Flat Pack Parent

£4.95 Postage and Packing

This is a discussion pack which aims to get the parents of pre-teens and teenagers talking together (adult to adult) about some of the issues that will arise as their children pass through puberty and on into adolescence so that they will be better able to talk to their children about these issues.

Research shows that teenagers actually want their parents to talk to them about the issues they face, sharing family values and beliefs as well as information. Over recent years, as these issues have made an increasing impact on youth culture, parents have misread the signs that their children have been giving them. Parents have recognised that embarrassment is excruciatingly painful for adolescents and assumed that it is better to avoid these issues altogether.

They have done so believing that schools, youth workers and health professionals have both a responsibility and the 'professional skills' to communicate this kind of information to young people in an appropriate manner.

Family Matters Institute believes that parents should not be leaving this important part of a child's education to the professionals (who are indeed trying to do a good job) but that parents and professionals need to be working in partnership. Parents need to share their opinions, ideas, values, moral beliefs, and personal experiences at home as part of everyday family life.

This will provide a clear frame work for the information that children later receive from the professionals. Young people are then in a good place to create their own independent picture, making sensible and healthy choices based on sound information and within the context of personal values, responsibility and consequences.