Parenting Conference Draws A Crowd In Lubbock

Writer: Linda Anderson, (979) 862-1460, lw-anderson@tamu.edu
Contact: Linda Lynch Evans, (806) 767-1190, l-lynch@tamu.edu

LUBBOCK – No prospective employee would ever consider accepting a for-pay position
that requires 24-hour shifts, seven days a week, with absolutely no vacation time.

Parents have this schedule all the time – and do it for free.

No doubt about it, parenting is the ultimate full-time job. Is it any wonder parents need all
the help they can get?

That’s why on the first Thursday of every November, the Partners for Parenting Coalition
of Lubbock and six other agencies sponsor their annual Building Strong Families Conference.
This year the conference was Nov. 7 at the First Church of the Nazarene in Lubbock. Topics
covered in the day-long conference include issues parents might face every day, including
discipline, family finances, health and nutrition, school and homework, and work and family
concerns.

The coalition is made up of “a group of about 45 local agencies who have, as their
programs’ priority, the needs of families,” said Linda Lynch Evans, Texas Cooperative
Extension family and consumer science agent in Lubbock County.
 
Texas Cooperative Extension helped found the coalition in 1989. “It’s one of the most
exciting things I’ve been involved in since I came here in 1979,” Evans said.

Evidently parents think so too, judging by their response. Evans, who also has been
involved in the coalition and the conference since their founding, said the first year conference
organizers were hoping they’d see 350 participants attend the conference, she said.
 
But they had underestimated the need and the interest of parents in the community.
“The first year we had 950 people show up,” she said. “The next year we had 1,200.
Since then we’ve tried to limit it to about 800.”

Still the interest grows. “The response tells us there is a real need out there for families to
get answers to problems (they are having) with parenting,” she said.

The conference isn’t just for residents of Lubbock County; rather, parents in “the entire
South Plains area (can) get answers to their parenting problems,” Evans said.
 
More men are attending, she added, and many participants come year after year.

Topics for discussion change each year, but always include issues of relevance to children
and parents of every age, as well as both genders and all cultural, social and economic
demographics. “Participants represent a cross section of the area’s population,” Evans said.

The conference is divided into five 50-minute sessions, and each session has four or five
choices of topics. For example, at this year’s conference, participants in Session 1 could choose
between attending talks on “Competing to Win,” “Angry and Explosive Children,” “Fortified
Families: Foundation for Success,” “Your Child’s Brain,” or the Spanish language session,
“Responsabilidad de Hijos y Parentes.” After each session, participants are asked to fill out
evaluation forms, which are then used by the coalition to determine the topics for the next year’s
conference, Evans said.

In addition to the morning and afternoon sessions conducted by experts in various
parenting fields, guest speakers open both morning and afternoon portions of the conference.

This year Pastor John Donnerberg of the First Church of the Nazarene opened  the
morning sessions with a talk on “The Value of Family.” After a catered barbecue lunch, the
afternoon began with a program on “Daddy’s Home: Bringing Fatherhood Back to the Family,”
given by Leonard Jarmen of Central Lubbock Church of Christ.

Organizing and presenting the conference takes a lot of work on the part of the planners
and volunteers who work the day-long event each year. In fact, planning on next year’s
conference starts in December, one month after this year’s conference is presented.

But their hard work is rewarded in other ways. “I get a joy and a satisfaction out of seeing
the families learning about something that’s going to help them ... solve problems they are
experiencing,” Evans said. “I get a lot of pleasure from helping families or I wouldn’t be an
Extension agent.”