Central Bedfordshire Council news and press releases

Free course to support parents of pre-school aged children

Wednesday, 13 April 2022

We're running a free programme to support parents and carers of pre-school aged (three to five-year-old) children.

The Parenting Puzzle programme aims to help parents and carers feel more confident and increase their understanding of their children’s feelings and needs, and how children communicate these.

The programme is designed to help parents and carers:

  • understand why children behave as they do
  • recognise the feelings behind the behaviour
  • explore different approaches to discipline
  • find ways to develop co-operation and self-discipline in children

The programme is available either as a ten-week programme – which provides a creche facility – or a four-week programme made up of four workshops. It is provided by Family Links, a national charity and training organisation dedicated to the promotion of emotional health at home, at school, and at work.

One parent told Family Links that the programme was:

…better than expected, [and] made me think differently about toddler behaviour.

Councillor Sue Clark, our Executive Member for Families, Education and Children, said:

The Parenting Puzzle course is completely free and designed to help support parents and children to create a happy, calm family life. The building blocks of the programme are self-awareness, appropriate expectations, empathy and positive discipline, and parents will learn more about each if they attend the course.

The programme will support parents and carers to develop new approaches to the everyday challenges that they may face and give them new tools to support their children.

Attendees will have access to the Parenting Puzzle resources, which support the content of the programme.

The Parenting Puzzle Programmes will be delivered out of children's centres by our fully-trained Early Years professionals. To find out when programmes are available in your area and to book a place, contact your local children’s centre.