BROOKINGS – It’s one thing to survive and another thing entirely to thrive.

With an attentive eye toward helping parents and children thrive in their relationship with each other, one group of academics is offering its expertise.

The Brookings group is called Thrive, an offshoot of the Advocates for Well-Being, and its work combines knowledge in school counseling, mental health, human development and education.

Advocates for Well-Being actually started 2 1/2 years ago as a book study group. They read the book “The Hundred Languages of Children,” which details the impact of a city-run early childhood program in Reggio Emilia, Italy, hailed as among the best education systems in the world.

“As we began reading about the organization as well as how families were involved, the group got very excited about what could we do here in Brookings in terms of well-being and began looking at … different places we could connect,” said SDSU professor Kay Cutler, one of several leaders of Thrive.

What is well-being?

The group’s first task was having the community they wanted to serve define well-being. This meant going to different local social service agencies and getting a consensus on what they saw as community needs.

As it turned out, the resulting top three needs in the community from their input are affordable housing, access to mental health services and affordable housing and nutritious foods.

Thrive started in the fall last year as the Advocates wanted to begin to focus their efforts on a few specific topics at a time.

“We started thinking about mental health issues and kind of gathered people with interest in that, but as the group formed, we decided we really wanted to focus on a very positive, asset-based approach in thinking about what could we do,” said Thrive leader and SDSU associate professor Mary Moeller.

The result was Thrive coming up with the Families Thrive project, an experimental education program, with increasing positive interactions between parents and their children the main idea.

“We had to start somewhere,” Thrive leader and assistant professor Staci Born said. “Thrive seems like such a big concept, so starting with the parent/child relationship was one piece of the pie, but we see other ways, whether its being involved with employers and educating them about thriving and helping their employees thrive at work and helping schools thrive, teachers, children, students.”

Mental health

One conclusion they’ve reached that speaks to their approach in helping build better parent/child relationships is their reluctance to hastily declare problems the result of mental illness.

“We are sometimes too quick to call mental health in children. My preferred term is really ‘signs of stress.’ If they are having depression or they are not able to concentrate, we are too quick to say, hey, you have clinical depression, you have ADHD,” associate professor Hande Briddick, a Thrive leader, said.

Sometimes it’s not mental illness to blame, but something as simple as children not getting adequate sleep or being worn out from a long day of school and extracurricular activities. And parents can suffer just as much from similar stresses.

“We really need to begin to think about signs of stress rather than mental health. That would require a pretty drastic change because now we need to look at basic needs, then also systemic changes. Maybe the family needs to say lights off at 8:30 or 9 p.m., no Minecraft, so that everybody’s going to sleep for at least nine to 10 hours, whatever their developmental level. That is, I think, the shift for us; rather than really emphasizing mental health, let’s go get signs of stress and what can we do,” Briddick said.

Immediately searching for a medical explanation for problems doesn’t do children or the community any favors, Born noted.

Having worked with children in a clinical setting, Born said, “Maybe I get referrals from a teacher or a doctor that they’re fidgeting or they can’t sit still in class, and they need a referral for ADHD medication. Whoa, wait a minute, let’s take a look at what this child has experienced and what they’re currently experiencing. Let’s work with teachers, care givers, medical professionals to see how we can change and sustain a different environment that helps the child thrive.”

Small steps

The advantage of this approach and outlook is that small steps can be made with tangible results.

One of the things they want to work on is not only helping parents and their children spend more time together, but also to work on having more quality bonding experiences.

That leads into what Thrive is working on now. Being largely composed of members of SDSU faculty, the Fishback Center for Early Childhood Development presented itself as a handy close location to work with on a pilot study of the kindergarteners and their parents, if they’re willing.

“That’s a smaller group of families to deal with, and if we get positive results from that, we can move on to approach maybe the school district or beyond,” Kathy Miller, another Thrive leader, said.

Seeking participants

They’ll move forward with seeking participants perhaps as soon as next week, once they receive approval from the Institutional Review Board, which reviews, approves and monitors applications for research on campus. The pilot program would continue through the rest of the semester.

The goal isn’t to just bring in those families and do rounds of surveys and interviews, but to teach them and give them tools they can use in their daily lives.

This will help them “discover the everyday amazingness of each other. ‘You’re so strong,’ ‘your eyes are so sparkly blue,’ ‘you’re so strong.” … Those small gestures can really build trust and autonomy,” Born said.

“The type of assessment (we are) describing is, rather than us from an ivory tower saying we’re going to do unto you, (we will be) going into the community and asking what do you need? We want you and your family to function better. What do you need to know?” she added.

Activities for the pilot program are also being planned, such as an evening out for supper and play time afterward. Other opportunities they might try to pursue include having parents each lunch with their kids at school.

The success of this group will hinge on the community, and there’s enthusiasm from the Advocates in that regard.

“We’re thankful that our community does have a very forward thinking kind of leadership that this is open to this kind of thing,” Miller said. “We’ve seen from some other community examples that city and Thrive groups can work together to bring the message to a lot of citizens, so we’re hopeful that’ll happen in Brookings as well.”

Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.