Seven self-study lessons to protect your family and descendents

How Concerned Educators Can Help
Prevent Family Stress and Divorce

By Peter K. Gerlach, MSW
Member NSRC Expert's Council

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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/prevent/educators.htm

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        This article is for (a) men and women who are professional teachers and instructors in all secular, religious, military, trade, and business settings and levels; and for (b) the people who train, certify, ev-aluate, hire, supervise, and support these educators. 

The Reason for This Article

        This article proposes that lay and professional educators in middle and high schools, colleges, graduate schools, and other settings are morally responsibility to learn and teach students four or five primal topics. Doing so can significantly help to strengthen families, increase wholistic health, and reduce the tragic American divorce epidemic. The topics are...

  • how low-nurturance childhoods promote serious psychological wounds, what the wounds usually mean, and how to detect and reduce them;

  • effective thinking and communication basics and skills;

  • losses (broken bonds) and healthy three-level grieving basics;

  • core realities about human personalities and mutually-satisfying relationships; and in some settings...

  • stepfamily realities, implications, hazards, and safeguards.   

This proposal is based on a guesstimate from my 30 years' professional study of average American people and families. It is that typical adults - specially parents - are largely ignorant of these topics, and how that ignorance degrades their families, work, health, and society. You can't evaluate this idea until you become fairly familiar with the topics.

        A related premise is that most state and professional organizations which certify and accredit teachers and schools don't require them to teach at least the first four of these vital topics. Did the schools you attended teach you about these topics and why they're vital to average people and families?

Are You Providing Effective Education?

        Try completing this sentence out loud: "I've chosen to be an educator because _____." Then reflect: do you agree that formal education on any level ranges between "ineffective" through "moderately effective," to "fully effective"? Try saying out loud what specific criteria you use to judge where you (and others) fall in this spectrum. A related question is "How closely does my definition of fully-effective education match the definition of the people I work with and for?"

        I propose that whether you're an intern or a veteran, if you're not currently (a) explaining and urging your students and coworkers to study and apply these four or five prevention topics, and/or (b) teaching a version of at least the first four topics yourself, you can only provide moderately-effective education at best. Notice your reaction to this opinion... I suspect that your (wounded,  ignorant) administrators and employers aren't aware of the value and content of these topics, and don't expect you to alert your students and coworkers to them. Am I right?

        Imagine the inevitable conversation you'll have with your elderly self, as you review your life's work and achievements. Will you be able to say "I gave my very best to my students, community, and society"?


Prevention Options

    1)  Key: evaluate yourself for false-self wounds. If your true Self is often disabled, (a) your family and descendents are vulnerable to the [wounds + ignorance] cycle, and (b) it will be hard or impossible for you to endorse and act effectively on these family-stress prevention options.

    2)  Evaluate the nurturance level of your work setting. My research and experience suggests that those of us who are significantly controlled by a false self unconsciously choose (or co-create) low-nurturance human settings like the one we grew up in. Such settings (a) inhibit our awareness and healing, and (b) promote false-self dominance in the staff and the people being served. When the setting is a pre-college school, this is specially tragic.

        If you teach in a classroom setting, you can also ... 

    3)  Evaluate the nurturance-level of your classroom/s. It is determined by your wholistic health, and that of the people who's policies you follow - i.e. your school district board, your superintendent, and/or your department chairperson. If the nurturance level is low, you're probably unintentionally promoting psychological wounding and denial of it.

    4)  Scan this 8-module course designed to alert courting co-parents to wound-recovery and communi-cation, grieving, and stepfamily basics. You're welcome to use or adapt any of the modules in your work at no charge, unless you make a profit. Then...

    5 Evaluate the content of your own lesson plans, and/or your departmental or organization's curri-culum. If those don't directly or indirectly alert students to the four main topics here, who's responsible for changing that? What obstacles need overcoming? When your students graduate, how many of these life-skill awarenesses do they have? Which fall within your organization's scope? 

      These five concrete options extend these three prevention steps to alert your students to the [wounds + ignorance] cycle and its toxic personal and social effects. Paradoxically, you won't really appreciate the scope and need for this help until you do the four evaluations above. When your organizations' students are elderly and mull how your teaching affected their lives, what do you want them to think? What do you want to think, when you retire?

Resources

        This nonprofit educational Web site offers many resources to help you alert your students to the cycle and its impacts...

  • Project 1 and its related guidebook "Who's Really  Running Your Life?" outline how to assess for inner wounds and reduce them;

  • Lesson 2 and its guidebook "Satisfactions" presents seven communication skills that empower adults and kids to fill their and others' primary needs;

  • Projects 3 and 4 offer basic stepfamily information that co-parents need to know, but usually don't seek during courtship; and ...

