Family Wellness

Links for Parents

Links for Teens

 

Parents:

You invest a lot of time and effort into keeping your kids safe and healthy. In fact, it’s possibly the most important thing you’ll do as a parent. You make sure they get enough sleep, eat fruits and vegetables, and brush their teeth. Prevention is the key to keeping your child well. Preventive measures—also called “protective factors”—can help keep your child from using alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.1 In contrast, risk factors are like red flags that can warn you about possible dangers in your child’s future—and help you take steps to prevent those dangers.

Parents can provide one of the most important protective factors: a strong family bond. When you and your children hang out and have fun together, you develop a sense of closeness and trust and help strengthen family ties. Time together also gives you a chance to share your values and expectations about different issues, including substance use. Understanding risk and protective factors is complicated because they both influence decisions and behaviors. In addition, what may be a risk factor for one person may not be a risk factor for someone else. But, if you let your child know up front that you don’t approve of young people using alcohol, tobacco, or drugs, your child is less likely to use them. Research shows that parental influence is a primary reason that youth don’t do drugs, so it is important to speak up and let your children know where you stand.

You have a chance to improve many of your child’s protective factors every day, regardless of her age or stage. Start by spending time together—cook and eat dinner together, go for a walk, ride your bicycles, drive the carpool, play board games, volunteer at the animal shelter, or share other activities that you and your child can enjoy together. Like the steps you take to keep your child’s body healthy, you can develop a solid relationship to help protect her from substance use and help keep her well in body, mind, and spirit.

parenting classes

Are you stressed as a parent and need a little support? Thursday Evenings from 6:00-7:30 Call to Sign Up! 505-326-7878. Here are the dates for upcoming groups:

We provide a loving curriculum that allows each parent to learn parenting techniques that are more comfortable and effective for the child and parent. We learn from evidence based curriculum and from each other.

 “Step Up" Group

 Desert View's "Step Up" is a violence intervention program for teens that have been violent with parents/guardians, siblings, family members or peers. This may include assaults, threats, property destruction or emotional abuse.


"Step-Up" is a 6 week evidence based curriculum group for teens, along with one support and education group for parents.  

Here are the dates for upcoming groups:

·        April 22nd - June 3rd 2009

·        June 17th - July 22nd 2009