"We want to reach the brain through the heart."...Leader Winter 1999 #5

Thanks to a very determined leader, Active Parenting takes off in Sweden.

by Terry Gibney

There are some interesting differences between teaching parenting skills in the United States and Sweden, notes Agnetha Birgersson, head of Active Parenting Sweden. "Things move slower here. We teach Active Parenting Today over a 12-week period instead of six weeks. We meet every other week and each session lasts for three hours."

Birgersson believes the more relaxed pace allows Swedes to integrate the parenting skills more fully into their lives. "Active Parenting is very much a process," she says, "and people need time to take it in. If you go too fast it goes into the brain but never gets to the heart. We want to reach the brain through the heart."

It is a challenge to bring Active Parenting to Sweden, a country where Birgersson says most people "are very skeptical of parent education. They don’t know what it is and often believe you should automatically know how to be a parent." For that reason she finds that "personal marketing" and word-of-mouth are the best ways to get people into classes. Mass-market advertising is simply less effective when people are unfamiliar with the service.

Birgersson herself learned about parent education when she and her husband were living in Minnesota and attended a class at their church. She found it helpful in parenting her own four children—now ages 8 through 22—and she started thinking about bringing the idea back home to Sweden.

"I looked around for the very best parenting program, and Active Parenting was always recommended to me," Birgersson recalls. She trained with APP founder Dr. Michael Popkin and director of training Susan Reed and set up shop in Sodra Sandby, in the southern part of Sweden. The former pediatric nurse and substance-abuse counselor had the Active Parenting Today videotapes subtitled, translated the parents’ and leaders’ guides and was in business.

Her organization now has 24 trainers scattered throughout the country, including one who works in the rugged area north of the Arctic Circle. She reports that parent evaluations express extremely high levels of satisfaction with the course. "By the end of the second session they understand what parent education is about and can see the value of the tools Active Parenting offers," says Birgersson. "You realize that families are the same all over the world."

She plans to offer the teen program soon and sees nothing but growth for parent education in her country. Birgersson hopes that one day "Activt Földraskap" will be as familiar a phrase in Sweden as Active Parenting is in the United States.

Reprinted from Leader magazine.
Copyright 1998 by Active Parenting Publishers, Inc.