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Every living things has a cycle of life. It also happens with human being. Once a baby is born, he or she will go through a stage of becoming an infant, a toddler, a child, a pre teen, a teenagers before being considered as an adult. Each growing up development stage will be aimed to prepare individual toward adulthood. Once someone step into different stage, he or she usually has a kind of “shock” and there is usually a need of adaptation in the new stage. The adaptation will affect to the individuals themselves and to people around them. The biggest adaptation to the stage change is in the family. The most stage that has complains by many people is the teen ages, start from 10 to 18.

The adaptation to the presence of the teenagers is coming in our family at the moment. The cute baby boys are changing into men physically sooner or later, but their thought and manner are still not stable. Their emotion can change very easily. One day they can have a very enthusiastic and sound very brilliant, but the other days they can be so horrible and lazy. Well, of course it should not happen to all of teenagers and the instability of one teenager is different from others. Anyway, there should be change in this case. It gives me a very hard moment.

It is great to have an information in the social media that a pack of Family Tool Box was going to be released. From the title, Family Toolbox, A Program for Parents and Teens, I felt that it was like a great help for our family to deal with the adaptation. I just applied to be a reviewer in the last minute before the chance was closed.

You might have read my previous posting about Family Toolbox giveaway and product description. Today I would like to share with my readers how we have encountered this wonderful program.

I received the product through a link sent to my email. It is great that Family toolbox is available for download as we are not the US residence. There are 16 life success principles grouped into 8 lessons accompanied by a forty page manual. Each lesson has 2 videos: 1 scenario video and 1 teaching video by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN. The messages in each principles are delivered through some dramas in the first files which are discussed and analyzed in the teaching videos. The manuals are used for both parents and teens.

Here is one way to use the program that we have done:

1. Parents watch both the drama and the teaching video to learn from the lessons first before we deliver them to kids. Parents are expected to read the paper or worksheets for both children and parents. My husband and I discussed the teaching points and did the parents' worksheets so that we can get the message well. We take a note in the parents worksheets.
2. We had lessons with kids together 15-20 minutes. Kids watch the video 2 times in the beginning. The first one is for introducing the situations. As we are not a native English speakers, we need the second time to make sure that kids understand the terms and plots. Kids usually ask about things that they don't understand in the video. Our Indonesian culture is definitely not the same with the drama in the video, but it might change into the similar cases as the globalization will make it happen.
3. Kids answer the questions and have some discussion based on the video. I play the drama for a couple of time and pause it whenever necessary.
4. In the end of the lessons, we have some goals based on the lesson. There is a verse taken from the bible to discuss and to solve a problem related. We close the lesson with pray.

Here are the topics presented and discussed in the Family Toolbox:

1. Be Respectful Even when it's hard
2. Develop Internal Motivation
3. Develop Healthy Habits for Following Instructions
4. Look for Ways to Contribute to Family Life
5. Solve Problems Instead of Generating Conflicts
6. Instead of Sarcasm, Develop the Skills of a Peacemaker
7. Learn to Value Correction
8. Apologize Well
9. Develop a Plan for Being Responsible
10. Take Responsibility for Your Mistakes
11. Train Yourself to Accept No as an Answer
12. Avoid Arguing
13. View Your Family as a Team and Look for Ways to Work Together
14. Learn Self Control to Manage Anger
15. Practice Flexibility When Plans Change
16. Learn to Handle Unfairness Well

There are a lot of things that parents including myself need to learn about Christian parenting that our parents cannot teach us either. Therefore, the presence of this book should be a great way to learn more about parenting. On the other hand, children, especially the teens should also have some inputs regarding life skills and character education to response parents well and to become parents in the future.

I would like to give reference for all Christian families to have this program since there are a lot of Christianity values adopted in this program in dealing with personal development for parents and children, especially the teens. To learn more and to purchase the program, please click the picture bellow

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