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Mission
The Springfield Area Parent Child Center builds strong communities, one family at a time. We believe that raising children is both a delightful and demanding job, undoubedly the most important job there is. We offer services to support and nurture young children and their families
Overview
The Springfield Area Parent Child Center was incorporated in 1992 offering Parenting support and services to families with young children. The SAPCC is one of sixteen community based Parent Child Centers in Vermont serving families in Andover, Bellows Falls, Cavendish, Chester, Grafton, Reading, Londonderry, Ludlow, Plymouth, Saxtons River, Springfield, Weathersfield, Windham, Windsor and West Windsor. We are a not-for-profit organziation governed by a volunteer board of directors and believe that healthy families are the cornerstone of our community. Donations are tax deductible and always appreciated.
Services we provide:
Home Visits, Parenting Educationa & Support, Child Care Support Services, On-site Education & Job Training, Play Groups, Early Care, Education and Early Intervention, Outreach, Information and Referral, Community Collaboration.
http://www.sapcc-vt.org
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The power that Betty Kinsman dealt in-- never sold, but gave away freely-- was the power to change family values.
ReplyDeleteThe “family values” that wingnuts try to peddle are not family values; they are community values, ones that a community might want families to hold to. Family values are the standards that a family holds to, and they can range widely, from jack-Mormon “sister wiving” to the family-ending Shaker celibacy. There was no way that a parent-child center could sell any family on adopting other values, but it could address the one value that children in all families share: “This is normal.”
It is perhaps the first value that children adopt: Studies have shown that by four months old, infants are aware of the emotional tenor of their surroundings. If they are in a family that is supportive, nurturing, communicative and coping well, they grow up with a basic expectation that that is how life is supposed to be, and when it is not, they work to re-establish it that way. But when by the age of four months old they have started to learn that impulsivity, substance abuse, poverty, anger, neglect, cruelty, ignorance and child abuse are normal, they do not in adult life expect things to be different.
It is a tribute to the toughness of Americans that those who are suffering every day from those effects continue to think that their lives are normal, but it is harmful to all of us that they in turn pass such qualities to their children.
To live and know only dysfunctional behavior is like living in a house with one window shade that is never raised, to never know what is on the other side. Betty Kinsman used taxpayers’ money and government guidelines to offer families a chance to examine that one value, to decide for themselves, “Is this normal?” Federally- and state-funded programs gave (and still give) parents a chance to roll up the window shade and determine for themselves whether they like what they see.
What they see has often freed them from the shackles of harmful family values: Disciplining versus spanking; rule-setting versus screaming; consistency versus arbitrariness; education versus conforming to their parents’ norms or siblings’ pressure; resource use versus isolation; personal growth versus a stultified life. Betty's parents saw, and they chose to change or not. No small number rolled the shade back down: they felt too powerless or they were too confined and only saw a chasm where there was actually just a small gap to step across, but the ones who dared and stepped, won power their parents had never thought possible.
Whatever the parents' choice, Betty Kinsman oversaw the programs that offered them real freedom and real power. She fulfilled her office fairly and honestly, and she always scanned the horizon for the arrival of the next tool her customers could use. It is to be hoped that all the staff of the Springfield Area Parent-Child Center honor her civic service by continuing it in that same spirit.