Love’s Cradle Training, Support, Trainer-of-Leaders Process

Love’s Cradle RE is one of the MML programs.  It uses mostly the same presentation of RE as Mastering the Mysteries of Love or Mastering the Magic of Love.  There are five main differences:

• Love’s Cradle’s focus is on unmarried parents with a child together
• Love’s Cradle is written for low income, low education parents, so the focus is on skill use with more focus on Expression and Problem Solving than in Mastering the Mysteries, which focuses on deep couple dialogues.  It includes group discussions, videos, and activities around topics of adjusting to parenthood.
• Love’s Cradle is both the core RE concepts and 4 supplemental Modules which include topics around trust, marriage, money, and complex family relationships.
• At present, the materials for Love’s Cradle are in handout form, rather than a book.

Training for Love’s Cradle is usually a 3 day training.  This includes the core RE concepts and one day on the supplemental modules and working with unmarried parents.

This pattern is good for working with agencies who have adapted Love’s Cradle as a curriculum because the program leaders are usually staff who have access to support and supervision at work. IDEALS also follows up the training with support as outlined with each agency program.  Sometimes this is simply being available for questions.  Other times this involves ongoing telephone supervision or technical assistance, site visits, or a structure of specific consults.

This is worked out individually with each agency.

This is a description of what the 3 day training includes:

In this 3 day training you will learn how to: (learning objectives)

• Teach couples how to use RE Showing Understanding, Expression, and Discussion skills to talk through even serious conflicts in ways that foster shared respect and mutual understanding
• Teach couples how to use RE Problem Solving, Self-change, and Helping Others Change skills to solve even difficult problems in ways both people feel good about
• Teach couples how to use RE Coaching, Conflict Management, Generalization, and Maintenance Skills to make the use of the skills of love an everyday part of their lives
• Match learning strategies, materials, and pace to the needs, abilities, and issues of non-traditional relationship education participants
• Use RE skills of Showing Understanding, Expression, Discussion, and Problem Solving in group leadership
• Use kinesthetic and experiential learning strategies to facilitate flexible thinking and self-chosen change in participants
• Use effective dialogue coaching strategies
• Use couple activities to build affection habits in couples
• Use experiential activities and couple dialogues to deepen couple bonds and encourage permanent commitments
• Use experiential activities to provide relevant information on trust, marriage, finances, and complex family relationships

This workshop will have no more than 12 participants. Approximately one-half of the time will be spent in hands-on activities and coached skill practice. The outline below will give you a good idea of the content of the program:

Day One

Day One will focus on learning how to do experiential activities and RE skills as if you were participants in a Love’s Cradle group. Selections from the first 5 sessions of the program will focus on the first five RE skills.

Day Two

On the second day you will learn how to help participants move from learning RE skills to using them to work through issues in deepened dialogues. Centering around the Trust module of the Love’s Cradle program, participants will learn how to lead experiential activities, group discussions, and supervise deepened couple dialogues.

Day Three

The third day focuses on the content and activities of the remaining content areas of the Love’s Cradle Program (Marriage, Finances, and Complex Family Relationships). Participants will review the curriculum, experience the variety of activities in Love’s Cradle, and practice using the Leader’s Guide. In the afternoon focus will shift to helping couples deal with runaway emotions, conflict management, and generalizing skills to everyday life. The workshop ends with participants planning how to implement the Love’s Cradle program in their setting.