Thanks to our funding from the Peter Lang Children’s Trust, Senior Youthworkers Becky and Frankie recently attended a 3-day training course in London on the Mellow Parenting approach to supporting young parents.

The aDOORables project, run in association with Homestart, provides a weekly parent and toddler group for young parents (those aged up to 25). We are currently exploring how we can develop the project into other parts of the district, and better support young parents.

Becky explained the principles she’d learnt, “Mellow Parenting is an intensive course which takes an holistic approach to helping parents of pre-school children. It covers things like trust, discipline and child-development.  Its focus is on helping parents see the positives of what they are already doing, and learning from each other rather than latching onto the course leader as an expert. Each parent has a video made of them at home, and gets to share their ‘best bits’ with the group. Often people figure out from themselves what they’re doing wrong by watching themselves back, and from seeing everyone else’s video”

Frankie added “What I really liked about Mellow Parenting is that it is a Holistic approach, it will enable us to help young people develop not just as a parent, but as a whole person. The course was really good, and we learnt lots. I’ve realised that so far aDOORables has been focusing on the children and their play, and whilst we do spend time talking to the parents over a cup of coffee, now we will be able to really help them reflect on themselves and their roles as parents.”

Over the coming weeks, the pair will be bringing a Mellow Parenting approach to aDOORables, which meets on a Friday in Stroud.