  • Lesson 3 overviews healthy three-level grieving, and how to promote "pro-grief" relationships and families.

        Whether you choose to alert your colleagues, administrators, and students to the [wounds + ignorance] cycle or not, consider this core...
 

 Option: Assess You and Your Workplace

        Reality check: on a scale of one (my true Self usually guides my personality) to 10 (I am usually dominated by a false self), I see myself now as a ___. Note that a typical protective false-self will protectively distort your answer to this, and earnestly deny or justify doing so.

        Your "workplace" is comprised of (a) a physical setting and environment, (b) lay and professional co-workers and colleagues, and (c) social factors like laws, policies, and resources that affect whom you work with, how you provide your service, and the results of your service. Collectively, these factors can be judged to be "very low-nurturance" (seldom filling the primary needs of the people involved) to "very high-nurturance" - frequently filling everyone's primary needs.

        Premises: significantly wounded people unconsciously seek (a) human-service avocations or professions, and (b) wounded associates and low-nurturance workplaces. (c) Working in a low-nurturance physical and/or social setting hinders personal wound-recovery and delivery of effective human-services (like education). Do you agree with these ideas? Could they pertain to you?

        Options: honestly assess (a) your current life priorities, (b) yourself for significant false-self wounds; (c) the nurturance-level of your physical and social workplaces, and (d) what these mean long-term for the quality and productivity of your life. If you conclude that you're currently choosing to work in a low-nurturance workplace, as long as you remain there and don't lobby for constructive changes...

  • your (a) odds for meaningful personal-wound recovery are reduced, and (b) odds for ongoing work-related stress are increased;

  • at best, your clients are probably receiving minimally to moderately-effective professional services from you and your co-workers and colleagues; and...

  • these won't change unless you choose to (a) empower your true Self, (b) assess whether raising your workplace's nurturance-level significantly is viable or not, (c) take responsibility for working for constructive change, or finding a more nurturing workplace.


Recap

        This is one of a series of articles in this Web site devoted to preventing family stress and (re)divorce trauma, and the anguish that leads to it. Millions of average adults live in unhappy families every day, and don't know how to reduce the real problems for their and their kids' sakes. As a therapist specializing in work with typical divorcing families and stepfamilies since 1981, I believe that one reason for this unhappiness is lack of awareness of...

  • low-nurturance (ineffective) parenting, which silently promotes widespread psychological wounding in young kids;

  • effective communication basics and seven essential skills; and ...

  • healthy and blocked grief, and requisites for a "pro-grief" family.

        For many of these anguished millions, another contributor is ...

  • unawareness of stepfamily facts, norms, hazards, realities, and protections.

        The cure for unawareness is education. If you're a professional educator or you support educators, you can significantly help your students and their families by (a) learning about these four topics, (b) encouraging your peers and colleagues to do the same, and (c) melding the topics into your organization's educational curricula and programs. 

        False-self wounding and recovery, communication effectiveness, and healthy grieving are universally relevant. I propose that teaching most people about them - ideally before they marry and/or conceive kids, would significantly reduce the unhappiness that promotes the (re)divorce epidemic that saps our culture's strength, health, and achievements. Such teaching must be experiential, vs. conceptual, to be effective. That's why these prevention articles invite you to evaluate yourself, your family, and your workplace and curriculum for false-self dominance and low nurturance levels.

        Imagine what might happen if taking an affordable course on these three subjects were required of...

  • couples before they could marry or divorce;

  • college students before they could graduate;

  • people convicted of a crime (a strong indicator of psychological wounding + unawareness); 

  • all human-service professionals before being licensed to practice;

  • as periodic in-service topics for human-service organizations qualify for and retain accreditation, funding, and insurance coverage.

        Further imagine all re/marrying couples having to also take a survey course in vital stepfamily information that they don't know they need for long-term success. And imagine states and professional associations requiring human-service providers to demonstrate (a) recovery from inner wounds, if any, and (b) competence in teaching these three topics to their students and members, to receive accreditation and licensure.

        Picture any young people in your life. Across our land, kids like them - and their unborn offspring - need us to answer: who will now claim responsibility for filling the widespread need for public and professional education on false-self dominance, effective communication and co-parenting, and healthy grieving? Restated: who will teach parents how to create high-nurturance families and protect our kids and society from divorce?

        Will you?

For more perspective, read this related  prevention article written to professional motivators.

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Updated June 30, 2009