Children come into this world without instructions on how to bring them up. That’s why it often happens that parents make mistakes in their upbringing. Those who are encouraged to maintain a close emotional bond with their children and to assess their own needs as individuals, have a much greater chance to raise capable and truly happy descendants. A UNICEF program has undertaken the task to help parents in this responsible mission via a program entitled "Let’s Grow up Together" – a workshop for parents. "UNICEF's experience shows that parents seek information, guidance and support in order to feel confident and competent in their relationship with their children. In 2012, we started this project, our goal is for parents to share their experiences and knowledge related to childcare, and to expand their knowledge of child development and psychological needs in babyhood," says Vera Rangelova, head of programs for early childhood development at UNICEF Bulgaria.

"The project involves working with parents of young children from 0 to 4 years of age under a program developed by UNICEF, which is applied in many countries. Its aim is to help parents to acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes that are useful to them in fulfilling their parental responsibilities and obligations towards the children and promote their development. The program is extremely useful because it provides a space in which parents of young children can get together in the presence of psychologists, social workers and teachers to discuss the needs of their children and how they could contribute to their education, to provide the most favorable conditions for life and growth. In our country, in general, there is the realization that parents themselves can cope with parental responsibilities, but our experience shows that they have a need for such programs, and are very actively looking for them."

The workshop contains 12 thematically related sessions during which, by the methods of group work, discussions, and interactive exercises parents deal with topics like: "Our children and how to love them", " Listening - an important skill for parenting", "How children learns about the world around them", etc. Here is what Vera Rangelova adds: " The view shared most often is that participation in this program gives parents greater confidence that they can cope with their duties and teaches them patience in communicating with children, how to handle difficult situations with unwanted behavior by kids. Something that many parents often share is that as a result of the program they started to pay more attention to their children and spend more time with them in joint activities, which is one of our goals. Indeed, at the beginning we were concerned how this program would be perceived but it turned out that currently the interest in it is huge, which indicates that it is really needed."

English version: Rossitsa Petcova