Speaking & Advocacy

Raise Your Children to be Emotionally Healthy and Prepared to Thrive

Dr. Ken Ginsburg will speak about the critical importance of parents in the lives of adolescents. It is the security of their love that allows young people to launch successfully into an uncertain future. It is parents’ high expectations that hold them accountable, keep them safe, and shape them to become their best selves. The best way to protect a child is to prepare them to manage life’s complexities while establishing clear boundaries beyond which they cannot stray. Parents’ open communication about emotional wellness and distress positions them to support their children to be emotionally intelligent and navigate life’s curveballs. Modeling of self-care and healthy stress management strategies teaches them to get through tough times. Parents matter greatly.  If you have younger children, now is the time to invest in building wise, strong children who will thrive through adolescence and beyond.

Lighthouse Parenting

I choose to be a Lighthouse parent.  A stable force on the shoreline from which my children can measure themselves against.  I’ll send my signals in a way they will choose to trust. I’ll look down at the rocks to be sure they don’t crash against them.  I’ll look into the waves and trust they’ll learn to ride them, but I am committed to prepare them to do so.  I’ll remain a source of light they can seek whenever they need a safe and secure return.

Lighthouse parenting is not a trend. It is rooted in strategies proven to make a difference to emotional, social, and academic outcomes. It is never too early to begin applying Lighthouse Parenting. In fact, this talk can be as useful for parents in the earliest years as it is for parents of teens. It hopes to prepare parents to be the most effective guides during adolescence and to forge the kind of enduring bond that will last long after the childrearing years.

Resilience in Action: Raising Children and Adolescents Who are Prepared to Thrive! 

This talk is an overview of the Seven C’s Model of Resilience. It focuses on communication strategies that position parents to be unwavering positive forces in their children’s lives.

Parents will leave the session better prepared to:

• Build confidence in their children
• Notice and reinforce their children’s competence
• Foster the vital connection between parents and children
• Develop character and a sense of contribution in their children
• Develop those critical coping strategies that will help their children thrive even through difficult times
• Help their children and teens gain control by learning that the privileges they earn are linked to the responsibility they demonstrate.

This presentation provides an overview of resilience with attention to strategies parents can use to help their children help themselves. Certain topics are covered in greater detail in the talks noted below (“Authentic Success” and “Keeping Adolescents Safe”).

Authentic Success: Raising Children and Adolescents who are Prepared to Thrive in a Challenging World

This talk discusses how to foster high achievement in children while instilling a love of learning, rather than a fear of failure. We must never forget that our goal in raising children is to prepare them to be happy and productive adults. This means that academic performance, while important, is only one measure of success. Children need the emotional and social intelligence to thrive in the home and workplace. They need to maintain and develop their creativity and innovative potential as well as their internal resilience. Children who are pushed too hard do not discover their gift and are driven to perfectionism. Perfectionists do not find themselves acceptable and don’t experience the joy associated with high performance, and in fact stifle their own creativity. The college admissions process will be discussed and the importance of guiding each child to find the right educational match will be emphasized.

This seminar is about raising successful children who will make their unique and substantial contributions to the world.

Changing How We See Teens

Parents of tweens and preteens begin receiving foreboding messages about adolescence early on. They mourn the loss of the innocence of childhood and dread their children pulling away. These fears are driven by undermining myths about adolescence. These myths change the way teens are treated and how they see themselves. Critically, they make parents wonder if they still matter in their children’s lives.

This talk is for community leaders and parent advocates who want to transform the false and undermining myths about adolescents and begin sharing the meaningful truth that adolescence is an unmatched opportunity for meaningful adult engagement. Adolescence is a wonderful time and teens are inspirational people. There may be a few bumps as children struggle for independence, but if parents honor their child’s growth while protecting them from risk, they can look forward to a lifelong healthy relationship that has the interdependence that helps families thrive far into the future.  

Note: Communities may pair this talk with another one that follows.  Leaders can first become empowered with this call to action.  Another talk can be given to a larger audience.

Building Resilience in Uncertain Times

These are uncertain and complex times. The best way to protect our children is to shape the lessons that they draw from these times, and in so doing, build the resilience skills they can draw from throughout their lives and the commitment to build a better world that will enable them to lead us into the future. The starting point is acknowledging that these are unsettling times for us adults and we must first be intentional about building our own fortitude and resolve with self-care and self-compassion. Further, it is the time to model the lesson that as individuals we are vulnerable, but that we gain strength when we seek the support of others. Dr. Ken, a leading expert on building resilience, will discuss how to strengthen your family during these times and prepare your children to gain critical lifelong resilience skills.

Keeping Adolescents Safe

We can’t wrap our children in bubble wrap, although sometimes we wish we could. Instead, the best thing we can do is to teach them to protect and to take good care of themselves. This talk will focus on preparing parents to have influence in four key areas.

• Working with schools and communities to display positive images of adolescents so that teens will see that it is “normal” to do the right thing.
• Helping teens develop skills to navigate peer culture as issues or conflicts come up in their daily lives.
• Monitoring teens in appropriate ways using strategies that are proven to substantially reduce risk in many areas.
• Reinforcing teens’ positive decision-making and coping strategies. Most behaviors we fear in adolescents are their quick easy fixes to stress. Telling teens what not to do backfires. Teens who possess healthy coping strategies will be less likely to reach for those dangerous behaviors.