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rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_0c38ee1b-184b-5121-8593-a4bd53d54559.png" alt="Screen_shot_2011-08-15_at_1.45.08_PM.png"/>a positive place. That conversation with my young friend reminded me that we never outgrow our need for a sympathetic ear and that if parenting is about any one thing it is about fostering our children's emotional development as they grow and adapt to changing circumstances.

      I hope this handbook will help you develop greater appreciation for what is working well in your own family. Focus on the positive aspects of family life will give you courage and energy to consider honestly the problems you face. The discussions and exercises described in later chapters will help you develop new perspectives on what may not be working so well. The handbook also suggests sorts of activities to look for -- and to organize -- in your community where you can meet others who share your concern for healthy family life.

      But parents are busy people and you may already have enough commitments! Whether you use the Parents Forum approach informally, as a reference, or formally, through participation in events, I hope it will be helpful to you.

      Most of us know instinctively what researchers tell us: that human beings, as social animals, need each other in at least two different ways: We need both the intimacy that comes from close relationships and the affiliation that comes from belonging to a group. Without these connections, we feel lonely and isolated. Participating in Parents Forum gives people a chance to make new friends and practice communications skills that can help us strengthen our relationships with family members. At the same time, Parents Forum activities connect participants to their communities, fulfilling the need for group affiliation.

      You may have picked up this book because you are concerned about stress or unhappiness you have noticed in yourself or a friend or family member. Maybe someone gave you this book because he or she is concerned about you or your children. Perhaps you have young children -- or no children yet -- and you want to look down the road ahead to see what sharp turns and scenic overlooks await you on the parenting journey. However this book got to you, I am glad you have it in hand.

      Perhaps you could say Parents Forum is a program of “smart love,” in that we seek to create a better balance between discipline and affection in our family lives. In sharing our stories -- describing the events of our lives, our reactions and those of people around us, and the eventual outcomes -- we raise our social and emotional intelligence. We become more effective and more loving parents as, using the skills we acquire in Parents Forum, we learn to listen with our hearts.

       Chapter Two

      Beginnings

      Parents Forum grew out of a serious family crisis. Some years ago, one of my teenage children started getting into trouble both in and out of school and began drinking and using other drugs. Within a year, his behavior was out of control. Despite the efforts of teachers, doctors, counselors and court officers who all tried to help us, his father and I did not find effective, long-term support for our son or ourselves in any traditional setting. My husband and I had separated not long before our son's problems began and we later divorced. In looking back, I don't believe that my son's misbehavior caused the divorce or that the divorce caused his misbehavior -- although certainly each made the other more difficult to handle. I do think, however, that the roots of both may be traced to difficulties we all had in communicating our feelings.

      In our early search for help, the focus was always on my son but, in fact, I was as troubled as he was and didn't realize it. My fear and anger, my “control-o-mania,” got in the way of everything! Successful resolution of our shared problems eventually came when we participated in a therapeutic community focused on recovery from addiction, particularly alcohol and other drug abuse. The program, which my ex-husband found for us through a friend, succeeded in helping us all make positive changes. I often wonder now whether improving our communications skills earlier would have helped us avoid many of the conflicts we experienced. At the very least, better communication skills would have helped us manage those conflicts more effectively and treat each other more respectfully. We found the help our family needed through Straight New England, a day-treatment program for young people with substance abuse problems. Founded in the mid-1980s, Straight was a controversial program that has since disbanded. Its unique residential component placed new clients in the homes of families of other young people who had been in the program several months or more. Parents received support for their own recovery (from “co-alcoholism” or codependency) as well as training in how to guide their own child and their “host son” or “host daughter” on the path to recovery.

      Professional addictions recovery staff directed the daily treatment, interviewed parents and monitored the “host homes” to assure compliance with state safety regulations. Funded in part by families' medical insurance, through fees assessed to parents and by fundraising undertaken by parents, the program had its critics -- and it certainly did not work for everyone. But when it worked, as it did in our case, it seemed to work miracles. The angry, self-destructive teenager we brought to Straight became, over the course of twenty months, a confident and purposeful young man.

      As clients in Straight for almost two years, our troubled son, his brothers, his father and I, along with several hundred other families, learned how substance abuse affects both individuals and families. In Straight we learned that alcoholism, or any addiction, is basically a disease of the feelings. With a lot of hard work, my ex-husband and I each succeeded in rebuilding our relationship with our son. This rebuilding was preceded by some “un-building,” as we examined our past experiences to discover the interlocking, unhealthy roles we each played under the influence of substance abuse. To accomplish this, we were charged with two main tasks. First, we had to learn to be emotionally honest, that is, to allow ourselves to experience our feelings and, as appropriate, to express feelings, thoughts and desires in words without blaming ourselves or others. Second, we had to learn to expect and encourage others to do the same.

      Since that desperate time, now happily over, I have seen how putting the lessons of recovery to work in day-to-day family situations can dramatically alter one's perspective even if it does not always alter the outcome of the situation. I've found that the usefulness of these lessons extends to situations involving difficult people and challenges at work and elsewhere outside family life.

      In the Straight parent network, none of us worried about the differences of race, religion, class or social standing that can loom large in ordinary life. We focused instead on the collective safety and individual recovery of our young people and, with those shared concerns foremost in our minds, we helped each other out. In their daily group meetings, our teenagers talked about past injuries they had suffered -- and injuries they had inflicted -- in their families, and they confronted each other about following the steps to recovery and the rules of the program. In twice weekly parent meetings, we adults did the same.

      A central element in our parent meetings involved reevaluating a past incident we recalled -- for example, a night when a teen came home drunk, or didn't come home at all, or a time when the police called after stopping a young person for reckless driving -- and describing our feelings about the incident without accusing or shaming the young person. Limiting the discussion to one specific incident was essential, as it kept us from launching into a series of accusations (”And another thing...!”) and kept both parent and young person “on the same page.” Through this exercise, we parents helped each other learn to separate our feelings from our thoughts and to express both without labeling our teenagers. We also learned to separate our feelings about our kids -- love, admiration, hope -- from our feelings about their misbehaviors -disappointment, disapproval, desperation.

      Over time, we learned how to have honest and, at the same time, sensitive conversations about our differences, how to be both clear and respectful in discussing difficult issues. In my family, these conversations, at first awkward, were a refreshing change from the yelling, name-calling and swearing, and from the troubled, punishing silences that marked the time when my son was actively using alcohol and

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