Do you find yourself yelling at your child more often than laughing with your child?

 Do you feel you have lost touch with your child…don’t feel as close as you’d like?

 Do you feel frustrated and find yourself saying the same things over and over again with no results?

 Would you like for your relationship with your child to go back to the “way it used to be”?

If you answered “Yes”

to any of these questions,

please read on…

C-P-R Training (also called Filial Therapy) is a research-based parenting course that teaches parents how to use some of the same skills that play therapists use to help children experiencing social, emotional or behavioral problems.

 Research shows that motivated parents can be as effective as a professional in helping their child.

 How Can C-P-R Training Help?

In this course you will learn how to:

Regain control as a parent

 Help your child develop self-control

 Effectively discipline & limit

Inappropriate behavior

 Understand your child’s emotional needs

Communicate more effectively with your child

 In a few weeks you will see a noticeable difference in:

 Your relationship with your child

 Your child’s behavior

Your ability to respond effectively

 Your confidence in your parenting skills

When are C-P-R Training Classes Held?

 Classes generally meet monthly on Saturdays

for 2-3 months/2-3 hours each session

 Where are Classes Held?

The Green House Center for

Growth & Learning

194 S Main

Pleasant Grove, UT 84062

How Do I Sign Up?

 Space in the C-P-R training groups

is limited, so call:

 The Green House Center for

Growth & Learning

801-785-1169

 TODAY

to set up an appointment

to reserve your spot.

Appointments fill up quickly!

“For me, it is the miracle of attachment and relationships. I recently received a miracle into my family in the form of a newborn grandchild. I spent the entire day with him and his parents. It was an inspiration to witness the beautiful dance of attachment that occurred throughout the day.

It is an honor and a privilege to be a witness at work every day. To create a place of safety for children to play out their stress and trauma; to assist in repairing relationships through filial therapy and to promote a more secure attachment between children and their parents are the kinds of activities that refuel my passion for this work.

One of the therapists at our agency was celebrating the culmination of over a year of therapy with a young boy who had been adopted through the foster care system.  He said, “I’m not a foster child anymore.”  It brought tears to her eyes to hear that, and later, tears to the eyes of his sweet mom as the story was related. Her young son now has a sense of belonging in his new family.

I hope this year continues to bring us many opportunities for gaining inspiration for filling our emotional buckets so that we can have the strength and wisdom to be good witnesses”

~Collette Dawson-Loveless

We are excited to announce the Parenting Towards Attachment class May 3rd! (tentative)  This eight week class will be held on Thursday nights from 6:30-8pm at The Green House Center.  The course will be instructed by Marilee Woolstenhume, CSW.

This class will cover concepts that include:

-          Attachment styles and behaviors

-          Attachment and brain development

-          Attuned commutation and nurturing tools for building attachment

-          Relationship building disciplining strategies

-          Trauma’s impact on children

-          Tools for dealing with trauma

-          Therapeutic resources available for foster children

You will be taught to:

-          Understand a child’s severe behaviors as attachment related

-          Use reflective responding to regulate a child’s emotions

-          Practice over 50 different suggested nurturing strategies and activities

-          Use the “level system”, behavioral charts, and other disciplining tools with compassion

-          Articulate the effect of trauma and mediate the effects of post-traumatic symptoms

-          Advocate for your child’s therapeutic needs and team more effectively with therapists

The cost for this eight week course is $300 for an individual or $375 for a couple.  This class is covered by Medicaid, and can also be covered with DCFS funding, with approval from your caseworker.  For more information, or to register, please e-mail Amy, at amy@greenhousecenter.org.  Or call 801.785.1169.

We hope to see you there!

Regaining Control: Neurofeedback & PTSD

Unfortunately, our dear Kate Hofer is leaving us. Kate has been our Art Therapy aficionado for about a year. She is moving on to pursue some more big adventures. She will be greatly missed.

Some exciting news is Candice Mortensen is now joining our team! Candice joins us with amazing experience helping children and families at Head Start. She then continued on to work at Wasatch Mental Health assisting adults. She is going to be a great addition to our Green House family. (Candice’s bio will be up on the website shortly, so you can read all about her.)

ALSO, guess what?! Marilee will be back from maternity leave at the beginning of the year! We are so excited to have her back! We have missed her so much!

What is this season for?  “It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.  It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.”  ~Agnes M. Pahro

Here, at The Green House, we are sponsoring in a Giving Tree for the Transition to Adult Living Services for DCFS. The TAL program provides young people assistance in transitioning from foster care to adult living. Some of these foster teens/former foster teens, who are pregnant or have small children, are in need of some support through the holiday. They are in need of baby supplies, food, diapers and baby care items.

If you would like to donate, we have a tree with tags of the items these young women need. The donations will be given to the Pregnancy Resource Center, through their “Earn While You Lean” program. All donations will be collected at The Green House Center until December 17th.

If you have any questions, you can call me, Amy. (801-785-1169) Or if you would like to help further, you can contact Terry Sawyer at tsawyer@utah.gov

I have enjoyed my time here and will miss each and every person at The Green House.  This is truly a remarkable place!  No where else have I seen lives touched and change for the better.   I’d like to thank everyone for all the support, insights, and help you have provided me while I have been here.  I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to my friends and colleagues at The Green House Center.   I have learned a great deal from everyone here.  It has been a great pleasure working along side each of you!

Amy Luth will now be the main point of contact at The Green House Center.  Amy has worked at The Green House Center for several months as our file clerk.  She’s done an excellent job, and I’m sure will continue to do so in her new role!
Thank you again to my Green House family!  I will miss you all!

