Asaf: The most obvious change in our household following the workshop was the happiness. We learned that children are happier when they are delegated responsibilities, much more so than children who grow up with a silver spoon! We discovered our children’s strengths, and amazingly, they discovered their strengths too. Our stressed out, angry, tearful family has transformed into a happy and tranquil family.
Odeya : After I completed a Parenting Workshop in the Golan, my household changed dramatically. In the past, I used to wait for my children to go to sleep so I could have a much needed break. Now, every afternoon when they are home is a pleasure, and it’s best during school vacations. I’ve begun to love having my children at home! They’ve learned to entertain themselves, and I’ve learned to rely on them. And I know that they are enjoying each other’s company…
Tal: As a single mother, for two years I felt tremendous guilt and cried bitterly over the trauma I thought I’d inflicted upon my children in the wake of the divorce. At times I was sure I would collapse under the weight of the guilt I was carrying around. It seemed that children were suffering, and I thought that the damage caused by the divorce was irreversible. Then I joined a Parenting Workshop, and I came to understand that my children were experiencing challenges, and this was their reality. But challenges bring opportunities for growth! After five months in the workshop, their self-pitying behaviors have disappeared. They have begun to cooperate, and help each other; happiness has returned to our home…
Orna: I am a mother of seven. I joined a parenting workshop when my older children were teenagers. I knew that I just needed to have patience until this tough phase ended. I told myself again and again, “Two to five more years, and it will all be better.” But I also knew then that my younger children would grow to be teens…
I joined a Parenting Workshop that shifted my whole view! I discovered that teens who want to assert their independence can do so by taking responsibility – not necessarily by "rebelling", as we are used to expecting from teenagers. They help with household chores and help with their younger siblings, in addition to developing a mature, responsible attitude to life in general. Now I can really enjoy them and their teenage years, and not just wait for this phase to end.
Inbar: The Shefer Parenting workshop (in Rishon LeTzion) saved us! We began the workshop with a 2.5 year old daughter who could not walk nor talk. She was officially classified as Developmentally Disabled. I gave up 50% of my job, and used that time to take her to every type of therapy I possibly could. After five months in the Parenting Workshop, our daughter was talking, walking, and even running. Both the speech therapist and the physiotherapist, with whom we’d worked for a year and a half, said that there had been a fundamental change – but neither could explain why. They both discharged us from therapy, saying our daughter no longer needed it, and does not have a developmental disability! Each therapist told us she must have made a diagnostic error. But I know that everything hinged on the changed approach my husband and I had developed since participating in the workshop. We have gained a healthy daughter! And we’ve saved a lot as well – time, money, and most of all, a lot of anguish and aggravation.
David: What bothered me more than anything else was the constant fighting among my children. We gave them separate rooms. We invested in “quality time” to try to minimize their jealousy. We tried to attend to the individual needs of each child. We bought books and games galore, on so many different levels, so everyone would be able to keep busy. And yet, we found ourselves constantly breaking up fights! We became judges and police officers, but we could not solve the problem. After participating in a Parenting Workshop in our Ashkelon neighborhood, we came to understand that our children own their arguments. They know how to end them, just as they knew how to begin them! We can rely on them to sort out their differences on their own. Otherwise, they would never learn to do so. Now they rarely fight, and when they do, they solve the problem without our intervention…