The Hanover School Division is hosting an educational evening for parents and caregivers on April 9. The message, delivered by special guest speaker Bonnie Randall, will focus on techniques for building deeper connections and greater levels of trust with kids.
The event will take place in the Steinbach Regional Secondary School’s gold gym at 7:00 p.m.
Hailing from Alberta, Randall works as a national trainer with the Centre for Trauma-Informed Practices. She’s also a clinical social worker with extensive background with high-risk teens, addiction, and mental health issues.
Randall’s approach is one of positivity. In a world of technological distractions and worrisome AI advancements, Randall bears witness to the fact that the simplest solutions to staying connected as humans are still the most effective.
What is equally hopeful, she says, is that the initiators for connection, these days, are kids themselves.
It’s a message that is being reinforced by school counsellors, she adds, who admit that the greatest struggle in a young person’s life right now is a lack of connection with parents who are distracted by screens.
“Here’s the good news,” Randall says. “The kids are seeing that this is a deficit that they are dealing with and they are asking for connection. This is where we can really mine for some gold. If these youth are already identifying that this is what they want, we already know that we can deliver that. We’ve just maybe forgotten how over the last decade or so.”
Thursday’s presentation will provide parents with new insights and strategies on building and rebuilding connection with their kids. Beyond that, Randall will reinforce the importance of connections kids should have with other adults in their lives, like coaches, teachers, and mentors.
These are the 3D connections, Randall says—the kind you won’t find on social media.
Still, Randall’s goal is not to diminish the importance of technology in an adult or child’s life. There just needs to be a healthy balance between real world and online world interactions.
“There’s space for both of them,” Randall says. “They provide two different ways of developing communication skills, of connecting and forming relationships, and you can have a complement of both.”
Randall will also provide ideas for effective ways to keep kids safe while using the internet. Even the dialogue that parents use to discuss technology with their kids is important.
“[We speak to them] not in a debate kind of way, or a laying down of the law kind of way, but rather with compassionate inquiry around it: ‘Tell me more about that. Help me understand that.’ Those sorts of responses.”
In the end, the most hopeful message that Randall can convey to parents is that kids today are ready for change, and they are longing to build deeper human connection.
“Our kids have far more wisdom than we are giving them credit for.”