Addictions, prison, disability, mourning, radicalization… How to be a parent in the face of extreme situations: a conference in Nîmes on May 23 and 24

Violence, addiction, maladie, prison… Que faire quand la parentalité devient extrême ? Midi Libre – SYLVIE CAMBON

La Maison des adolescents (MDA) organise un colloque ouvert à tous les 23 et 24 mai à l’université sur "les parentalités de l’extrême". Pour aider parents et professionnels à partager leurs expériences pour mieux y faire face.

Being a parent is rarely a smooth ride. For everyone, small worries, major worries and bouts of stress mark this journey. But sometimes, situations get out of control and take a serious turn which puts families in great difficulty.

"This questioning around extreme parenting started from the support of a group by the MDA of families whose children left for the war in Syria around 2015", explains Mathieu Jeanjean, coordinator of Radeo, the system set up to monitor these families in the face of radicalization. "It’s a traumatic experience, they didn’not see it coming. There were disappearances, deaths, ten years later, it's still very difficult to manage.

However, these families have found extraordinary resources to continue functioning, and have developed skills"despite the isolation, guilt or shame", adds Mathieu Jeanjean.

Colloquium Thursday May 23 and Friday May 24

Thursday May 23: 10am – 12 h nbsp; Round table "The family in all its states : describing the common nature of extreme parenting". 2 p.m. – 17 h : "Support, tools and methods to share and invent". Three themes: facing the excesses of control, understanding knowledge about desistance to better understand extreme parenting, from the ordeal of illness to expertise .

Friday May 24:9:30 a.m. "Parental burnout: signs, risk factors and management". 10am  15 – 12:30 a.m.: workshops, sharing with parents and associations. 2 p.m. – 15 h 45 "The notion of lay expertise", "process of disengagement, the role of families and institutions. 15h 45 : reflective and dramatized return to the conference.

"Isolation, guilt…"

The researchers realized that in other forms of extreme parenting, perhaps less publicized, families had also had to develop adaptations, as had the educational teams who accompanied them. Faced with disability, mental illness, the placement of a child, addictions, incarceration, life in a neighborhood undermined by drug trafficking, transidentity, parents also put put in place answers, empirical but effective, creative, found ways to keep their heads above water and help their child. "There are points common to all these extreme parenting situations: being pushed aside, the feeling of having missed something, confronting the sometimes stigmatizing social gaze, administrative wandering, etc. hellip;", explains the Radeo coordinator.

Pooling all these experiences, with successes and obstacles, building peer support to move forward together, highlighting skills and tools common to all these situations, such is the objective of this conference which, over two days, will bring together researchers, psychologists, associations (Unafam, Costes children's home, Autisme…), CHU, PJJ, Penitentiary Integration and Probation Service (Spip) and parents who will testify… "These exchanges will make it possible to identify tools, to welcome the value and expertise of parents' words"< /em>, emphasizes Mathieu Jeanjean.