Empowering Girls and Women as Mothers

Last week I shared about Acornhoek, this week I thought I would share more about our adventure. The second part of the week we went to another site in Rooiboklaagte where we trained more parents. I wanted to share with you the heart-warming comments from the ladies after the training and also share the videos I took of some of the role plays, some of these ladies should receive an “Oscar” for their performances.

The Journey of Life looks at pressure the children are under, the first video although in language you can very definitely hear and sense the bullying that the parents identified as a road block to their child’s development.

The second video is about peer pressure and the pressure that this issue places on the whole family. Finally, the third video is about stealing.

The ladies where very surprised to realise they too had to overcome these issues growing up, and how that affected them in their journey. It is all rather sad.

After the training, when we ask for feedback, one lady was in tears with the realisation of how much she had caused her children pain. One of the exercises the ladies had to do was to collect stones for every negative thing they had given their children, then they had to speak out what the negative was, and place the stone in a plastic bag. Then the bag was given to one of the ladies over her shoulder and she was then instructed to jump up and down and have fun, while carrying this bag. Obviously, she couldn’t, the bag weighed too much. This is how our negativity affects the children. This mum was horrified about the harm she had caused her children, how much hurt and pain she had caused her kids. The good news is, she was determined to make it right!

The ladies were amazed at how forgiving their children were, the parents all went home and practiced active listening with their children, the kids were very sceptical in the beginning but after a short period of time, the kids engaged with their parents and the start of new relationships were formed. This astounded the parents and the children. So much healing was present, each day we could see the parents becoming more engaged, more animated and more excited, their whole countenances were changing. These sorts of lightbulb moments are priceless.

Thank you for assisting us to change lives and families. Needless to say all the parents want to know when the next training is, however, we charged them with talking about what they had learnt to the community members so that the knowledge is shared and more impact is gleaned from the training.

You are such a blessing to the work we do. We are blessed by you; you make such a difference to the work we do.
Thank you

Louise

Links:

• Bullying video
• Peer Pressure video
• Stealing Video