What you need to know:
- FUHSD and Project Cornerstone are offering free workshops to help parents strengthen relationships with their teens.
- The workshops provide valuable resources without the cost of counseling, covering topics like anxiety and communication.
- The next session on Oct. 17 will focus on discussing current events and mental health with teens.
Throughout the 2024-25 school year, FUHSD and Young Men’s Christian Association Project Cornerstone are jointly hosting free online workshops to help parents navigate their relationships with their teens. The workshops are geared toward helping parents and guardians express care for their kids in meaningful ways, navigate sensitive topics with their teens and improve family relationships. They cover a broad scope of topics ranging from managing anxiety to studying the adolescent brain.
For parents seeking assistance in fostering stronger relationships with their teens, these workshops are an accessible resource. As services such as counseling and therapy can be costly nowadays, these charge-free workshops have the potential to be especially impactful for families.
The first workshop, “Creating Caring Relationships,” was held over Zoom on the evening of Sept. 26. The main focus of this workshop was helping parents improve their abilities in expressing care and support for their children, and learning how to connect and build trust in their relationships. In particular, the workshop focused on the Developmental Relationship framework, which was developed in 2013 by Search Institute, an educational research organization. The framework includes five key elements namely expressing care, challenging growth, providing support, sharing power and expanding possibilities.
The structure of the workshops is centered around presentations led by Debbi Headley, Project Cornerstone school partnerships director, who covers the main topics in each session. During each workshop, parents are encouraged to ask questions or share their thoughts at any time during the presentation. Throughout the workshop, there are also reflection activities to engage parents in the content.
Parent-teen relationships are a common concern for many families at Lynbrook. Stevens and school-based therapist Jenna Starnes work with Lynbrook students and parents who are concerned about their family relationships. They reveal that miscommunication and disputes over setting and respecting boundaries can be major culprits of conflict.
“Parents may misunderstand their teens’ behavior or comments, just as teens may misinterpret the way that their parents are showing care,” Starnes said.
Realizing the importance of maintaining healthy parent-teen relationships, Headley and FUHSD therapist Leila Lurie organized these workshops in hopes of bringing more relationship-building resources to families at Lynbrook. Her goal is to help parents learn how to foster stronger relationships with their teens.
“Project Cornerstone firmly believes in a partnership between students, teachers, parents and community members,” Headley said. “One of the things that we do to help young people thrive is by educating their parents.”
A second workshop, “How to Talk to Your Teen About Current Events,” will be held over Zoom from 6:30- 8pm on Oct. 17. The focus will be on helping parents navigate sensitive news topics and trauma with their teens. In doing so, the objective is to protect students’ mental health, improve family relationships and help attendees be capable of recognizing legitimate news sources. Following this workshop, two more will be held in March 2025 that touch on the adolescent brain and managing anxiety, respectively.
Currently, FUHSD is working to improve its resources for members of its community who are struggling with their mental health, emotional wellbeing and family relationships. In the future, the district hopes to implement more accessible services and tools to make a difference.
“It is helpful for us to have conversations about the pressures that teens face along with their guardians’ hopes and dreams, and how we can build a bridge between the two,” Lurie said.
