I recently went to an excellent topic group led by Chuck Esser, the International Commonality Reference Person for Family Work, on how to start family work in your RC Community—or restart it since the COVID-19 pandemic.


Here are some highlights from what he said:


FOR PARENTS


• “Ongoing parent support groups are important for breaking isolation. Every parent needs one Co-Counselor that they can tell everything to. It’s good for parent support group leaders to be well connected and discharge together.”
• “It’s good for parents to put their re-emergence in the center, which is challenging to do. If you discharge, you’ll have more capacity to parent.”
• “It can be good to give your child your Co-Counselor’s phone number and invite your child to give it to you any time they think you need a Co-Counseling session.”

FOR COMMUNITIES


• “We are formulating a new way to think about children in RC. Family work is restimulating and is a deeply powerful contradiction that can help people access their heaviest, earliest material [distress].”
• “Special time works well in countries around the world.”
• One parent asked about young people with disabilities for whom family work is challenging or not possible. Chuck said, “It’s a good opportunity to have Community members discharge about how we are all ‘odd’ [different from what is expected].”
• “In the early days of family work there was often a large group of allies and one family with one child. That’s a fine model.”
• “It’s good to introduce family work in RC fundamentals classes.“
• “It is useful to remember an adult who was important to you as a young person and have a session about it.”
• “People need to be in person for family work to be sustainable.”

ADULT PLAY DAYS


Chuck said that parent support groups and adult play days are great places to start building family work. In his RC Area, they have an adult play day every year where everyone gets a chance to do special time.


Special time is a kind of session where you think of something you love to do—or always wanted to do, or gave up on doing—and do it with attention. It’s good for people to think and discharge ahead of time about what they want to try, so they can bring items they might want to use in their special time.


Chuck’s adult play days in his Area consist of the following:


1. People take turns doing special time.


2. After special time, people do a go-round where they share about something they know or can teach; people get to notice things that they know how to do.


3. Next, people split into groups where some people teach and some people learn. Chuck gave the example of teaching Spanish; it can be a great chance to learn each other’s languages. With this activity, it’s good to do two rounds so that everyone who teaches gets a turn to learn. This helps us remember that we can have unlimited lives.


The play day prepares everyone—parents and allies—to be able to give special time to young people. It’s useful to have sessions soon after the play day to discharge on how it went. If you can’t get together in a large group for a play day, then you can give special time to a young person in your life and then have a session about it with a Co-Counselor after.