Mary Hayek, MEd
TLC Certified Trainer
Mary Hayek is a parent, social worker and educator supporting children and families for over 30 years. Since 1998, she has provided parenting education for parents, including those with children who have been adjudicated. The experience of losing many family members, including her spouse, in a very short period of time, led her to understand the need to not only incorporate effective parenting strategies that provide a sense of safety and healthy control for children experiencing loss, but also to seek out effective ways in which to assist herself and others to move past the pain and uncertainty created by losses of any kind. Training provided by the Grief Recovery Institute in Sherman Oaks, CA, resulting in her own recovery from loss, has allowed her to assist others. In recent years, Mary expanded her expertise to include training in trauma and trauma intervention from the TLC Institute. This was precipitated by the numbers of adolescents with whom she interacted in the middle school where she provides social work services to general education students. The incidence of trauma was extremely concerning to her. Mary’s knowledge of grief, trauma, and effective interventions have combined with her expertise in parent education to provide supports to families that address a variety of problems emanating from trauma and loss experiences.
Mary presents the following course:
Being a Certain Parent in an Uncertain Time
As parents, we discover very quickly there is much to learn. When our child experiences events that are unlike anything typical, we also discover there is much to learn, except differently. Life today is not only difficult but, because of all the uncertainties, quite challenging. Traumatic deaths, traumatic events beyond our control, war and multiple deployments, financial instability, Internet predators and so much more today, can leave any parent at a loss as to how to raise their children. This presentation will discuss meeting parent needs, the code children use to get their needs met, what works and what doesn’t and what parents can say when their child asks difficult questions.