Helping Parents Find Their Voice
Stephen J. Bavolek, Ph.D.
Author of the Nurturing
Parenting Programs ®
Focus of the Training
 Adult Learning Strategies
 Empowerment
 Communication
Adult Learning
Strategies
Andragogy:
“The art and science of
helping adults learn.”
Keep in mind that adults generally remember …
 10% of what they read
 20% of what they hear
 30% of what they see
 50% of what they see and hear
 70% of what they say and write
 90% of what they say as they do
(Explained by Edgar Dale –Dale’s Cone of Experience, 1960)
Cone of Experience, Edgar Dale (1946) in “AudioVisual Methods of Teaching”
Knowles, Holton and Swanson (1998) discuss six
assumptions of andragogy:
 The Adult’s Need to Know
 The Adult’s Self-Concept
 The Role of the Adult’s Experience
 The Adult’s Orientation to Learning
 The Adult’s Readiness to Learn
 The Adult’s Motivation to Learn
The Adult’s Need to Know
 Adults need to know why they should learn
something and how it will benefit them.
 Learning for immediate use is better than
learning for future use.
 What do you expect to learn?
 How might the information be useful for them?
The Adult’s Self-Concept
 Adults resent and resist situations in which
they feel others are imposing their wills on
them.
 Self-Concept as a learner is influenced by
successes and failures in school.
 Self-Concept as a learner is also related to the
person’s level of empowerment and motivation.
The Role of the Adult’s Experience
 Based on a lifetime of experiences, adult learners
are more heterogeneous than younger learners.
 Adults’ personal identity is often tied to their
experiences with biases and habits.
 Reflective learning helps adults reassess the
impact of experiences and prepare them for
change.
The Adult’s Readiness to Learn
 Adults are ready to learn when they
experience a need to learn something in
order to cope with real life tasks or
problems.
The Adult’s Orientation to Learning
 Adults are life, task, or problem-centered in
their orientation.
 Learning needs to use real life situations.
 Flexibility in the lesson allows for personal
experiences.
The Adult’s Motivation to Learn
 Adults’ internal priorities are more important than
external priorities.
 Incentives such as self-esteem, quality of life, and
satisfaction are most important.
 Adults’ input into the development of lessons or
prioritization of topics can encourage adults to
take ownership of the learning process.
There are Four Elements to Learning
 Motivation
 Retention
 Reinforcement
 Transference
Motivation
 A key aspect of learning.
 Teaching to unmotivated adults is a waste of the
instructor’s time.
 A friendly and open atmosphere helps build motivation.
 The learning environment needs an appropriate level of
concern and stress.
 Appropriate level of difficulty.
 Provide relevance.
Retention
 Practice through role play
 Repetition
 Sequenced lesson
 Practical use experiences
Reinforcement
 Encourage learning
 Positive better than negative
 Support for students
Transference
 Learners can associate new information with
something they know.
 Learners can find similarities between the new
information and something they know.
 Learners have a high degree of original learning
(self-discovery).
 Learners need information for a critical reason.
Summary of Major Points
 Discover why adults would want to learn something
new.
 Adults need to learn experientially.
 Approach topic as problem-solving.
 Repeatedly emphasize relevance of topic.
 Involve the adult in the planning, learning and
evaluation.
 Adults will need to process and reflect.
Empowering Adults
Empowerment involves
helping others build their
own power bases.
Empowerment is a feeling
of capability.
In Nurturing philosophy,
empowerment is referred
to as Personal Power.
Personal Power is defined as
“the life energy within
everyone that influences
their quality of life.”
Everyone has Personal Power.
Personal Power is …
 The drive to accomplish
 The choices we make
 The will to love
 The energy to explore, create and question
 The commitment to nurture ourselves and
others
 Our personal perceptions and self-worth
Personal Power can be
positive or negative.
Positive use of Personal
Power enhances our life,
the lives of others, and
builds positive self-worth.
Negative use of Personal
Power detracts and injures
our life, the lives of others,
and builds negative selfworth.
The negative use of
Personal Power is the
mission of the victim and
perpetrator personality
traits within all of us.
The positive use of
Personal Power is the
mission of the Nurturer
and the Nurtured
personality traits within
all of us.
Over time, personality
traits turn into full-blown
personalities with diseased
or healthy neurological
networks.
Powerlessness is a feeling of
learned helplessness which is
related to drug and alcohol use,
depression, domestic violence,
influence of peer pressure, high
levels of stress and anger, and
family dysfunction.
Power struggles are the
personal desires of adults,
teens and children to use
one’s life energy to
influence their lives.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Increase your level of self-awareness
and model this behavior with your
family and clients.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Praise others for Being: unconditional
regard. Often referred to as Unconditional
Love.
 Praise your self for Being and model this
behavior with your family and clients.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Praise others for Doing: conditional regard with
focus on behavior.
