Teens In Transition:

Eight weeks of Yoga and Empowerment!         The progression to high school can be an unusually stressful experience for teens.  This transition can cause anxiety, moodiness, angry outbursts or withdrawal from friends and family.

 Teens in Transition is a therapeutic yoga class which meets once a week to assist teens in reducing stress, increasing body awareness and creating community through breathing, exercises, meditation, and journaling. Classes will be held at the Youth Services building.

 The cost for the entire series is $40.  Registration is required    through Granby Youth Services at 860.844.5355.

This class will be taught by Kristal Fiorentino, a certified Yoga instructor with years of teaching experience.  More information is available on the Town of Granby Youth Service Bureau website.

Look What’s Coming!

Spring is on its way, and so are some new programs.

PACT 360: Parents You Matter: Drugs/Alcohol, Your Teen and You.    This program for parents will be presented in cooperation with GMMS and the PAC.  Child care and pizza will be provided.  Details forthcoming.

QPR: Question, Persuade, Refer:  Suicide prevention Training for the community.  This one hour training is available to any community group or group of residents for free.  Appropriate for teens and adults.

SPEAKER Bob Anastas: founder of Students Against Driving Drunk.  Bob is a powerful and motivating speaker. The topic is Check in to a Winning Life.  Bring your teen or tween with you to this engaging night!   Thursday April 3^rd.  Location and time to be announced.

Love and Logic Parenting Workshop:  This parenting workshop has been highly praised by the parents who attended the first three sessions. In six sessions you develop the skills to end the power struggles with your kids, build a positive and loving relationship, while teaching them to be responsible humans who understand that actions have consequences.  The Spring session will begin in March.  Registration for this session will be open February 1, 2014.

Y.E.S. Youth Employment Service:  Our Y.E.S. program helps connect local youth interested in earning some extra money with area residents who are looking for some help.  From babysitting to yard clean up, we help facilitate connections between our youth and residents.  The youth application is available on our website.  Call AnneMarie Cox for more information!

Oh the weather outside is frightful.....

Winter is here indeed.  After a short break for the holidays, our winter programs will be back up and running.

GO!, our Guys Only group gets a bit smaller as our activities move inside.  Friday nights find us hanging our at the YSB shooting pool, playing ping pong, or improvising crazy games of dodge ball in the community room!

WOW- Women on the Way is a group of high school age girls, and meets at the YSB most Thursday evenings.  Great snacks and unique activities bring girls back year after year:-)

As always, our counseling services are available for youth and families in Granby free of charge.  This tends to be a busy time of year as most families experience increased stresses post holiday, but as of today, we are still able to serve new clients within a week to two of the referral.

Our Kids Play You Stay group for infants and toddlers meets on Wednesday mornings at the Barn at Holcomb Farm.

Our winter session of Love and Logic, a highly praised workshop that helps parents have more fun while raising responsible children wrapped up the first week of January.  The Spring session will start registration in February.

Keeping the Thanks in Thanksgiving

What memories do you want your children to take with them as they grow up?  When they think of the holidays, what do you hope they recall?

I know what I don"t want them to remember: a mother so stressed out about the "production" that no one is having fun.  Holidays are the best when I find that balance that creates something special that connects me with my family here and now, and at the same time connects me to my past and to the future where my children have the memories of what we do today.  That feeling of connection is  is the magical part of this season for me.

So I have to let go of a lot of stuff.  Yes, the house needs to be cleaner than normal when Nana comes, but it won't be perfect.  There will be dust bunnies, and the hallway will not be painted.  The kids rooms will be partial disasters, but the bathrooms will be clean, the floors will be mopped, and the kitchen will sparkle.  And guess what, Nana won't really care!

I have to set a budget, and I have to stay within it.  Money is tight, and if I pretend it isn't then the stress of overspending will make me resent the holiday, not embrace it.  I need to focus on what I CAN do and not dwell on the gifts or things I can't have as part of our holiday.  I won't focus on the I Phone my daughter wants but will not get, rather I need to focus on having fun shopping for the stuff she is going to get.

I am "doing" Thanksgiving dinner at our house, only for ten, but it is the first time it is more than just the four of us.  We typically go to Nana or Grandma's house.  My Thanksgiving will be good, we will have fun together.  It will not be perfect.  I work full time.  I need some shortcuts to make it happen. So while the pie crusts will not be homemade, my daughter will be thrilled that the mashed potatoes will be.  The table will be pretty, but not worthy of a magazine.  And as I type this I remind myself that I have little memory of what table settings my mom used, just that we used the nice glasses, and the turkey looked awesome.  My kids will not care that our tablecloth is inexpensive, and that the centerpiece is not a work of art.  They will see family sitting together, and turkey, and feel love and a sense of connection.  We will laugh about who carves the turkey, and debate the merits of candied yams vs mashed potatoes. These are the memories I hope they will carry with them.

