always WANT to be
  close, to trust and to help each other.
• But they may operate according to the belief that
  in order to be significant in this family they
  need to show each other that they cannot be
  pushed around.

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If left to smoulder

• This discontent may deteriorate into
  life-threatening problems if adolescents rebel
• At best, it may result in life-long alienation of
  family members from each other.

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Our purpose is to

• Assure families are in harmony and balance
• by assuring mutual respect and trust.

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How do we do this

• First, in separate parent and childrens groups,
  we help members build a supportive, safe
  community

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How do we do this?

• we want people to feel good about themselves and
  to focus on their positive strengths

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How do we do this?

• We also emphasize how we are similar to and
  connected to others.
• Our goal is to help us all return to our
  non-defensive, constructive, trusting selveshow
  we were as young children

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Secondly

• We want everyone to be clear about what they
  REALLY want
• We encourage everyone to reflect on their own
  wishes, goals, interests

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We also

• encourage everyone to get clear about their
  already significant number of skills
• And we reinforce these goals as worthy

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Thirdly

• We expose participants to constructive ways to
  reach those goals
• We give lectures on constructive communication
  methods, conflict resolution, group organization,
  goal-setting and problem solving
• We engage in exercises to role play these

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Fourthly

• We help participants reflect on how they are
  currently approaching their goals
• We help participants clarify their current
  operating procedures
• We ask IF these methods are working for them

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Fifthly

• If participants want advice,
• We recommend they use the more constructive
  methods that we have modeled, demonstrated and
  explained