Project SWOT Scouts at IES Azcona has recently promoted our schoolchildren’s parents attending “School of Families”, an initiative by a university research team. The organizer, “Advances in Intervention and Epidemiology in Children, Adolescents and Families” (Faculty of Psychology, University of Almería) has run a course for parents to learn how to self-regulate emotions when dealing with their children’s issues, for a more satisfactory, positive family life.

Using the metaphor of the forest of parenthood, during the four 2-hour sessions, university lecturer Juan Miguel Flujas (Faculty of Psychology) discussed the difficulties of coping with their adolescent children’s problems and behaviour, and how an awful lot can be achieved by means of self-regulation of emotional outbursts, active listening, emotional validation and positive reinforcement.