Parent-Child Development Program

I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You’re going to trip over that for a good part of your life. (Maurice Sendak)

Good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them. (Jonas Salk)

Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what’s real and what’s not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross. (Maurice Sendak)

Parent-Child Development Program at ORI consists of three 10-week trimesters of clinical theory or experiential courses. Each year, this program is designed to tailor to the academic needs of current candidates and to offer a coherent curriculum to the newcomers. This program should be beneficial to every psychotherapy/ psychoanalytic practitioner who works with children, families, parents.

Non-clinicians (e.g., educators in early childhood and K-12 field) can benefit from taking individual courses and or the full program: “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men” (Frederick Douglass).

This program can provide help, support, education to parents too. As Dr. Salk said once, “good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is; wings – to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them.”

Mentorship (for non-clinicians), one-on one or for a small group, is not a mandatory part of this program, but it is possible if requested.

Individual Supervision (for clinicians) is strongly suggested, but not required for graduation from the program.

Each course can earn 12 or 12.5 hrs of post-graduate training certificate.

Tuition:

$450/ each 10-week course If courses are taken separately, the registration fee is $25/ course. (Registration form is HERE)

If courses are taken as a part of the program – one time registration fee of $65/ program is applied. (Application Form is HERE)

Below, please find the listing of the courses offered through the current academic year, as well as the once that were offered in the years before

SOME THOUGHTS on PARENTING and CHILDHOOD:

When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it’s a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what’s happening. She becomes what’s happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time. Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark on it. He has its mark on him. Both marks are, for better or for worse, indelible. All daughters and sons, are prodigals if they’re smart. Assuming the Old Man doesn’t run out on them first, they will run out on him if they are to survive, and if he’s smart he won’t put up too much of a fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe that’s why he keeps his distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way home again, none can say for sure, but it’s the risk he must take if they’re ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves. Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children will break it as they need to break it if ever they’re to find something better to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there’s no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose Dad and find themselves. Terrible blunders will be made — disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And they’ll keep making them even after they’ve found themselves too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard knock they ever get knocks the father even harder still, if that’s possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, there’s maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation. (Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark)

It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. (Frederick Douglass)

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. (Helen Adams Keller)

RESEARCH on PARENTING and CHILDHOOD:

Adverse childhood experiences pyramid –  adopted from “Adult Implications of Childhood Maltreatment” by Brian T. Hinch, M.D. (http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/special-reports/adult-implications-childhood-maltreatment)

READINGS on PARENTING and CHILDHOOD:

HUMOR and PARENTING: