No. 52 Parenting # 2

Facilitator______________
Date___________________

Group Session Plan from FUSN (developed by Holly Zeeb and Bob Zeeb)

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

Because that is the nature of being a parent. . . you love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and—in that love, and in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love—you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents.

Ursula Hegi, “Freitod” (from Hotel of the Saints)

Check-in/Sharing

Topic/Activity:
We have all had parents and, in one way or another, we all are parents (If you have not had your own children focus on children you have become intimate with, children who have become a part of your life). Talk about your experience as a parent focusing on one incident or one period of time.

Select the topic and location for the next meeting

Check-out / Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

It is one of the paradoxes of parenting, and often a painful paradox, that even as our children need us for love and trust, they also need us for honest differing. It’s not only over limits and rules. . . (but also) about what we represent in the way of culture, traditions, and values. We owe it to them to be honest adversaries for it is through this honest confrontation that children can grow into adults who have a firm sense of their place in the sequence of the generations.
Fred Rogers

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray