The 17th annual Partners in Parenting Conference was held Saturday, March 1 in the gymnasium at West Boundary Elementary School.
The six-hour conference continues to live up to their theme of “Meeting the needs of rural communities” and again this year parents, early childhood educators and caregivers came from the Kootenays and the Okanagan to join in the day’s sharing and learning.
The event was sponsored by Boundary Child Care Resource and Referral, Regional District of Kootenay Boundary, Rock Creek Community Medical Society, School District 51 and School District 51 Parents Advisory Council.
Keynote speaker this year was Terril Elwood, MS, SLP—an authorized course facilitator and parent coach with the Neufeld Institute. In the morning she spoke for three hours on “Understanding Preschoolers: What They Need From Us.”
“The most important concept about what I am talking about today is that preschoolers have one emotion at a time,” explained Elwood. “That is natural and as they grow and come into clarity on each of these feelings, then they can mix them.
“Then you get consideration, you get more mature functioning. The bottom line is that they need relationships with parents; deep relationships with caring adults because in that relationship they can feel all of their emotions, come to a place of mixing those emotions and growing up; because emotions grow kids up.”
In the afternoon she presented a 90-minute talk entitle “Teen Sexuality”, based on the work of Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.
“Specifically to sexuality being another dimension of attachment,” she stated. “So we are going to go through the levels of attachment and what that looks like for a teen who has become very peer oriented and how that impacts sexual choices.”
Three vendors were at the conference this year: Scott Davis from Grand Forks was offering books from the Bearfoot Books franchise, Sharon’s Felts and Finger Fun was there from Rossland, and Greenwood market gardener Alison Anderson was there with Greenwood Garden Goodies.
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