Since we are immersed in conversations with the black community, we are able to keep our fingers on the pulse of our concerns. It is a fortunate position to be in and an interesting one to say the least.

One topic of conversation and concern that comes up frequently is the need for us to strengthen our parenting skills. Many are concerned about the future and know if our children were taught better, loved more, and given more direction at home, then the children would be better served. It is widely recognized that the parents are the very first teachers of our children, so improving their skills would improve our children and future.

In conjunction with Black Parental Soul (be sure to like the FB page by clicking the link), Urban Intellectuals  has been engaged, behind the scenes, in discussion of forming an initiative to start parental mentoring.

We have all been in situations where we have seen inappropriate parenting in our community. My wife calls it “Ghetto Parenting”. You know what i’m talking about. In stores, you see parents yelling and cursing their children out as if a 3 year is going to respond to something so harsh or they are grabbing their children and threatening them, instead of using simple distraction tactics that work.

Obviously, many of these parents just need some basic skills and tactics that would make their lives and our interactions with their children much better, but at the moment they don’t have them.

What is curious is we are so gun ho about mentoring our youth, mentoring in business and careers, but no one is encouraging people to mentor or get mentoring for parents. If mentoring works in every other area of life, then why not in the area of parenting?

Resistance by the Black Community?

When this idea was tossed out to a few people for discussion, one of the main concerns that came back was you know the black community can’t stand to be criticized when it comes to parenting. We don’t like people in our business and don’t want to be told or shown how to parent.

I can’t really argue with that, but only can say it still doesn’t mean that it isn’t needed in the community. In fact, I would go so far as to say that we must consider something along this line because our children that want to do the right things are being poisoned by these poor parenting techniques.

Even when you get a child into a mentoring program, expose them to wonderful opportunities, sights, and lessons, at the end of the day they are going home to a dysfunctional family and all the work will be undone. This is counter productive, so why not get the parents involved in the mentoring as well?

How it can be structured?

Now we are getting down to the meat of the program and unfortuantely, I don’t have an answer….YET! As I stated, we just started kicking around the idea, but here is a thought by #UIExample, an Urban Intellectual’s Admin on the Facebook Page:

So it sounds like the initial approach would be based on establishing a parenting support network, and from there individual connections with parents are made….then it’s not intrusive. I like how you envision covering every aspect of rebuilding the community.

Love this idea and seems like a logical place to start the discussion. Others have weighed in and expounded on this idea, but we want to hear from you to get your input.

Is this a good idea? Should it be done? And if you agree, then how should it be structure and implemented?

Let’s have this discussion, UI Family. We may not agree on all things, but we can agree that we must do something and mentoring is a great idea in many aspects of life….why not parenting?