Nashville-Based Nonprofit Helps Kids by Helping Their Parents to Parent Effectively

The Family Center Nashville-based Nonprofit Adverse Childhood Experiences Adverse Community Environments ACEs intergenerational trauma Multigenerational Trauma Positive Parenting Plus Nurturing Families Vulnerable Families Recovering Parents incarcerated parents Teen Pregnancy Program

By Jo Anne Hubert , Parent Herald Nov 06, 10:22 am

A Nashville-based nonprofit is helping kids through training their parents to parent effectively through teaching them about their children's brain and how these are significantly connected with their kids' emotions and behaviors.

"There's a real stigma that we have in our society around not being able to naturally parent our children, and yet as a society, we don't always give parents of vulnerable families the resources they need to be able to parent effectively," Susan Galeas, president and CEO of The Family Center, expressed,

Originally started to stop and fight against child abuse in 1985, the Family Center is a Nashville-based nonprofit that now uses research-backed programs to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma in familes, specifically ACEs - Adverse Childhood Experiences or Adverse Community Environments.

ACEs are potentially traumatic events that a child experiences before he/she reaches 18 years old. These sad and painful experiences can interfere with the child's health, opportunities and stability as he/she grows and throughout his or her lifetime. Moreover, it can even seriously affect future generations if not processed and healed. It usually occur in an an unsafe community environment where violence, neglect, poverty, discrimination, abuse, homelessness are found.

Goal: To help parents raise resilient kids

Research shows that more than 4 ACEs lessens life expectancy and heightens the chances of kids and adults participating in unsafe behaviors and having an encounter with the justice system, Galeas explained. And, when trauma like ACEs is experienced by children, it transforms their brains, and even their DNA, resulting in proven negative health, mental health, poor academic and employment outcomes.

From July 2021 to June 2022, The Family Center has served 83 percent of 601 parents who experienced at least one ACE in their own childhood, and almost half of these parents had experienced 4 or more ACEs.

They are currently offering the programs Positive Parenting Plus, an eight-week, once-a-week seminar that helps parents become better parents, and Nurturing Families, which is a family coaching program.

Galeas emphasized that the organization "desperately" desires for the public to know that they it exist because they would want to make a difference. They have seen great outcomes from their programs and training and would want not only to provide "evidence-based curriculum" to the families they serve but, most importantly, wrap themselves around these families to generously provide resources necessary to raise resilient kids.

Generously, because the organization offers their programs and training at no cost to families who are located in Davidson, Rutherford and Knox counties.

Most families and clients TFC serves are "vulnerable," referred from the Department of Children's Services, the Department of Human Services, courts and jails. Last fiscal year, they were able to serve 68 parents in recovery and 149 that are incarcerated.

Recently, they have also begun offering a teen pregnancy program in Metro Nashville Public Schools and Montgomery County schools.

A parent's testimony

One of the parents who was helped healed and transformed by TFC was Stephanie Eusebio. The mother of 2 encountered the non-profit in 2019 as she was longing to become a better parent. She and her two daughters were "transitioning to a new life, and Eusebio felt like she hit rock bottom."

She recalled that who she was then as a mother was definitely not the kind of mother she wanted to be. She knew she needed help yet she was afraid to look for help because she feared being judged, Mainstreet Nashville reported.

When she found TFC, she was welcomed and taken care of by a group of people she fondly calls "God's warriors" - individuals who showed her and all the other parents in the program compassion, mercy and a non-judgemental outlook.

The Positive Parenting Plus program transformed her and her girls from "surviving to thriving." She learned her kids' normal developmental stages and expectations, something she had not encountered growing up. She learned that using self-care as an "emotional reset" is healthy, and that it can be even healthier to step out of the "box" of her parent's parenting styles.

More than all these, and the most important of all, Eusebio found out that her family was having this multigenerational trauma, and she realized that she is able to change the future of her kids and her grandkids. Now, she is determined to end their family's trauma, thanks to The Family Center.