It will be good, and it will be best if I am relaxed and enjoying it with everyone, not worrying about how things don't live up to some artificial ideal in my head created from a Norman Rockwell painting or a Martha Stewart magazine.

So I wish you and your families a warm, stress free holiday season full of happy memories of the past, and hopes for the future.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Suicide Prevention: We all can play a role

Both the Towns of Granby and East Granby are proud to announce that they now have a certified QPR instructor on staff.  Question, Pursuade, Refer is a research based, nationally recognized suicide prevention program suitable for older teens and adults.  In a brief hour long session, you learn what to look for and how to respond to someone who may be considereing suicide.

It is an uncomfortable topic, one we may avoid asking about.  Asking someone if they are suicidal means we need to do shomething if they are, and many of us feel unqualified to handle this kind of situation.  QPR gives you the skills you need to ask the right questions and get the person the help they need.

Sucicde is preventable, and the more members of our community who are prepared to respond to the warning signs of depression and suicide, the better we can rotect our friends, families and neigbors from a deadly decision.

If youor anyone you know are interested in taking this free one hour training class, please call AneMare Cax at (8600 844-5355 to schedule a training session.  Small group or larger, here at the YSB or at your office or home, this program is worth your time.  You could help save a life.

Creating a community voice for prevention.

One of the reasons I moved from my work in a school based clinical day treatment program to the Town of Granby Youth Service Bureau was my desire to shift from intervention to prevention.  Watching kid after kid struggle with anxiety, depression and substance abuse was frustrating and sad.  I remember thinking if I could help just one kid NOT start using, NOT become so depressed he or she harmed themselves, NOT be so anxious that attending school was an un-winnable battle, then I would truly have accomplished something profoundly worthwhile.

As the coordinator, and a counselor with the Youth Service Bureau, prevention is a big part of what I do.  I firmly believe that community based prevention is the key to raising children able to make healthy decisions and reduce the risky behaviors they engage in.  That said, community prevention is no walk in the park!

There is really good information out there, research based intervention strategies that have documented effectiveness, and they do not require a rocket scientist to implement.  What they do require is a community interested in hearing them, and incorporating the ideas and philosophies into a community wide voice that clearly lets our youth know that they are valued, supported, and that risky behaviors such as under age drinking, drinking and driving, risky sexual behavior and smoking marijuana or experimenting with other drugs is dangerous and unacceptable.

In our community  (as in many,  if not most communities) reaching parents with the information they need to be effective contributors in a community wide prevention effort often feels like an uphill battle.  As in other towns, when we host a parent night, or an educational forum on a prevention topic ( be it drug use, suicide prevention or concussion prevention) we typically get anywhere from 10 to 20 parent attendees.  Those parents almost always leave feeling they have learned important information.  

Our challenge then is to figure out how to move the message beyond these 15 or 20 families and reach the thousand or so other families we are missing time and time again.  No one has time for another meeting, another workshop, another anything, and prevention education just does not resonate with families as something they need to concern themselves with right now.  The excuse may be my children are still too young, or my kids are doing fine, or they have good friends and I don't have to worry.  

Well, we need to consider some facts here.  Your children are too young? Maybe, but the average age of first use in Connecticut is age 12. This means that the discussion needs to start while our kids are in elementary school.  Your kids are doing fine?  Fantastic!  Let's work together to keep it that way. Your kid has good friends?  Also fantastic, but lets face facts, in a community where almost 50% of high school seniors say they have smoked pot or consumed alcohol in the recent past, a whole lot of good kids are engaging in some high risk behaviors.

As parents we need to prioritize prevention.  Knowing the facts will help you guide your child to making safer decisions as a teenager, and if you are lucky enough to raise a teen who never makes a risky choice, I can almost guarantee you that  he or she will have a friend who will make a mistake.  The information and limits you impart to your child is may well help another child reduce the risks they take.    

So please, the next time you hear that a prevention program is being offered in town, make the time to check it out.  Coming to a program on preventing drug use in no way implies that you are worried that your child has a problem.  To the contrary, it means that you are doing everything in your power to prevent a problem from developing.  Please become a part of Granby's voice as we work to protect our youth from the very real dangers of underage substance use.

If you have any suggestions for topics of concern that you would like more information on, or ideas for bringing more parents to the programs we hold, please let me know!