Welcome to the Spring 2010 Edition of our Bringing Baby Home Connections
Newsletter! With this newsletter, I would like to officially welcome some new
faces to the BBH Family…
Welcome to our newly trained Certified
Gottman Educators (CGEs)!We
had a very successful Winter 2010 BBH Certification Training here in Seattle this past
February. We are happy to announce that we now have 44 new CGEs to add to our
group. And what a wonderful group they are! I was very pleased to have the
opportunity to get to know some of the new CGEs, who come from a variety of
backgrounds and geographic areas and seem as passionate about helping couples
through the transition to parenthood as John Gottman himself. It was highly
enjoyable to listen to all of the fascinating questions and ideas brought forth
by the new CGEs during the Certification Training. Thanks to everyone who
participated! I’d also like to give a very special thanks to Joni Parthemer,
our BBH Education Director—who beautifully orchestrated the entire event—and to
Emily Nackley, our BBH Program Coordinator—who organized the training from
start to finish and became a CGE herself in the process! Outstanding job, Joni
and Emily!! Many thanks also go out to Carolyn Pirak, Joan Hoffman, and Heidi
Koss-Noble, who also made significant contributions to the training via their
participation in our panel.
Welcome to our new BBH Training Specialists
(TS)—Lynee Brown, Beth Goss, Julia Laibson, Jennyfer Ryden, and Lisa
Tinkersley!(click here for the brief bios of our new Training Specialists on our website)The Training Specialists started off as CGEs and
were invited to become TS based on their level of excellence in facilitating
the BBH Workshops with families in their areas. It was a pleasure to see all of
them in action at the Winter Training—sharing so much information about
families and modeling a variety of thought-provoking teaching methods. Thank
you all for all of the hard work and effort that you put into the training
process and event! The new CGEs surely benefited from experiencing your wealth
of knowledge and styles. Now that these individuals have experienced the
process of planning and conducting a BBH Certification Training, they will be
available to assist with upcoming Seattle-based and on-site Trainings. Speaking
of which…
Upcoming BBH Certification Training
Opportunities.Stay tuned for
details about the Seattle-based Certification Training that we’ve got scheduled
for this September 2010. Alternatively, if you or your organization is
interested in having a BBH Certification Training for a group of folks at your
site, please contact Emily Nackley for details about our new on-site training
options.
As
always, please stay in touch with BBH via our newly revised website, www.bbhonline.org. Also, if you have ideas for articles that you’d be
interested in seeing in our newsletter, or if you have stories of your own that
you’d like to share, please let us know! We may feature your topic or story in
one of our upcoming newsletters. Thanks very much for your continued support of
the Relationship Research Institute’s Bringing Baby Home Program.
Best regards,
Renay Bradley
and the BBH Team
Updates!
Bringing Baby Home is on Facebook. Check us out and click "I Like" at the top of our Facebook page to support us!You can also follow us as we tweet on Twitter!
Good news! If your 'CGE'certification is up-to-date, then you are listed as a Certified Gottman Educator on our website now! Please note that I will be removing workshop listings under our "Upcoming BBH Workshops" page if there are no upcoming dates attached to the listing.
Making BBH A Household Name
The Bringing Baby Home Program would like to welcome Drew Warren, of “Right Place, Right Time, Right Mindset”, and Stephanie Lo, from the University of Washington, to the BBH Family! Drew and Stephanie have come on board to help brand and market BBH so that we can make Bringing Baby Home a household name and start initiatives that will help grow and sustain the organization. As many of you know, there is an urgent need to get the BBH Program back on track if we are going to meet our goal of making BBH available as part of the standard birth preparation program offered to expectant couples in hospitals throughout the nation and around the world. We are excited to have the marketing expertise of Drew and Stephanie as we begin to create a strategic plan of action to make this happen.
As part of this new initiative, we would like to begin by getting feedback from you—our BBH CGEs! That’s right! It’s time for you to let us know about your experience with the BBH Program, including how and why you became a CGE in the first place, what you’ve done with your CGE title, and ideas for how we can build a stronger program and foundation of trained CGEs. In order to learn about your experience and ideas, we will be inviting all current CGEs to share this information with us via a web survey. Please be on the look out for an email invitation to participate in this survey within the coming months.
A CGE looks back on her experience putting on a Bringing Baby Home Workshop A letter from Lisa Tankersley, CGE and recently installed Training Specialist
I just wanted to share with you how I felt after my BBH class ended last week.I chose to teach this as a Saturday and Sunday workshop, and I believe it worked quite well.
...They had so much fun with the “Bean Bag” exercise(explained below)on communication that I had to ask them to breathe and calm down.The “actor” in several people really came out as we recalled the patterns of behavior, which lead to a meltdown.
Talking of Father’s was touching and I could actually see the chests of the dad’s raise up on their spines and puff up a bit. “The Value Of Fathers”, indeed.
The fishbowl exercise was both heart wrenching and hopeful as so many people showed the understanding of their own need to break negative cycles and foster a better connection with their children. (click here for entire article on our website!)
The Beanie Baby Exercise- The Art of Responding to Bids
At our February Training in Seattle, Lisa Tankersley taught us an exercise that really did have us hootin' and hollerin' as we tossed beanie babies at one another. This exercise is a fun way for couples to "Practice" the art of responding to bids after learning about them from the lecture. To begin, each couple is given a beanie baby (or something soft to throw) and directed to stand a few feet from one another. Then the couples simply start tossing the beanie baby back and forth with one another. Then the Instructor tells them that when one partner tosses the beanie baby, the other partner is to respond as if he/she is "Turning Away". After a few moments of that, the instructor tells the partners to respond as if they are "Turning Towards", then "Turning Against", then "Stonewalling", then "Contempt", then "an Unclear Bid", then "Belligerence", then "Humor", and so on. You are welcome to add more bid responses as you deliver the exercise. During this activity, couples will get a chance to feel what a bid response such as "Turning Away" feels like in a very physical sense - as the beanie baby they've just tossed drops to the floor because their partner turned away!
Obama’s Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Initiative
As the Director of Research at the Relationship Research Institute, I am always trying to keep an eye and ear out to learn about new funding opportunities geared toward research on family relationships. I was particularly excited when I recently learned about President Obama’s new “Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Initiative”. I had the pleasure of participating in a “webinar” sponsored by the National Fatherhood Leaders Group (NFLG) on April 1, 2010, which described the Initiative and its goals.The NFLG (www.nflgonline.org) is an emerging organization that is comprised of men and women who have been involved in responsible fatherhood policy, research, advocacy and practice.NFLG was created to build and sustain the fatherhood field and to raise the awareness of the importance of fathers in the lives of all children and families. As such, the NFLG—like myself—were also very excited about Obama’s new Initiative and the potential impact it can have on fathers, children, and families. Thus, they sponsored this webinar as a way of getting the word out about this new Initiative in hopes of sharing details on how organizations can get involved and benefit from this new Innovation Fund.
This past February, Obama introduced the Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Initiative and announced that the federal government will provide $500 million to support fatherhood and healthy relationships starting in 2011! (click here for entire article on our website!)
Have a wonderful month of May!
Bringing Baby Home 2030 First Ave, Suite 205 Seattle, WA 98121 bbh.ct@bbhonline.org www.bbhonline.org
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