RESTORING MANA AND BUILDING LEGACY
It's all about the dads on this ten-week programme led by David Ringrose. He tells us about the Fathers For Families group he has run for the last five years.
In the past, we gave our children away to other people to teach. But through working with families, David Ringrose began to realise that “we our own child’s best teacher, that parents are essential to helping children reach their full potential”.
However, dads were reporting that they felt left out of the parenting process.
“I saw some dads with children who had major health issues, even life-threatening, and the dads were treated like a third party by those involved in their child’s care, hovering in the corner,” he says. “The GPs, Plunket, social workers… they would often focus on mums, and the men told me that they felt excluded. This experience doesn’t really set men up to be good fathers. It makes them feel like parenting is not their responsibility.”
David Ringrose, the FSM whānau worker who heads up the Fathers For Families programme
A seasoned social worker, David established a group to support men to become engaged fathers.
“The core idea behind Fathers For Families is ‘better men, better fathers’. As a father, you are a coach for your child,” he says. “If you were coaching a football team you’d want to upskill yourself, to know what works and what doesn’t, what techniques can enhance the team.”
Parenting is largely trial and error, he says, and our children live through those errors. Even if we have a good blueprint from our own parents, it doesn’t fully prepare us.
“What happens in the early days of a child’s life can affect them physically and emotionally in the long term.”
The programme gives fathers the knowledge and tools to parent well.
“We want to help them get rid of negative beliefs about themselves. Did someone once tell you that you were useless at drawing? I’ve seen men carry a belief like this from childhood and it affects how they behave.
“I’m just amazed by some of our guys. Men that were abused as children, who have gone through Youth Justice, who have been in care and in prison - then they come to us and want to be a good man in their 20s and 30s. Their resilience just blows me away. Many people would have given up, but they’re trying to pull themselves up. It’s incredible and we want to help.”
Fathers For Families is a ten-week course addressing issues like controlling anger, how violence, drugs and alcohol affect children, and setting values and goals. There is an ongoing Monday evening support group for graduates of the programme in Wiri, Manukau City.