Lynn parenting group going strong 13 years

LYNN – Friday night for most people is all about the weekend, but for 46 parents Friday nights for the next 15 weeks are all about saving their families.”This is the largest group we’ve had in 13 years,” said Pamela Freeman, program director for the Lynn Community Connection Coalition.Thirty-nine women and seven men ranging in age from 15 to 67 pressed into the third floor conference room of the Willow Street multi service center for Freeman’s Family Nurturing Parenting Program.To her knowledge, the program, which is funded through a federal Community Block Grant, is the longest continuously running parenting program in the city, Freeman said. It provides participants with free child care, dinner, non-judgmental support and an education in parenting. And if they finish the program, Freeman will also provide a letter that might just help them keep, win back custody or increase visitation time with their children. She does make one guarantee: If they stick with it they will be able to look at themselves in the mirror at the end and be proud.”If you think you’re a perfect person, a perfect parent, then you don’t belong in this group and you can walk right out this door,” Freeman said during a recent meeting. “People who want to work, to make progress, that’s who we want here.”Freeman has never had to solicit clients. They come to her, she said.”They find their way through referrals from DCF (Department of Children and Families) ? juvenile court, church or someone walking down the street and seeing them struggling mentions us,” she explained. “Some of it is just word of mouth.”And they are in the class for a variety of reasons. One is 15 and pregnant with her first child, one lost her children because of her klonopin addiction and one is simply terrified to be a mother and has only recently been able to bring herself to see her child on weekends.Christine Lindsay is blunt when she talks about losing her three daughters to a crack pipe.”I never stayed in detox or rehab more than an hour or a day,” she said. “I wasn’t a sticker or a stayer.”She said she started using what she called hard core drugs at 15 and before long her life had only one purpose: “Everything focused on sticking a needle in my hand or a pipe in my mouth.”Four months sober, she has visitations with her daughters and she said they have noticed the change.”They respond to me now because I’m calmer,” she said. “It’s noble to say you’d nurture your kids over yourself but you can’t take care of a child without taking care of yourself.”According to Freeman, 75 percent of those that enroll will make it through the program, 25 percent will drop out. Nine have failed to show up after the first week of this fall session, which Freeman said is typical.”It’s a commitment,” she said.Freeman gives the group guidelines to be respectful, responsive and resilient and tells them each week will be different, but she doesn’t tell them what will happen each week. There is no syllabus.”You never know what’s coming or what session you’ll attend because that’s life,” she said. “You never know what life will throw at you. We’re going to laugh and cry, and someone’s story will make you not want to come back.”Freeman said she thinks the program has been successful because she insists on talking to parents at the level they’re at. She does not judge, she does not let them think that their trauma has devalued them, she said.”I’m building a relationship with them,” she said. “I’m opening myself up. Parenting is a tough job, no one has it easy. I know wealth makes it easier, but no one has it easy.”Freeman launched the program in 1996 after quitting a high powered job to follow her desire to give back and she wanted to help children.She said she knows she gets too close to her parents, at one point or another she has cleaned homes and sat all day in court with one or another but she shrugs it off.”Very few people will do what I do,” she said. “I love to go to school and learn but no one could e