Strengthening Relationships – Parent Seminar

February Parent Seminar- Strengthening Relationships

Every year Oxbow Academy does three informative parent seminars. Our parents have the opportunity to visit our campus to attend a presentation, participate in parent support groups, attend parent-teacher conferences, an equine experiential activity, and participate in family therapy sessions with their son and his therapist.

This February, Shawn Brooks, our Executive Director, presented at our seminar on Strengthening Relationships.

He addressed the essential topic of shame and how it often drives all of us to disconnect and prevent relationships. He used the video clip from Brené Brown’s Ted Talk on shame to further explain this point.

Shawn and our parents discussed what role shame plays in their own lives, and how they can overcome it to better strengthen each of their relationships, especially the relationships they have with their son. How can they better support their son in owning their own stories? This can take a lot of courage at times, and be the bravest thing they may ever do.

Shawn discussed as each of our students work through the difficult and painful process of owning their own story, they can then rewrite a new ending to their story.

They can do this by the appropriate use of vulnerability, which is essential to strengthening relationships. The video clip below explains the importance and use of vulnerability as described by Brené Brown.

“Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past 13 years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. Brené is the author of three #1 New York Times Bestsellers: Rising Strong, Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection.”

Since hands-on learning is so important to our program, not to mention our brains, we gave the parents an opportunity to further learn how to strengthen relationships through an equine experience, just as our boys would experience.

The next day was nothing less as eventful as our student’s were able to perform for their proud parents what they had learned in their music class with our amazing Music Director, Dallin Roberson.

We ended the day with some famous Sanpete turkey steak lunch and then off to family equine sessions they went.

Overall it was a successful and relationship-strengthening parent seminar for all who attended. We look forward to the next one.