Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hey. Hey. This is Phil Clark at just say something. And I want to welcome you back to our series of podcasts that we are doing here at just say something. Be on the lookout, because every Tuesday of this year, 2024, we will be releasing a new podcast.
In this, we highlight our programs and we also highlight some of our partnerships and some of the additional work that we are doing in our community.
And so you just want to stay tuned and you never know who may be next as a guest.
So just say something. Has been around since 1986. We are a community based nonprofit organization, and our goal here is to get our families to have conversations centered around drugs and alcohol. There's so many different methods, so many different ways that we teach this. It's more than just the old days of just say no. There's so much more to it these days. So I want to welcome you again. We've been covering our parenting programs with our parenting director, Lynn Hooper. And so if you joined us in week one of this series, we covered our parenting wisely class, which is for families who have children from birth to about eight or nine years old, which is a five week class.
In our second session of this series, we covered back in control. Back in Control is a six weeks class, and it's for those little Darlins who aren't little Darlins anymore from about eight or nine through high school. And so this particular week or last week, we talked about our transparenting, which is for families who are going through some type of trauma or drama, whether that's a divorce or separation or something along that line. So this week is our fourth series or fourth part of this series that we have that we offer here. Just say something. And so today, again, we're talking about Triple P, our positive parenting program.
And I'm excited to have our parenting director, Lyn Hooper, back with us again. If you've been listening for the last few weeks, you understand how important Lynn is to the success of this organization. And so, Lynn, with that, I would like to welcome you back to this series.
And, you know, I've said a few things about you as we go into this four part series, and I don't know what's left other than say, you are our parenting guru, and I would put you up against any other person in South Carolina as far as teaching parents, connecting with parents, and providing them the opportunity to learn new skills.
So welcome you back and just tell us a little bit first about you and how you landed at just say something, and then we'll get into today's conversation about triple P. Thank you.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Well, it was kind of interesting how I got here.
My house burned, and at that time, I had a portfolio, and I was doing seminars for.
It's hard to even remember the name of the career track. I was doing seminars for career track, working with them, and my portfolio, of course, burned up. And I remember I was sitting in my husband's office, and I saw this ad in the paper for a part time parenting coordinator. And because I had raised a family and was a mother or a parent that I liked that, I kept looking at that and thinking, you know what? I'm going to call about that. So I did. And at that time, we were Greenville family partnership. We have had a name change since then, but it was Greenville family partnership then. And so I got an interview with Carol Reeves, who was the director, then went in and talked with her. And through the process of several different meetings together, I got the job because it was a new job. They were just starting to work on having. Offering parenting classes with their mission. And they had hired a lady to do this job, but she had gotten very sick, and she could not do the job. So that's when they put the ad out to find someone else, and I was selected to do it. So I started out, Phil, not really knowing anything, but the one thing she told me, do not try to reinvent the wheel on parenting. There are many organizations out there that already do it and have definite ways to do it. So what I want you to start doing is going around to the different organizations and talking with people and seeing where we can fit. So I talked to many places and wound up with Red Cross. Red Cross was the person that they were doing parenting classes, but their classes were for parents of children from birth to six years old. So I met with Charlote Ford, who at that time was the parenting person at Red Cross. They don't do parenting classes there anymore, but that was 26 years ago. So I met with her, and we decided that we could, at that time, our office. We did not have a classroom space in our office, but Red Cross did. So we worked on a situation where I could come in there and do their parenting classes from birth to six, but we could also add the adolescent part. And, of course, what our mission was, prevention of drugs for kids. So that is how we started. I started at Red Cross doing that. We started with four parents sometimes, and it took probably two or three years for us to begin to gain parents. And then Red Cross quit doing parenting classes. So at that time, we had moved locations, and we had classroom space. So that is how we started building the program.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Okay, well, started with four parents. And then I think when you came in this morning, you said that you had 15 in your class last night. So we've definitely grown. We've definitely progressed, and that's all due to your efforts. And again, very much appreciate you and what you do for. Just say something. And then again, for our community.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: So today our topic is triple P positive parenting program. So can you give those who are listening with us today kind of a quick overview of what P is?
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Yes. Triple P is a program that addresses behavioral, emotional and developmental problems in.
