Hi, I am posting back to describe this class that our son has just completed. Hope this is not too long-winded.
While the boys got together, the parents met to discuss parenting ideas and issues that our kids were/are having.
This was an abbreviated version (6 wks) of the longer course they hold during the school year. (30+ wks).
For the parents part, I'd say it was definitely helpful. They'd start each session by asking the parents to describe the week, or the homework we'd done with our sons and how it went. And then we'd learn a new technique for handling various issues.
Some of the subjects - good communication skills, conflict resolution, self-esteem.
Certainly many of these areas could have been covered for weeks, but even the brief look at each one was helpful. For us, the communication skills section and the section on positive reinforcement were great. I know I'd read a bit about some of these techniques in books here and there, but it was good to hear some further explanation and examples.
For ds, I think he enjoyed being with the other boys, they'd always get a good-behavior/participation prize or two at the end of each class. The homework was engaging and ds never complained about doing it. I think he learned a few new skills, and may be seeing more *why* it's important to practice good communication.
He told me, 'I know most of this stuff, I just choose not to do it', but I think he's already seeing some good results with just a bit of effort.
I think I 'see' him better now; before I couldn't really pin down his issues with making/keeping friends other than he can be a 'pest'. Now we have defined this a bit better, he has issues with respecting other people's personal space, stopping when people say 'stop' and not hogging the conversation. Oh, and his sensitivity can lead to him feeling slighted during what other kids would consider normal interaction.
Now we have some key phrases we can use to help him stay on track, and with practice hope he'll make these into habits.
Hearing someone other than me talk about some of these techniques such as positive reinforcement (through the use of a token/rewards jar) has helped with both ds and Dh. Dh seems more open to reading about additional techniques and using them. He was willing to go, willing to listen but much less willing to consider using the new things we learned. Then we had a really really successful weekend with ds9 and 4 of his boy cousins, and I think dh's opinion has definitely shifted. (He is by nature an extreme pessimist).
It never occurred to us to use tokens/rewards for practicing good social skills, never had the social skills sort of boiled down/presented in bite-size pieces to make prioritizing 2-3 of them even possible.
Definitely recommend the shorter class, the longer one I think we are going to hold off on, and take what we've learned for now and try to run with it.
