Learning About Parent-Child Relationships

In this course, FSOS 4155 Parent-Child Relationships, we are exploring the dynamics between parents and children that create the lifelong bond and that have countless influences on the development of the child, and of the parent as an adult.

We'll begin by looking at the internal dynamics between parents and children that drive relationships - human development, life stage, personal characteristics, contexts and psychological motivations, such as the drive for agency and for communion. Then we'll explore parent-child relationships over the normative trajectory of the transition to parenthood through infancy and early childhood, through schoolage, adolescence, young adulthood and then parent-child relationships between the adult as child and the adult as parent into grandparenthood and caring for our aging parents.

At each turn, to reinforce the content provided to us in readings, web links, videos and lecture files, we will provide a brief summary of the key points. This summary will aid personal learning and it will focus on salient topics that we as a class believe that parents need to know. If we were parent educators designing a class for parents on the topic, we would ask:

• what is important for parents to know
• what is important for parents to be able to do

For example, if we were working with parents of newborns and the discussion centered on forging a secure attachment with babies, it is important for them to know about brain development of the infant and how a secure attachment to the caregiver promotes neural connections in number and in depth and diminishes the possibility of hormones that destroy those connections (such as when the infant experiences stress and trauma). It is important for parents to be able to forge a secure attachment relationship with their infant, and information about how to hold the infant, respond to the infant's cues, be attuned to the infants' rhythms, make eye contact, speak to the infant and such would be valuable to learning the skills that result in positive attachment.

Specific to our discussion on the blog we will go further with our application and ask:

• how can technology aid in parents gaining the information that they need to know, and
• how can technology aid in parents gaining the skills that they need

With 'technology' being a pretty large term to encompass interactions and information search on the Internet, virtual realities, the use of social media to connect with family, friends and others, the use of cell phones, texting, email, videoconferencing for communication, the use of 'technology' for entertainment, personal expression, and utility purposes (like shopping, record keeping, banking).

Our comments in response to these questions will identify perhaps, websites with information on the topic (in that case, technology as a resource for helping parents gain the information they need), a helpful video (to watch and observe useful skills), an online group that offer parents social interactions to exchange information with other parents, ask questions, help with decision-making, an app for the mobile phone.

From our class to the online platform then, our learning about parent-child relationships will be personal and shared and easily accessible to us 24/7 - as it is for parents as well.