Protective Factor #4: Social Connections

Hello Everyone and welcome to the middle of the work week! The Labor Day holiday is behind us and the days of Fall are before us. However, here in Oklahoma, Fall seems far off with continuous temperatures still hovering around 100 degrees. Oh well...that can only mean more outside play time with the family before chilly north winds and crisp temperatures keep us indoors playing board games and drinking hot cocoa.

September is Family Meal Month here at Family Builders and so most of our blog posts will celebrate and encourage families sitting down together and sharing meals. However, I would like us to continue our journey on becoming familiar with the 6 Protective Factors. We have covered Factors 1-3 and today I would like to concentrate on Protective Factor #4: Social Connections.

Parents should always keep up social connections. Period. What are social connections you may wonder, and why is it important in the realm of improving and expanding my parenting skills? There has been evidence that links maltreatment and lack of support for children with parents who experience social isolation and a lack of interaction with friends and family outside the home (www.childwelfare.gov). Parents need to interact with other adults and parents in their community as an important form of their own social development.

Interactions with friends and other parents within the community can foster a sharing environment that may serve as a resource for parents in observing, sharing, and learning alternative parenting styles. Learning how other parents parent and hearing stories of how these parents deal with parenting stress can serve as an important outlet for mothers and fathers alike. These social connections can serve as a stabilizing point for parents and allow them to interact with other human beings, besides their own children. This can help ease the burden of parenting and provide support in crises.

Additionally, this social interaction will serve as an example for your own children in encouraging them to make friends and interact with other children within the community. Serving as a role model for your children on proper social development, will further help them along in their own social connections and maturity, while helping them learn how to make friends.  

So now, where to start? Everyone has obstacles to overcome in order to get out of the home and begin interacting within the community. These can include transportation and child car obstacles. First, access community resources, especially those that might have free child care (such as churches) and city transportation services. Then join a parents group in your area, or start a play group in your own neighborhood. This can be a great idea as a neighborhood play group alleviates transportation issues. On a rotational basis one parent from the group can watch children in a neighborhood or backyard playground while the rest of the group meets. Or meet in a home, where children can play in a playroom while parents meet.

There are ways to work through barriers to making social connections. Parents need the support of other parents and so social connections are indeed important. This Protective Factor may serve as one of the most important in keeping parents resilient to the challenges that inevitably may come when being a parent!