Parenting Education

On August 31, 2020, at 10:00 a.m., First Teacher will host a Zoom activity for parents and children about training service dogs. Great Futures preschool teacher Kim Rosales and Hadley, her Black Labrador Retriever, will talk about their experience training service dogs. Kim will read out loud, share some experiences, and take questions from everyone participating.

Please join and share your questions and experiences with service dogs, and encourage your children to ask questions and get involved. A Zoom link will be available at First Teacher’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/FirstTeacherPMF. Check back for future Zoom activity information.

First Teacher Zoom activities are free to parents and children in Port Angeles, Sequim, Clallam Bay, Neah Bay, Forks, and anywhere in Clallam County. Contact First Teacher if you would like to host a Zoom activity.

First Teacher is a service of the nonprofit Parenting Matters Foundation.

Law is an important service to the health of our community. Parenting is even more important.

The First Teacher program is hosting a series of parent-child online activities with Zoom events during the COVID-19 pandemic. These will be free parent-child activities, discussions, and educational events for parents, caregivers, and guardians in Clallam County. They will be weekly, at 10:00 a.m. every Monday. Parents and kids can ask questions via Zoom’s chat feature.

The sessions will usually involve a host reading a story and facilitating a discussion about a topic related to parenting and children’s needs. Topics will range from discussing childhood development to doing physical activities to considering special needs some people in our community have.

Topics in the first part of the series will include preparing preschoolers for kindergarten, exploring sibling rivalry, stretching and poses to promote body awareness and flexibility, and training and working with service dogs.

Topics will be of interest to toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary school children. If you have something you want to share, please consider being a session host. Contact First Teacher with your suggestions.

To join the Zoom session, go to First Teacher’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/FirstTeacherPMF.

The First Teacher Zoom sessions started August 10, 2020, and are expected to continue to run during the pandemic times. Families from Port Angeles, Sequim, Joyce, Neah Bay, Clallam Bay, La Push, Forks, and anywhere in Clallam County are invited.

Core parenting skills

Kids don’t come with manuals. Some parenting skills are innate and don’t need to be learned, but most parenting skills need to be learned or at least developed. The learning process is never ending.

When parents develop their parenting skills they can give their children many things. The act of developing our own skills models for our kids that life is a constant effort to improve ourselves. We can provide our kids a life full of meaning, kindness, flexibility and resilience. Helping our kids to stop and think about their experiences teaches critical thinking and self-control skills. When we learn to accept and acknowledge our children’s feelings, and help them work through their feelings, we help them learn to utilize all of their many neural networks. Developing our own parenting and relationship skills develops, to the fullest extent as possible, our child’s brains.

You can find a list of excellent and easy to use parenting books and resources based on modern neuroscience principles and attachment theory at this page.