Baby & Toddler Talks: Developing Resilience to Deal with Challenges of Parenting Young Children

Lunch & learn designed to help parents of young children develop their parenting skills.

This workshop will focus on developing resilience as a parent of young children. Resilience has been defined as the ability to use one’s resources and knowledge to deal with problems or setbacks in parenting in an adaptive way, according to Gavida-Payne et al1. Through participating in this workshop, learners will have the opportunity to:

  • Understand the importance of developing coping skills, and its connection to resiliency. This seminar will also delve into the relationship between and effect of parental resiliency on health outcomes of the parent and of the child.
  • Learn about how your family can become more resilient as a whole. In addition to building coping mechanisms as an individual, the workshop will address strategies that can be adopted by the whole family. Learn to cope with stressors together, and to build stronger relationships.
  • Learn about resiliency skills that are specific to a widely experienced parental challenge: fatigue. Learn about the effects of parental fatigue on the parent-child relationship, and about strategies you can develop to manage fatigue in a positive way.

There will also be an opportunity for an open-forum discussion amongst workshop participants at the end of the session.

References:
1. Gavida-Payne S, Denny B, Davis K, Francis A, Jackson M. Parental resilience: A neglected construct in resilience research. Clinical Psychologist. 2015;19(3):111-121
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cp.12053/pdf

Facilitators: Prof. Jennifer M. Jenkins (OISE/ U of T), Nadine Nejati and Vishalini Sivarajah

Nadine is a second year medical student at the University of Toronto, and is completing a community placement with the Family Care Office. She completed her Bachelor of Health Sciences Honours degree at McMaster University, with a minor in Psychology.

Vishalini is a second year medical student at the University of Toronto, and is completing a community placement with the Family Care Office. She completed her Bachelor of Health Sciences Honours degree at McMaster University, with a specialization in Global Health.