Sincerely,

Sam

First, we learned to D.I.G deep by: get Deliberate, get Inspired, get Going

Then, we were taught by 10 of our therapists on the 10 Guideposts listed in the book:

Guidepost #1: Cultivating Authenticity

Authenticity is a conscience choice of how we want to live. We establish our core values and live by those values. When we live deliberately, we invite long-term joy and happiness into our lives, even at the cost of people who do not accept us.   Brené says that authenticity is “…to show up and be real…to be honest…[and] to let our true selves be seen”

Guidepost #2 – Letting Go of Perfectionism

Brené describes perfectionism as creating a ‘facade for the perception’ of others.   Don’t use perfection as an emotional shield!  Perfectionism is often the opposite of authenticity.

Guidepost #3 – Cultivating a Resilient Spirit

Brené reports that “we are the most in debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in history” – we use these to numb our senses and to avoid feeling failure.   However, we learn that there are certain factors that make it more likely for one to succeed while dealing with adversity:

• They are resourceful.
• They are more likely to seek help.
• They hold the belief that they can do something to manage their feelings and cope.
• They have social support available.
• They are connected with family and friends.

Guidepost #4 – Cultivating Gratitude and Joy

When we want to feel joy, we must cultivate gratitude.  These two cannot be separated from each other.  Gratitude is more than an attitude!  We must practice gratitude through conscience acts of acknowledgment and thanks in our daily interactions with others.

Guidepost #5 – Letting go of the Need for Certainty

We all have intuition that we should practice listening to; intuition leads to towards internal conclusions as well as the realization that sometimes we need more information before making a decision. We can not assume intuition always means making decisions from the seat of our pants. But what is certain is that in order to make intuitive decisions, we have to accept living in a context of uncertain outcomes.

Guidepost #6 – Letting Go of Comparison and Cultivating Creativity

There’s no such thing as uncreative people!  There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t.  Don’t let your fear of being judged or shame stop you from expressing yourself.  There is a creative soul in everyone, it’s our jobs to find it, nurture it, and let it blossom.

Guidepost #7 – Seven Properties of Play

1. Apparently purposeless
2. Is voluntary
3. It has inherent attraction–It’s fun and makes you feel good
4. Offers freedom from time
5. Provides diminished consciousness of self (in imaginative play, we can be a different self)
6. Carries improvisational potential – it is not rigid
7. Creates a continuation desire – we desire to keep doing it

Guidepost #8 – Cultivating Calm and Stillness

This chapter is all about accepting the reality of stress and anxiety, while making decisions to insure that anxiety is not a lifestyle.  Yoga, meditation, and breathing relaxation aren’t the only options.  Sometimes going to the gym, on a walk, or reading a book can cultivate the sense of peace and tranquility.  Find what works best for you, and practice it.  Make time for it.  Don’t push through stress and anxiety, look at it head on, face it, and diminish it’s power over you.  Calm and stillness are simple choices in how we react to stress and anxiety.

Guidepost #9 – Cultivating Meaningful Work

Finding a balance of work and using our talents is often a struggle for many of us.   Unfortunately, a single career most likely will not use all of our talents, however defining ourselves by extremes is also damaging – Living as if your talents are more important than supporting a family or that money must be the end result of all work are both beyond the mark of meaningful work. In other words, picture meaningful work as a collage of what we do to love, serve, connect and give to those around us.

Guidepost #10 – Cultivating Laughter, Song and Dance

Sometimes, we all just need to let go and dance!  Don’t care who’s watching!  Relax and let yourself and your body move.  Enjoy the freedom and letting go, and be goofy!  Let people see your soulful expression of who you really are, and don’t let fear or embarrassment stop you.  Let your self feel vulnerable.  It’s only then that you will begin to feel authentic and wholehearted.

Remember: becoming an authentic, wholehearted person doesn’t happen overnight.  It’s the choices that we make every day that shape our lives and turn us into the people that we become.

To purchase Brené’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection, click here:

To watch a video on Brené Brown present about The Power of Vulnerability, click here

Using the story/parable format so popular these days, Leadership and Self-Deception takes a novel psychological approach to leadership. It’s not what you do that matters, say the authors (presumably plural–the book is credited to the esteemed Arbinger Institute), but why you do it. Latching onto the latest leadership trend won’t make people follow you if your motives are selfish–people can smell a rat, even one that says it’s trying to empower them. The tricky thing is, we don’t know that our motivation is flawed. We deceive ourselves in subtle ways into thinking that we’re doing the right thing for the right reason. We really do know what the right thing to do is, but this constant self-justification becomes such an ingrained habit that it’s hard to break free of it–it’s as though we’re trapped in a box, the authors say.

Learning how the process of self-deception works–and how to avoid it and stay in touch with our innate sense of what’s right–is at the heart of the book. We follow Tom, an old-school, by-the-book kind of guy who is a newly hired executive at Zagrum Corporation, as two senior executives show him the many ways he’s “in the box,” how that limits him as a leader in ways he’s not aware of, and of course how to get out. This is as much a book about personal transformation as it is about leadership per se. The authors use examples from the characters’ private as well as professional lives to show how self-deception skews our view of ourselves and the world and ruins our interactions with people, despite what we sincerely believe are our best intentions.

While the writing won’t make John Updike lose any sleep, the story entertainingly does the job of pulling the reader in and making a potentially abstruse argument quite enjoyable. The authors have a much better ear for dialogue than is typical of the genre (the book is largely dialogue), although a certain didactic tone creeps in now and then. But ultimately it’s a hopeful, even inspiring read that flows along nicely and conveys a message that more than a few managers need to hear.

Purchase Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box here:

Also, be sure to check out our new “Resources” section of our website!  Here you will find books that we recommend and use regularly with our clients.