A Guiding Life

I have recently done a 5 week parenting course at a local Church. It is a lovely old Church with very modern halls, kitchens, facilities and very active youth workers.

Each week comprised of getting in and sitting down to a lovely cooked meal, and generally nattering over the meal about life, teenagers, not having killed your kids this week etc

Then there was a DVD to watch presented by Nicky and Sila Lee. It was easy watching, informative, not condescending, not bible bashing - just common sense reminders. Lots of different parents and teenagers are interviewed with plenty of sound bite pieces about different topics.

This was followed by dessert actually a hearty pudding! and guided discussion about the topics the DVD covered.

We then had tea and coffee whilst watching the second part of the DVD, plenty of table discussion afterwards and tootle off home feeling rather warmed that everyone has 'issues' of some sort, at some time, that actually it's normal and a lot of tips for handling them.

I seriously can't recommend this enough, it you get the chance and you have 11-18 year olds do it. For me it was £3.50 a week of great company, a lovely welcoming atmosphere, lovely food and a lot to be learnt.

It is part of the Alpha series, but Religious or not I would still say do it. didn't even realise it was Alpha until the very end of the 2nd week, which shows how little it directly refers to the Church.

There is a course for 0 to 10 year olds in the same series and a marriage course. I would like to do the marriage course, I'm not sure I would get the weekly commitment out of OH so if any of you fancy a weekly night ou.....oh, oh I see....damn!

I can't precis 12 hours of learning into one blog post for you, but I'm sure that snippets will appear through my posts, although I am pleased to say that a lot of the attitude I take now sits very well with their ethos.