Strengthening Families Testimonial – Gabby

“Well hello Gabby, how are you today?”

“Good, how are you?”

“I can’t complain, I am doing ok. So, I just wanted to ask you a couple questions. I know you took the Strengthening Families ages 10-14 program and I just wanted to ask you a couple questions since we are trying to expand it and trying to get parents feedback about how the program helped families.

Are you still having to use some of those affirmations we learned, at home? Just what you’ve learned in the past when you took the program, how did you like it? Just kind of tell me about that.”

“Our family did the program a few years ago, I believe it was 2019. The reason we did it was because it offered in Spanish. And so, my Husband only speaks Spanish, a little bit of English but we prefer Spanish. My oldest son, he’s in High School now but he was in middle school and my husband and I were having some issues of course of like adolescence and them growing up. And so, we took the courses, and we didn’t think it was going to transform our family.

I believe once a week we met and the good thing about it was there was childcare for little ones and we had two little ones at the time. And so that was really nice to take some time with my older son and to really figure out how we can manage our family and make it harmonious, because sometimes with teenagers there can be a lot of tension.

We went and took some other courses and we found out stuff about each other that we didn’t know. Like what was his favorite color or what was our favorite color, what we liked to do, what he liked to do. One of the things was I loved one of the workshops when they tangled us all together, the parents, we were all tangled up and we had to untangle ourselves and figure that out. That was a fun activity, because in reality, after work and after school we just go home and hide in our rooms.

But all those programs helped to really think about how special family time is, even sitting down and eating a meal or just asking them simple questions that your Strengthening Families program really helped us think about those small things about our children.”

“Awesome! Well thank you so much, I really appreciate it. You know our plan is to hopefully be able to keep having this program throughout the school district and to be able to bring it to more families and especially now we really need it. So, I really appreciate your time.”

“And you know what? Something that we really appreciated was when we’d get to the meetings, there was a snack, there was a sandwich, there was something for our kids. Because I know the meetings were at 6 so my husband would come home at 5 and it was like we were all rushing. And that's a big difference, even if they were nachos or anything like that, because I wouldn’t have to worry about making dinner because you guys had that taken care of.”

“Well thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Well thank you for being a part of the program and having to take the class and I really hope you can let other families know that we still have the program and –“

“Yes and push it! Its very important, especially in our Latino community and especially after COVID. People kind of shut down and we were very fortunate enough to do it right before COVID started.

“Are you still having your family time with your family?”

“We do.”

“That is awesome, well thank you so much Gabby, I really appreciate your time.”

“Yes, anything we can do to help out.”

“Thank you so much, well you have a good one. Bye”

“Bye”