Fatherhood Channel

Congressman Kendrick Meek demonstrates the power of technology and partnership to connect with constituents. Reprinted from Redefining Relationships.

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.

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.

A sour economy, soaring healthcare costs, and difficult job market is leading increasing numbers of men to marriage education classes for tips and tools to bring greater harmony to their families, improve relationships with spouses and children, and strengthen their ability to weather financial challenges.

While there is no one size fits all approach to reducing teen pregnancy, educational programs that focus on helping youngsters better express themselves through conversations with trusted confidants offer much promise. That’s especially so when confidants are parents and other significant adults who are able to model healthy relationship building skills.

Research demonstrates that PAIRS relationship skills training, a behavioral/cognitive educational approach developed, evaluated, and refined over a quarter century, has the potential to reverse the trend of marital and family breakdown and significantly contribute to strengthening families and improving outcomes for children.

How do we respond when tragedy afflicts loved ones who are instantly a world away? How can we answer when family and friends are trapped dying or dead within collapsed homes and buildings, babies and their mothers are crying out unanswered prayers for help amidst the chaotic ruins, thousands of corpses are bearing silent witness to helplessness in the face of tragic devastation, basic services that provide sustenance and life are eviscerated, and disease and desperation is rising each moment from the ruins? For the residents of Carrfour’s Little Haiti community, some answers were clear.

If any of these 12 statements sound familiar, discover how relationship skills training can help you step back from the brink of family breakdown and divorce to save your marriage and family: “I can never forgive you,” “I can’t talk to you,” “I just don’t love you anymore,” “I never really loved you,” “I’ll never be happy in this relationship,” I’m in love with someone else,” “I’m so angry at you,” “It’s too late,” “There’s no chemistry,” “You betrayed me,” “You’re not the person I married,” “You’ll never change.”

Politicians are not the only ones calling it quits this month. In divorce filings nationwide, an estimated 100,000 American couples will throw in the towel on their marriages in January. While those decisions will not receive the attention of this week’s political announcements, for their children especially, the lifelong impact will be far more significant.

More than a quarter century ago, Lori Gordon, a Northern Virginia marriage and family therapist whose early career included extensive work with adolescents in residential treatment centers, realized that one of the most important contributions mental health professionals and educators could make to children was to help their parents’ own relationships. Mrs. Gordon developed the concept of relationship skills training into an educational approach that today ranks among the preeminent, evidence-based marriage education programs in the world, having evolved into a comprehensive model that attends to ethics, program evaluation, rigorous quality management, and ongoing training for leaders.

Six month follow-up results from 996 recent participants in PAIRS brief (9-12 hours) relationship skills training classes validate significant benefits and the highest levels of client satisfaction. This report, by PAIRS Foundation’s Research Director Amanda Falciglia, offers meaningful evidence of the lasting impact of relationship skills classes for marriages and families.

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