Family & Parenting Programs

Parenting the Love and Logic Way® is a group-based curriculum.  This program addresses the daily challenges of raising responsible and respectful children.  Throughout this course parents will gain insight in how to effectively stop arguing, how to use empathy with your child to foster a strong relationship, and how to support your child in the joys and heartaches of making day-to-day decisions.

Basic principles include: preserve and enhance the child's self-concept, teach children how to own and solve the problems they create, share the control and decision making, combine consequences with high levels of empathy and warmth and build the adult-child relationship.

Class Topics:

  • The daily challenges of raising responsible, respectful children

  • How to neutralize arguments

  • Using empathy to foster a strong relationship

  • How to help children learn the joys and heartaches of making decisions

  • Setting boundaries

  • Appropriate discipline techniques

Class Details:

  • This is class is available online two times a year

  • Parents and caregivers with children of any age

  • Pre-registration required

  • $45 fee for individuals/ $70 fee for a couple includes all sessions and materials.

The Nurtured Heart Approach®

The Nurtured Heart Approach®, a relationship-focused strategy originally developed for working with children who are challenged behaviorally, socially and academically.

Shown to create a change in all children, The Nurtured Heart Approach® can be beneficial to families with children diagnosed with ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder and other behavioral, emotional and anxiety related symptoms.

Leave with three strategies:

The 3 Stands™

Stand One: Absolutely No!
I refuse to give my time, energy and relationship to negative behavior. I will not accidentally foster failure nor will I reward problems by responding to them in animated ways. I will save my time and energy searching for success.

Stand Two: Absolutely Yes!
I will relentlessly and strategically pull the child into new patterns of success. I will constantly recognize the success and achievement that children are displaying no matter how small and present them with clear, undeniable evidence of their value and how great they are.

Stand Three: Absolute Clarity!
I will have clear and consistent consequences for children when a rule has been broken. “Here are the rules, and here’s what happens when you break a rule.”

Class Details:

  • Parents, caregivers and professionals with children of all ages and in all stages

  • Pre-registration is required

  • $45 fee for individuals/ $70 fee for a couple includes all sessions and materials

  • This class is offered as a 6 hour Saturday, or 7 weeks on Tuesdays. There is a greater benefit of taking the class over 7 weeks to help support parents through the skills and reflecting after practicing at home.

Circle of Security Parenting

At times all parents feel lost or without a clue about what their child might need from them. Imagine what it might feel like if you were able to make sense of what your child was really asking from you. The Circle of Security Parenting™ program is based on decades of research about how secure parent-child relationships can be supported and strengthened.  COSP helps parents with children who have trouble with emotional regulation, impulse control, disruptive behavior, aggression and withdrawal/detachment.

Circle of Security Parenting

 Learning Objectives of the Program:

  • Understand your child’s emotional world by learning to read the emotional needs

  • Support your child’s ability to successfully manage emotions

  • Enhance the development of your child's self esteem

  • Honor your innate wisdom and desire for your child to be secure

Class Details:

  • Parents & caregivers with children 4 months to 10 years of age

  • Pre-registration required

  • $45 fee for individuals/ $70 fee for a couple includes all sessions and materials.

Strengthening Families

Strengthening Families®

Strengthening Families® is the only parenting class at Mercer that includes children 7 years old and up. Caregivers and children learn new skills and then are given the opportunity to use those skills in a family activity.

Strengthening Families® is proven to:

  • Delay the onset of adolescent substance use

  • Lower levels of aggression in youth

  • Increase the resistance to peer pressure in youth

  • Reduce youth conduct problems in school

  • Improve parent skills including building a positive relationship with their youth, setting appropriate limits, and following through on consequences, while showing love and support for their children.

A program designed to bring families together and create an environment with lots of love, but very definite limits. Research has shown this program to be a protective factor against substance abuse, aggression, and failure in school. This is an evidence based program and endorsed by NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) and the US Department of Education.

Strengthening Families® is proven to improve parent skills including building a positive relationship with their youth, setting appropriate limits, and following through on consequences, while showing love and support for their children.

***Enrollment is only complete when paperwork and payment have been received at Mercer Family Resource Center. Must be received 24hr before class.

Class Facilitator:

Anna Hebbert 307-233-4276 ahebbert@mercercasper.com