Fatherhood Channel

PAIRS DTR, a free iPhone app available today from iTunes, helps couples, families, parents, and friends strengthen relationships. Developed by the nonprofit PAIRS Foundation, a leader in relationship skills training, PAIRS DTR for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad guides users through a practical, five-step communication exercise that can be posted on Facebook or shared by e-mail.

Their eyes still sparkle with the innocence of youth; their eager smiles and endearing manners invite understanding and empathy. For many of these children, behind their eyes, smiles and natural charm are traumatic images, memories, and anxieties that rob them daily of the carefree joys of childhood. These children do not live in Haiti or anywhere else that is the focus of global campaigns for urgent public support, rescue and contribution. They live in Miami-Dade’s Liberty City, minutes from Florida’s southern capitals of relative wealth, abundance, and extravagance. Over the past month, a team of instructors and research staff from PAIRS Foundation had the privilege of working with the fourth and fifth graders of Liberty City Elementary School, sharing practical skills and strategies for better understanding themselves and others, deepening empathy, expressing emotions, resolving differences and conflicts, and caring for the relationships they cherish.

Escape to a remarkable 23-acre retreat at the luxurious Hyatt Regency Bonaventure Conference Center and Spa in Weston, Florida (minutes from Fort Lauderdale airport) for four days of professional training on the best practice in marriage enrichment, March 10-13, 2010. Immerse yourself in powerful, proven, experiential curricula that deliver lasting benefits for participants in marriage, fatherhood and family education programs.

PAIRS team arrived in Nashville Thursday to share skills and strategies for resilient relationships and families with nearly 300 soldiers and spouses from the 101st Airborne Division, the only Air Assault division in the world. We returned to our homes in South Florida Sunday having learned lifelong lessons in courage, valor, faith, service and sacrifice.

T. Williard Fair, President of the Urban League of Greater Miami and Chairman of the Florida Department of Education, encourages efforts to strengthen marriages and families as the foundation for revitalizing schools, communities, and improving the well-being of children during a visit to a PAIRS relationship skills class in Liberty City.

Join our mission of creating a safer, saner, more loving world through evidence-based educational programs for fatherhood, marriage and families. PAIRS professional training prepares educators, counselors, health care professionals, clergy, and others to deliver the world’s premier relationship skills training programs. Enrollment is now open for professional, certification training in English and Spanish, Weston, Florida, March 2010.

Seven in ten parents of school-age children responding to a recent survey said they’ve considered separation or divorce. Six months after participating in a nine hour class to improve communication, emotional understanding, empathy and conflict resolution skills, the percentage who said they never consider separation or divorce doubled.

Marriage education helps couples with children strengthen their marriages and families. The percentage who never consider divorce doubled after just nine hours of relationship skills training.

Last Saturday, at the request of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, PAIRS Foundation began delivering relationship skills training classes to the parents of fourth and fifth graders at Liberty City Elementary School and continued yesterday with programs for the students themselves as well as the teachers, administrators, and staff who impact the youngsters’ lives each day. The weekly classes will continue over the next month. In 15 years of delivering programs that empower fathers, marriages and families, I have never seen groups so enthusiastically embrace the opportunity for learning, growth, and discovery that I witnessed in this first week with the Liberty City participants. Our collective hope is that this experience will strengthen the families of Liberty City, help more fathers stay actively, responsible engaged in the lives of their sons and daughters, and provide new opportunities for couples and families of all types to create lives in which their dreams for themselves and their children have a better chance of coming true.

PAIRS team members meet weekly to share Appreciations, New Information, Puzzles, Concerns with Recommendations, and Wishes, Hopes and Dreams. This week, Sanford Rosenthal helped the team learn valuable life lessons that deepened our appreciation for our own resources and abilities and helped us better understand the challenges people with disabilities face daily.