Medical center hosts parenting skills classes Program offers insight, strategies for parents of young children BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer LONG BRANCH - - There may not be a "how-to" book on parenting, but a class offered at Monmouth Medical Center (MMC) in Long Branch can act as a guide. To help parents develop skills that will help them better understand the behavior of young children, the medical center is hosting a program titled "Systematic Training for Effective Parenting," or S.T.E.P. The program is open to parents who are raising children from infancy to 6 years old, according to Jean Bonn, a registered nurse at MMC who teaches the class. "This is not just for parents who are having problems," said Bonn, an Ocean Township resident, last week. "It is for anyone who wants to understand and improve their relationship with their children," she said. "We get a lot of positive results." S.T.E.P. focuses on teaching parents how to understand the behavior of young children, as well as how to develop communication and effective discipline skills through a five-session course, Bonn explained. "I would recommend this to everybody with small children," said Bonn, the mother of four. "It is very helpful. Being a parent is such an important job and often you don't know if you are doing the right thing." S.T.E.P. classes were introduced at the medical center in 2000, and Bonn came aboard in 2002 when she became the coordinator of the childbirth and parenting program at MMC. The course is generally offered about three times a year and a session is currently underway that will run through Oct. 17. The class meets once a week on Wednesdays from 7 to 9 p.m. for five consecutive weeks. Bonn also goes out into the community to teach private classes for groups such as the P.T.A., she said. The cost of the program is $75 per person or $100 per couple. To learn more about S.T.E.P. or to find out when the next course is being taught, call (732) 923-6990. "This program is to help parents see things from a child's perspective," Bonn said. "You take classes on how to have a baby and how to take care of an infant," she said. "You set the baby's schedule and then by the time the child is two, they have their own words and want to have a say in what is going on. It can be hard." At the beginning of each S.T.E.P. course, parents are issued a workbook and are given a reading assignment, according to Bonn. During class, the parents talk about the concepts in the chapter they read and then relate the issues to their own families, Bonn said. The discussion is then followed by exercises and video segments are shown in class with different parenting scenarios, according to Bonn. S.T.E.P. is an international program that was started in 1976 and has reached more than 4.5 million parents across the world, according to the S.T.E.P. Web site. There are four S.T.E.P. programs: early childhood; school age; teens; and Spanish, according to Bonn. "We are offering early childhood for parenting of young children," Bonn said. "We have offered S.T.E.P. for school-age in the past." The goal of the early childhood program is to help parents learn what to expect at the different ages of their child's life, according to Bonn. "Sometimes parents think their children are misbehaving, but it is just natural behavior for that age," Bonn said. "Other times the kids are misbehaving and the parents have to learn to handle it." Bonn explained that the class helps parents learn to set up boundaries for their children. "Rather than say no, no, no all the time," she said, "you can structure the environment to be more positive. It is about giving the kids choices that are reasonable while keeping them safe." Bonn said this strategy can be as simple as putting a gate up to block stairs rather than having to tell the child repeatedly not to climb the steps. "This class is about understanding your child's behavior," Bonn said. "It is about communicating and building self-esteem. It is about making a parent feel more confident and a little more positive." The classes also offer the opportunity for parents to network with parents experiencing similar situations and facing the same challenges. "The support and the camaraderie is important," Bonn said. "I think parenting is such an important job and it needs support," she said. "You bond and you learn." At the end of the course, the hospital asks parents for an evaluation, according to Bonn, who said that in the six years she has been teaching the class, she has heard positive feedback from participants. "I continually hear that parents understand their kids better and are communicating better," she said. "And that there is less yelling and less arguing." Classes for the program have been cancelled in the past due to low registration, but Bonn said classes can be as large as 10 sets of parents. "Sometimes it is both parents and sometimes it is single parents. When you have young children it is hard to get out," Bonn said. "The people that need it the most are sometimes the hardest ones to get to the class."