Parent Express for 06-May-2008

Welcome to Parent Express, the PCI e-zine! Here you will find updates on the Parent Coaching Institute, along with ideas and practical tips for the parenting journey.

Happy Mothers Day! May this day be one of renewal and peace for all Moms!

And Happy Mothers Day to our environmental mother, Mother Earth! We don't want to let her out of the festivities. With all the focus on wise stewardship of our precious planet, our featured article by PCI Certified Parent Coach® Tasmin Pesso, serves as a friendly reminder of the gift we give to our children when we live consciously to support the needs of our only earth. Her article, "Environmental Parenting," provides important ideas to practice and ponder with our children.

May all mothers enjoy the full blossoming of spring this month!

Gloria DeGaetano, Founder and CEO

Take Advantage of Early Registration for Summer Quarter!

Applications are now being accepted for entrance Summer Quarter for the Parent Coach Certification® Training Program with phone classes for Course 1 beginning the week of June 23. Phone classes are in the evening time to accommodate work schedules of our students.

Send in your basic application before May 15 and receive $500.00 off the cost of tuition. There are currently only two places left for the $500 discount.

Deadline to apply for Summer Quarter is June 2. Spaces are limited. Early applications receive first consideration.

Please send in the basic application as your first step. Transcripts and letters of reference can follow the basic application by a few weeks. Download the application here. Send to the PCI at: 1400-112th Ave. SE, Bellevue, WA 98004. Questions? Please call: (425) 401-1519.

Learn more about our acclaimed, graduate-level, distance-learning Parent Coach Certification® Program by clicking here for more information.

Check out our Video About the PCI Parent Coach Training Program and see what professionals think about their training with the PCI.

"I very much appreciate the PCI and the thorough training program we have been provided with. I can't imagine how any other training program could be any better. The PCI systems approach, along with the use of AI, presents a solid guideline for successful coaching."
—Donna Wallington, Taulatin, Oregon

"The wealth of information and knowledge I've been exposed to as a PCI student has been phenomenal…it's incredible how much all this information just fits together so well…internalizing and digesting all of this knowledge has been a joy. Beginning to use it in my daily life and within my relationships has been life-changing."
—Mari Ferrell, Round Rock, Texas

Working with a parent coach who has received Parent Coach Certification® through the PCI is giving yourself a valuable gift as well as a sound investment in your family's future. PCI Certified Parent Coaches® are caring, thoughtful professionals with years of experience working with parents. They have successfully completed the PCI Parent Coach Certification® Training Program—a comprehensive academic one-year, graduate-level program in collaboration with Seattle Pacific University. Through a series of coaching conversations that can be either by telephone or in person, PCI Parent Coaches help you re-discover your dreams and design your life for more joy and satisfaction.

To find a PCI Parent Coach in your area, please click here or call (425) 401-1519 for a referral to a PCI Parent Coach selected especially for you.

Visit www.parentappreciationradio.com to listen to programs featuring PCI Certified Parent Coaches® and other experts from around the country discussing topics of interest to moms and dads.

Programs are available as podcasts. Listeners can download individual episodes directly, listen to them from this site using a Web browser, or via the iTunes podcast directory. iTunes subscribers will automatically pick up new episodes as they become available!

Environmental Parenting

by Tasmin Pesso, PCI Certified Parent Coach®

As a group, parents are the most important people in any society. Our successes and failures are the future of our culture. It is commendable how seriously we take our responsibility. We draw from our own pasts, consult with friends and family, as well as refer to the experts through books, parent education programs, and private consultations, all to help us meet the healthy developmental needs of our children. However, one aspect of parenting is frequently overlooked by the aforementioned resources and that is how to raise our children with sustainable habits appropriate to their current and future needs. I am sure none of us want our worst environmental habits to be part of our legacy.

Now, imagine the powerful impact we parents are having when we raise our children to commute in accordance with our environmental values. We are immediately having an environmental impact with lower carbon dioxide output, while simultaneously supporting healthy behaviors and character traits that will continue throughout our children's future. This quality once integrated will also automatically become part of our children's future parenting practices. That is a legacy to be proud of.

Read the Rest of the Article…

Local PCI Coach on Local TV Program
Karen Bierdeman, PCI Certified Parent Coach® and one of her clients, a couple in Seattle, will be featured on the May 14 edition of Evening Magazine on a piece about PCI parent coaching. Tune into KING 5 Wednesday May 14!

Child Honoring Now Available as Free PDF
Raffi, songwriter, singer, storyteller, and child advocate has been forwarding his campaign of Child Honoring out into the world—a call for a new paradigm in which we change the world by putting the needs of children first. Children's irreducible needs give all concerned a unifying ethic. His book Child Honoring is a must-read collection by experts in the field giving passionate pleas for transformative change for the sake of our children. He co-edited this marvelous book with Professor Sharna Olfman, and it is now available as a free PDF.

Children and Electronic Media
The Future of Children is a collaboration of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution. Their latest issue is devoted to recent research on children and screen technology.

Discussion Guide Available for Parenting Well
A Discussion Guide for parent groups reading and talking about Parenting Well in a Media Age is available here. The Guide consists of key questions to help understand the impact of the industry-generated culture on parenting and to assist parents with practicing The Vital Five in their daily lives with their children.

Back issues of Parent Express are available on the PCI Web site. There you can read articles by Gloria DeGaetano and PCI Certified Parent Coaches®, and easily send past issues to friends and colleagues via e-mail.

Springtime: Time to Transform

by Gloria DeGaetano
Founder and CEO,
The Parent Coaching Institute

The energy of springtime is the energy of movement. When I think of transforming self or helping to transform declining conditions on our planet, I think of forward movement—one small step at a time, usually. The pace we go doesn't matter as much as the "how" we do what we are moved to do. For it is in the "how" that we catalyze good in our everyday lives for the people we touch. The ripple effect moves out from there. The pace at which it moves out can often astound when the "how" is in alignment with three key qualities.

These qualities define characteristics of internal states that shepherd our constructive actions, imbuing them with far-reaching results, making the good we do more sustainable. Here is a thumb-nail synthesis of each quality. By focusing on them and inviting them to grow within us, we bring more light to ourselves and to our world.

Integrity

In a thought-provoking article titled, "Awakening to the Highest Reaches of Integrity," in the Spring edition of the Vision in Action Journal, Yasuhiko Genku Kimura defines "integrity" on three levels:

"Integrity means being true to one's principles, one's word, and one's self, and true integrity involves the total accord between these three levels of being true. People who can sustain their commitment are those who say, "I am committed to making X happen," and then follow though with the necessary stages of action that ensure that X happens. Such people have integrity. They sustain their commitment to the end. God is reported to have said, "Let there be light," and immediately there was light. In the case of humans, it takes time for commitment to unfold, but the principle is the same. For example, we say, ‘Let there be peace on earth.' If the majority of us have true integrity, with which we are prepared to take sustained action, peace will surely prevail on earth."

Read the Rest of the Article…