 Provide opportunities for success to boost selfconfidence.
 Praise your self for Doing and model this with your
family and clients. Focus on your behavior – not
your intentions.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Brainstorm choices with clients and
possible positive and negative
consequences. Write these
consequences down and give the list to
the clients.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Build anger management strategies:
- Increase understanding of anger.
- Focus on anger “cues” (related to attunement skills).
- Brainstorm with clients ways to express anger
energy in healthy, positive ways.
- Emphasize the importance of modeling appropriate
anger expression skills with children.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Build stress management strategies:
- Increase understanding of stress and distress
- Focus on stress “cues” (related to attunement skills).
- Brainstorm with clients ways to express stress
energy in healthy, positive ways.
- Brainstorm with clients ways to reduce stress.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Increase self-awareness. List self traits
that are desirable and undesirable and
a plan to replace undesirable traits with
desirable ones.
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Increase self-worth:
- Personal Power
- Praise for Being and Doing
- Self-Awareness
- Accept praise from others
- Offer self praise
- Change negative self-labels for positive ones
- Have appropriate and realistic expectations for self
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Treat others with dignity by
developing Empathy.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to perceive and accept
the subjective experiences of others and to
respond in a caring, dignified way.
- Comes from the Greek word “empatheia” which means
feeling into.
- Brainstorm with clients ways to build empathy: caring
for objects (clothes, home, car, etc.); caring for self
(hygiene, diet, exercise, personal references/labels, etc.);
caring for others (plants, pets, children, etc).
Ways to Build Personal Power
in Self and Clients
 Build communication skills:
- Taking responsibility for one’s behavior: no
blaming.
- Confronting and not criticizing: using “I”
statements” and no name calling.
- Brainstorm possibilities/causes/reasons to
situations and events.
Problem Solving and Decision Making
Problem Solving
- What is the problem?
- Whose problem is it
- What have you tried?
-
Decision Making
What would you like to see instead?
Brainstorm three ways you can achieve your goals.
Try your solutions and evaluate the effectiveness.
If the problem persists, begin the process over.
Negotiate and Compromise
- When problem solving leaves both people at a stalemate.
Communication
Barriers to Listening
 Focusing on Personal Agenda: Formulating our next thought
while speaker is still talking.
 Emotional Noise: Appearance; non-verbal cues.
 Criticizing Speaker: Focus on the message and not on the
messenger.
 Speech Rate v. Thought Rate: Speech rate (125 wpm) is much
slower than the rate at which we think (500-800 wpm).
 Information Overload: Too much information.
 External Noise: TV, cell phones, too hot or too cold room.
 Feeling Sick: Headache, stomach ache, pain, discomfort
Strategies for Listening
 Focus on the person, their thoughts and feelings.
 Pay attention to the person.
 Listen for the essence of the message.
 Be empathic and imagine how you would feel.
 Ask questions for clarification.
Barriers to Accurate Perceptions
 Intense emotional state: anger, sadness, fear, etc.
 Holding preconceptions about people or events.
 Misconceptions generated from making assumptions and
ignoring details.
 Focusing on the negative aspects is a common habit.
 Assuming others have a similar interpretation without
checking how others interpret a situation.
 Sending or receiving incongruent communication
(behavioral) cues, i.e. body language that contradicts verbal
message.
Strategies for Improving Perceptions
 Reality is nothing more than perceptions at moment.
 All realities are the subjective interpretation of the moment.
There is no objective world.
 Question your perceptions and think about how they are formed.
 Observe carefully and attentively – be completely involved in the
moment.
 Be aware of the meanings you attach to your perceptions.
 Increased self-awareness will lead to awareness of the barriers
used in perceptions.
 Develop your level of empathy and work on focusing on others.
Barriers to Effective Verbal
Communication
 Lacking clarity and precision: vague, political-type
responses
 Using generalizations and stereotypes
 Jumping to conclusions
 Using disconfirming responses such as interrupting,
making irrelevant responses, not saying anything at all
 Lacking confidence due to shyness, low self-worth, low
sense of personal power
Strategies for Effective Verbal
Communication
 Describe your own feelings and thoughts rather than
evaluating others.
 Focus in the issue rather than on the person.
 Be yourself, honestly and openly but with dignity.
 Empathize rather than remain detached.
 Allow for other points of view.
Continued
Strategies for Effective Verbal
Communication
 Value yourself and your own experiences.
 Perceive and present yourself as an equal rather than a
superior.
 Respond to others in ways that acknowledge their
experiences, opinions, values. This is not necessarily
agreeing with the messages, but honoring their
response.
 Send consistent verbal and non-verbal messages.
Adapted from Beebe et al.
Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others
2nd Canadian Edition, 2000; and,
Developing and Maintaining Professional
Relationships, TRACE Workshops, 2002.
Additional concepts have been added by Stephen
Bavolek, Ph.D., Family Development Resources, Inc.,
2008