Empowered To Connect (ETC) Parent Training is a learning and training experience designed specifically for adoptive and foster parents. The ETC Parent Training was developed by Empowered To Connect and is based upon the Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) model developed by Dr. Karyn Purvis and her colleagues at the TCU Institute of Child Development.

ETC Parent Training equips parents with a holistic understanding of their child’s needs and empowers them with the strategies and tools to effectively meet those needs while both building trust and helping their child heal and grow. The training is taught from a Christian perspective and focuses on a wide range of topics and issues, including helping parents understand the impacts of their child’s history, what they themselves bring to the parent-child dynamic, the fundamentals of attachment, the impact of fear, and the importance of meeting their child’s sensory processing, nutritional and other physiological needs. Ultimately, the ETC Parent Training integrates this holistic understanding with the insights and skills parents need to effectively and consistently use the TBRI principles and strategies and enables them to employ a balanced parenting approach that allows them to provide compassionate discipline that both connects and corrects.

Empowered To Connect Parent Training is taught in small groups that meet weekly for two hour sessions over the course of nine weeks, and is highly interactive.  The nine sessions covered in the training are as follows:

1. Introduction & Overview of Empowered To Connect Training
2. The Whole Equation: Understanding What You and Your Child Bring to the Relationship (Part 1)
3. The Whole Equation: Understanding What You and Your Child Bring to the Relationship (Part 2)
4. The Attachment Dance
5. Understanding the Impact of Fear and the Importance of Playful Engagement
6. Understanding How Sensory Processing, Nutrition and Neurotransmitters Affect Your Child
7. Behavioral Change: Connecting While Correcting (Part 1)
8. Behavioral Change: Connecting While Correcting (Part 2)
9. Behavioral Change: Connecting While Correcting (Part 3)

The in-class sessions are supplemented by weekly outside assignments, including reading and a variety of participatory exercises.  In addition, training participants have the opportunity to undergo (at a reduced cost) a Clinical Family Assessment provided by a licensed clinical social worker and experienced adoption counselor. This assessment provides parents with an opportunity to fully embrace the meaning and implications of their attachment style (a topic that is thoroughly discussed during the training), and helps to identify goals and develop ways that will help parents implement changes that put into practice the strategies they learn in the ETC Parent Training.

The next semester of ETC Parent Training starts on September 13, 2012, and will meet on Thursday nights from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Irving Bible Church.  The cost for the training is $125 per family, which includes materials, required resources and childcare (ages 0 to 5th grade).  Married couples are required to attend together and singles are encouraged to attend with a support team member.  Class sizes are limited. 

Note: This summer Tapestry will host a six-week discussion group for adoptive and foster moms and moms-to-be to work through the Created To Connect Study Guide. This group will meet on Tuesday evenings, starting June 12^th, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, in West C & D at Irving Bible Church.  Click here for more information.

For more information about the Empowered To Connect Parent Training or to inquire about registering to attend the training for the upcoming semester, contact Amy Monroe at tapestry@irvingbible.org.  If you are interested in learning more about Empowered To Connect Parent Training or how you might become trained to teach the training to parents in your area, visit http://empoweredtoconnect.org/training/.

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