At first, the parents seated around the tables didn’t how to react when Dee J. Anderson, executive director/founder of Abba House Outreach Ministries, told everyone to group themselves into pairs … and arm-wrestle. Once they got over the giggling, the female-dominated room paired up, and when Anderson shouted, “Go!” they all started wrestling, with only a few clear-cut winners.
“And what happened?” she asked them. “Not many of you won, because each of you were working against the other. Anderson smiled. “That’s because you have conflict.” Anderson used this example to illustrate how parents need to work with their children and not against them in a workshop for the fourth annual Parents Taking Control of Discipline Conference, held Friday — two days before Mother’s Day — sponsored by the Atlanta Council of PTAs and held at the Salvation Army’s Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center.
The conference brings community workers and organizations together with parents to offer real-life and usefuly tools to help prevent or deal with children with challenging behavior issues. Pared down somewhat due to the economy, the conference nevertheless focused its efforts. “We wanted to narrow our concentration on three key issues: gangs and drugs, bullying, and attendance,” said Thelma Malone, chairperson of the Atlanta Council of PTAs and interviewed in the video above. “When students aren’t in schools, there’s a reason, and a lack of discipline plays into that. We want to address those issues.”
While previous conferences have featured a combination of parents and APS staff in the audience, this year focused solely on parents; there were 200 in attendance. (See video above with one parent’s perspective.) More on this story after the jump …
