(MARE Program Director Kirsta Grapentine recently completed an eight-week parenting class. Memoirs and lessons will appear as a series in FAM)

I recently enrolled in a parenting class that focused on early childhood. My purpose for doing so was three-fold: to gather more information on parenting for use during pre-adopt training of prospective adoptive families; to use the information to write parenting articles for MARE’s FAM newsletter; and last but not least, to build my skills as a parent of two young children.

The classes were offered through a local center that was affiliated with the Council on Child Abuse and Neglect. The Center provides a myriad of services to the community including parenting classes, supervised visits for non-custodial parents, support groups and childcare. Excited about the opportunity to learn skills that would make me an even better parent, my first lesson learned was a hard one: nobody voluntarily takes parenting classes. When I shared with friends that I had enrolled in a parenting class they would pause and ask if I was having problems, or if Child Protective Services had recently paid me a visit. Perhaps if the classes had been held at the local Y or in a church, the stigma of taking a parenting class would have been less.

I realize that there is no such thing as the Perfect Parent. There are some parents who are better able to understand and meet their children’s needs than others. I also realize that being a parent is the hardest but most important job in the world. The less-prepared we are and the fewer resources we have, the greater the challenge of parenting seems. But I began to question whether parenting classes were worth the hassle of having to face the knowing glances of those who did not see their merit. This set the stage for my second lesson: check your attitude at the door.

I admit that I was ready to drop out of parenting class before the first one ever began. As I walked toward the Center on the first day of class, a disheveled man rode up on a bicycle and headed toward the same building. In the pit of my stomach I knew that he would be in my class and that I would open the door to find more people inside that were not like me. And I did. Although for confidentiality reasons I cannot disclose specific information about the other individuals in the class, I can say that we were the only family that attended class voluntarily. For some reason I figured that made me better. But by the end of the first class, I realized that I had more in common with these families than not. We all faced similar challenges, and wanted to provide our children with more child-centered and sensitive parenting techniques than our parents had provided us. Although I can’t speak for all of us at the table that day, I can say that I, for one, did not plan on coming back for the next class. But on that first day the teacher offered us each a gift that no one could refuse. The gift was that by the end of the course, we would all have a repertoire of parenting techniques that would work, and that would allow us to discipline our children without resorting to corporal punishment. Every single one of us was back for the second class. And by the end of the course, I had a new type of admiration for my fellow classmates, especially the man who rode to class on a bicycle.

Next issue: What type of a parent are you? Lessons in parenting styles.