An Infant and Toddler Class
A lot of families with newborns joined our RC Community during COVID, so we convened an infant and toddler class (on Zoom). We meet monthly and do the following:
Each parent has an in-person support person with whom they Co-Counsel at some point during the class. The support person might be a grandparent, partner, aunt, uncle, Co-Counselor, or someone else who is in the “COVID pod” with the parent.
We start the class by sharing “family news and goods.”
Then each child gets twenty minutes of special time with the parent and an online ally. (Sometimes the screen is so interesting to the child that we ask the online ally to shut off their video so the parent can be the primary person doing special time.)
Next each child goes off [goes to another location] with the in-person support person, and the parent either gets one-way time from the online ally or counsels with another parent. The online allies have sessions with each other if the parents are Co-Counseling together. We do this for twenty minutes.
Then everyone comes back for twenty minutes of open questions. The grandparents, and Co-Counselors with grown children, often share valuable information from their long experience. Sometimes we collect the questions and think about them during the next month.
We usually end with each child getting a few minutes of attention.
If the online allies didn’t get discharge time, we ask them to stay after the class for a mini-session.
As we have gotten to know each other, the children have found ways to have big sessions online with our attention.
Sometimes the allies meet with and support the parents in person in between classes. (They meet outside and are masked.)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of parents
(Present Time 209, October 2022)