Parenting clubs help caregivers master positive parenting skills

Oksana, 47, from Myrhorod in Ukraine’s Poltava region, is mother to four children, two of whom are adopted. Parenting clubs created with the support of UNICEF have helped her to acquire valuable new skills and knowledge that help her family to thrive.

“Although I have considerable experience working with children, I learned a lot of new stuff in these classes,” says Oksana. “For example, about the different types of attachment that a child forms during the first year of life. In addition, the club has become a support group for me.”

In the midst of the ongoing war, Oksana and her family were determined to adopt. They knew that adoption was not without its challenges – during the process, they learned that children deprived of family care can often experience psychological trauma that must be addressed.

“We agreed to meet the first pair of children,” recalls Oksana. 

“I had never been so nervous, not even before the most important interviews. But after the meeting, the children chose us as their parents.”

The children immediately started calling Oksana and her husband ‘mom’ and ‘dad’.

“It’s hard to imagine our family in any other way now. Our children are happy together, they are incredibly friendly. This is happiness as it is.”

“Our children are happy together”

Oksana knows from her own experience about the difficulties of raising a child with special educational needs. When her eldest son, who is now an adult, was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in childhood, she realised that Ukraine lacked specialized support for such children and their parents.

This prompted her to begin researching the issue and, eight years ago, she founded an Early Development Center to help other parents facing similar challenges.

“Parents can burn out and fall into a state from which it is difficult to recover. When my husband and I were preparing to adopt children, I realised that our country had already learned to help children, but was only beginning to learn how to help parents.”

UNICEF supports initiatives aimed at supporting parents. One of them is parenting clubs, which Oksana attends, under the ‘Parenting Without Stress’ programme. These meetings are organized by specialists from the NGO Psychological Assistance Center ‘Confidence’, a UNICEF implementing partner. They emphasize the importance of educating parents, understanding child development and teaching new approaches to parenting.

“I learn how the brain works, how to deliver information to children so that it is understandable even to children with special educational needs,” says Oksana, who dreams of equipping her Early Development Center with rehabilitation rooms for children with autism and conducting training for school psychologists and teachers.

“Parenting clubs help us gain knowledge”

Parenting clubs are a place where parents can come with their questions and find answers that may not be in books. They have become a meaningful source of support for both those who are already parents and those who are preparing to become parents.

“Often, having become parents, people risk completely dissolving into parenthood. A difficult choice can arise – to be good parents or successful professionals. Parenting clubs help us to gain the necessary knowledge to be effective parents.”

The UNICEF project is implemented by the NGO ‘Confidence’ in the Sumy and Poltava regions, with the support of the Government of Norway.