THE PARENTS' SUCCESS KIT: includes the Coaching Guide for Better Parents and Stronger Kids for a structured, effective approach to raising children, A Relaxation and Meditation Companion for stress management, a 52 page (a page a week) Family Journal to record family events, meetings, what’s hot and what’s not, The Talking Tile for effective communication, and a folder to hold your family reports (each kit includes two reports (combinations of parent or student).

THE PARENTS'
SUCCESS KIT
by Dr. Carol Renaud Gaffney

As reviewed in the Providence Journal, Boulder Daily Camera, Scranton Tribune and Portland Oregonian

CLICK HERE to read Dr. Gaffney's letter that accompanies her Parents' Success Kit.

From The Providence Journal - August 19, 1999

BRISTOL -- News about teen slayings fill air waves. Childhood depression is rising. And parents are uncertain of their role. "Tragic" is how Carol Gaffney describes these circumstances affecting today's youth.

Carol Renaud Gaffney, Ph.D., has created a kit she believes may help parents raise stronger kids. It's called The Parents' Success Kit , which includes a coaching guide to help parents and children understand one another.

Gaffney's book helps parents identify problems their children may be having, develop a line of communication with their children, and help their children become more responsible for themselves.

Gaffney said she was inspired to write the book after her son Chris was attacked at college. Traveling one night with a group of friends, Chris was hit from behind with a shovel by a man while another man beat him.

Gaffney recalled receiving the telephone call informing her that Chris was in the hospital. "I was furious," she remembered.

Months after the incident, while Chris recovered from his wounds, Gaffney's anger persisted. Because the assailants were never found there was no legal resolution. So Gaffney said she had no place to direct her anger.

In the introduction to her book, Dr. Gaffney's Coaching Guide for Better Parents and Stronger Kids , Gaffney writes, "I thought at first that if I could ever get my hands on the guys who did this to my son, I would rip them apart. With the passage of time, I decided that if I were able to confront them, anger and violence would henceforth be part of my being, not just in my life. I chose not to let that happen. I remember consciously making the decision to put whatever energy I had into Chris's healing, not into retribution. I decided to stand for something of value. I wanted this atrocious event to make a positive difference."

"I decided to channel my anger into the book," she said.

"When Chris was assaulted I became more determined to crystallize my thinking and techniques toward developing ways families can protect against violence happening to them," Gaffney writes.

"I realized there are two aspects to Chris's story: 1) He had put himself in a vulnerable position through a number of choices he made, and as a result became a victim. 2) The perpetrators had come to a point in their lives in which their violent behavior, their contempt for human life, was an everyday choice.

"My goal in the book is to address the problem from both sides: to provide ways for our children to keep out of harm's way and to provide them with values and choices of behavior that will keep them from resorting to violence. The key to both sides is the parents, their awareness, their knowledge, their involvement in their children's lives and how they guide them to becoming healthy adults."

"For stronger kids," Gaffney writes, "we must be better parents."

For example, Gaffney said, parents need to take responsibility for what kinds of images children see.

"You can't have garbage go into a mind and not have it affected," she said. She said that she had noticed "the media change" in the early 80s with the introduction of cable and channels such as MTV. Eventually media images became more graphic and children were seeing far more adult-oriented subject matter than they had a decade before.

For her own children, Gaffney decided that "this was not good for them" but it felt like "a sense of having my finger in the dam."

A practicing psychologist for about 15 years, Gaffney now works closely with corporations using the Coaching Guide system. She says parents should be aware of their children's routines because any deviation from that routine could be a sign of difficulty.

"If you think there is something wrong, check it out," Gaffney suggested. If parents believe there is a problem, they should "have the problem evaluated by a pediatrician, a family doctor" and "talk with school teachers" to see if the child is doing well.

She said parents "have to be honest with themselves and find someone in the community to help them." That someone, she said, should have the same values they do. This doesn't mean that person must be family members but that they must the same ethical and moral values.

Community is key, said Gaffney. During a lecture, Gaffney said, Gen. Colin Powell told the audience that he "didn't have Netscape, he had Auntscape," a community of family members on his block who watched out for him.

"Parents have to be willing to have that kind of community," said Gaffney. In Dr. Gaffney's Coaching Guide for Better Parents and Stronger Kids , Gaffney outlines three basic principles:

* Parents "can only take their children as far as they [the parents] have gone. They may progress beyond where you are in life, in learning and in personal standards and values, but if they do, it will be because of what they learn from others."

* "Raising children to adulthood is a gradual process of their learning and our letting go."

* "Behavior, yours and your children's, is an expression of biology, psychology, social experience and the yearnings of the soul. The medical and behavioral health fields have been guided by the idea that behavior is a result of the interactions of our biology, psychology and social experiences. The time has come to take the next step and add the concept of the soul to the factors affecting the expression of behavior. The closer your behavior is to the expression of your soul's needs and desires, the more relaxed, confident and healthy you can be as an adult and your children can be during their childhood."

The Parents' Success Kit contains an audio tape for relaxation and meditation, two Family Talk Reports (two disc programs for the computer), a journal for tracking progress, and the Coaching Guide.

Gaffney said that she designed each item to be "easy to carry," so "parents could carry a dog-eared copy" anywhere.

The kit can also be used by children, especially the audio companion. "It will be easy for children to use the tape," said Gaffney. "Children can learn to breathe. They're great at it."