Now, it's used a lot of different ways throughout the state of South Carolina, but how we use that program here is we use it more with working with individual parents. When they have a problem with a child in a certain area that triple P addresses, we work with that parent on that. How I do it through my classes in parenting wisely. I give my parents an opportunity after they finish parenting wisely, if they have a child that they need individual attention to help with a problem, like for young children, like disobedience, not wanting to go to school, aggression, being physically aggressive with other kids, whining, small children that whine a lot. Just a lot of different individual topics that we can help these parents with. So I give my parents an opportunity to sign up through me to come in and get additional help. And so they do that probably. I have maybe one or two or maybe three from each different class that feels like they need some individual help on some things. So when they come in, I give them a tip sheet on some positive ways because triple P is positive parenting. So I give them a tip sheet on some different ways, some different skills that they can use to try to help solve the problem they have, and then they report back to me, and then we work together to see if that's beginning. Some of the skills that I share are beginning to work. So that's how we do the individual.
Now in different places, they do it different. We also offer P, which is the positive parenting program through a setting of a group, like a PTA meeting or maybe a garden club of a lot of women that have kids, community centers, places that would want someone to come in and talk with a group. And we talk about different parents, like raising resilient children, helping children have a positive outlook on life, helping them to learn to be confident in themselves, high self esteem, those kind of things we talk about in that kind of setting. And then there is another program that we do. It's called group parenting. And you take like four sessions of that and you work with maybe a group of 2357, something like that, and you stay on topics, I think there's four topics in that particular one. And you talk about those and you work with parents to try to help them find ways, solutions with problems that they might be having with their children. On an individual level, it's kind of different from parenting wisely because we cover so many different parenting skills. But then they can come back to us with needs for triple P and have the opportunity to go a little further on some things that they have concerns about with their children.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Okay, so triple P being different than parenting wisely and back in control to where they have a set number of weeks for each one of those programs, triple P is more or less as the parent needs additional support.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yes. Like for instance, if I put it out there for my parenting wisely parents when their five week session is ending, if you are interested in more help in these particular areas with your children, then sign up for triple P. So they do sign up, and I do more individual than I do some seminar, but I do more individual. So when they sign up for it, I call them, get a time for them to come into the office, and if they can't come in, we'll talk about it over the phone. I give them some tips and some skills that will help them with this particular problem and ask them to work on those. And then we come back together. Maybe they take a week or so to work on it, and then we come back together and talk about what works, what doesn't. Is it helping your child? So sometimes you can solve it and they can sit with me 2 hours and I give them these tips. They take them home and work on them and they solve the problem with the child. So sometimes only two settings together, sometimes it takes more. But we're willing to try everything we can to help that child solve that. I mean, to help that parent solve that child with their children.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Okay. All right, great. So that was a little bit about triple P. Let me ask you this one question, Lynn, because I know it comes up a lot or not as a question for parents. So a family has three children.
Does one size fit all when it comes to parenting?
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Oh, no. Absolutely it doesn't. You can have two children, three children, five children.
None of them are alike.
And I get this question from a lot of parents in the different classes I do. Why are children different when they're raised in the same family with the same rules, the same structure, the same routines, but yet they're a lot different.
They have different ideas about things. But of course, no one child has the same personality, right?
[00:14:39] Speaker A: So I know that causes for some families conflict. I know one thing I say when I'm out in the corporate world talking, our companies provide our employees with professional development.
As they look at their employees, most of them are moms and dads or aunts and uncles. And so what is Mr. Business owner out there providing as a means for his employees to have a better home life? Just as we look at professional development, there's that parental development. And so I know we get a lot of the same comment.
I know what I'm doing.
Well, we can't always say what we think, but give me a quick kind of answer to that.
Okay.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Well, in parenting, there are no right and wrong answers. You deal with your kids where they are at that moment. That's exactly what you do. And sometimes you can take all the rules and all the experiences that you have with working with your children, and then sometimes they just don't work. And you wonder, what's wrong with this child? Why is everything I'm trying to do or trying to help this child with not working? And then you got to figure out what went wrong. Where are they and what's going on with them? And how do we help them solve this particular problem that may not affect the other kids in the family at all?
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah, there's so much out there. And so we want our community to know that. Just say something is here as a resource for you. We're not counselors. We're not therapists. We're teaching skills. And so just know that when you come here or if you call to talk to us, if you need to go that route, we can refer you. But again, we are here through our programming to teach skills. And so if you would like to register or to get more information about any of our parenting programs, because this is our fourth in our series of programming for parents that we started out with parenting wisely. Then we went to back in control transparenting. And today we're ending the series with our Triple P positive parenting program. So if you're out there listening, you want more information, please go to our website, just saysomething sc.org or give us a call. 864-467-4099 well, Lynn, I want to thank you for these four weeks together of the programming and spending time with you and sharing with the community the different programs that we offer for our parents. So for our listeners out there, be sure to join us again next week when we have a new topic.
Until then, we'll see you later.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Thank you, Phil.
