IT was 13 years ago that Parents Anonymous opened its doors. Since then, the programme, which was started in the United States by a concerned mother and her social worker, has responded to the diverse needs of many of the island's families, offering free support and guidance as they struggle to raise their child in a healthy and loving environment.

As a body, the group of volunteers who lend their assistance to families are knowledgeable about child abuse, juvenile delinquency, group dynamics, family systems, child development and are in touch with a host of community resources so that their expertise might be put to the best possible use by the parents involved.

IN a perfect society, each child would come with a care list; a set of guidelines which, if followed, would enable parents to raise them to become well-adjusted adults. In a perfect society, all parents would be well-adjusted adults, capable of handling the stresses of day-to-day life without causing harm to those in their care.

But this isn't a perfect society. Children aren't always well behaved and parents aren't always aware of, or capable of administering, the best methods of discipline. On any given day, a glance through Bermuda's newspapers will reveal that the incidence of violence by young offenders, if not increasing, is certainly becoming more evident.

According to Eileen Brown, executive director of local support group Parents Anonymous, it's a situation that can improve, but only if parents are taught how to discipline their children - and they begin at an early age. "I'm not an expert," said Mrs. Brown, "but I have five children. My youngest is now 15 but, like most children, they were rude sometimes. Don't wait until your child is 16 years old and then say, 'I want to start disciplining you.' It might be a bit too late. Start when they're young."

Children having children is part of the problem, she says. Many are not mature enough to cope with all the stresses and pressures having a child can bring. "Among our group facilitators, we often say we have a group of children bringing up children. They haven't been taught proper skills themselves. We wanted to have courses in the schools teaching children how to parent. They have life skills (courses) but they don't really teach them how to care for a child.

"They need to know about conflict resolution. It's taught, but maybe the child doesn't think it applies to bringing up a child. They're learning it as a subject as opposed to a skill they might apply to their own lives. So, for us to enter the schools could be one solution, but we don't want to put the blame on one segment of the community. It's not only young parents who lack the proper skills.

"We all have to work as a group - educators, students and parents - to see any change. I don't know if the incidence of child offenders is getting worse, or we just didn't hear about it before, but we have research from Parents Anonymous (in the United States) which shows that our programme reduces juvenile delinquincy."

Parents Anonymous - a spin-off of Parents Anonymous Inc., the oldest child abuse prevention organisation in America - was launched as a charitable organisation in Bermuda 13 years ago. Through its meetings, the group provides a safe, supportive atmosphere in which parents may share questions, concerns, problems and solutions to parenting.

"Sometimes parents are sent to us or come to us because they're abusing their child but that's not the majority of the time," Mrs. Brown said. "It could be neglect or poor parenting skills or just not knowing about child development.

"Sometimes there aren't any problems. Most of the parents we see come on a self-referral basis. Most of us were never taught parenting skills and (they) come to us simply to enhance them. Children don't come with tags that say handle with care and many parents are just looking for a positive way to bring up their child; a way that's different to how their parents brought them up." The idea for the local programme stemmed from the services offered by the former Rape Crisis Centre, now the Women's Resource Centre.

"I was probably one of the founding members of that group and so I saw the results of abuse with children," she explained. "One of my colleagues there, an American, wondered if we had any services here which offered help with parenting to parents.

"We found that there wasn't anything here at the time and so we decided to become an affiliate of Parents Anonymous in the United States. It's recognised in the United States as being the number one child abuse prevention and neglect agency and we're trying to follow suit. But I guess I really only got into it by wanting to do better for my own children. I wasn't educated (in the field). I don't have any training other than as a facilitator for Parents Anonymous, (but) we have lots of school psychologists and so forth on hand to provide assistance and, in a sense, it's become a passion for me."

IN order to become accredited with the American association, Parents Anonymous Inc., the local group - which has its headquarters in the old Woodlands School at 38 Mount Hill - had to base its operations on four principles:

l Parent leadership: Parents recognise and take responsibility for their problems, develop their own solutions and serve as role models for other parents

Mutual support: Help is reciprocal in that parents give and receive support from each other, creating a strong sense of community.

Shared leadership: Parents and professionals build successful partnerships to share responsibility, expertise and leadership roles.

Personal growth: Parents make significant long-term, positive change through identifying their options, exploring their feelings, and acting on their decisions in an atmosphere of belonging, trust, and acceptance in which healthy interactions are modelled.

Those tools, Mrs. Brown says, are taught to parents by professionally trained facilitators, who meet twice weekly with group members and are available between meetings if necessary.

"We don't say we know it all. How (the programme) works, is that we ask participants to own the group. In other words, there's a professional facilitator there who keeps them focused, but the parents in the group help to support one another.

"If one person, A, had a problem and said, 'When I tried such and such with my children it never worked', B might say, 'Well I tried this. I'm not saying it's going to work, but why don't you try (it)? And then there's a discussion about it.

"After a while, they wouldn't call the facilitator if they got into a situation where, say, they felt like shaking their baby, they would call a group member. To get to this point, however, takes a while. Yes, it works, but it's a long process."

Parents Annonymous survives through the goodwill of its volunteers - many of whom work in education - and one full-time staff member. Together, they strive to enhance the capability of families to rear their children.

"We conduct parenting groups at our headquarters and we also have groups at one of Family Services' community facilities," said Mrs. Brown. "We also work with Family Services. Unfortunately, we don't have enough people working as volunteers. We are in need of more.

"Hopefully, during the Bermuda Union of Teachers educational/professional day in November we'll be training some more counsellors so that they can take it into the schools. We have done it before but it's time to do it again because we've had some changes in staff. Most of our volunteers work in the educational system full-time as counsellors and they refer persons they see to (us)."

The group is at times called on to lend its expertise to Government committees, and assisted only recently in revamping the Children's Act, enabling legislation for the mandatory reporting of abuse. "We don't want to be judgmental but we do tell people that if they tell us that they're abusing their child, we will report them. We will ask them to go to the authorities and we will accompany them and say that they're getting help with it," the executive director stressed.

"We correspond with the legal fraternity and the judiciary and we have persons who are mandated by the courts who sometimes have to go to court with the parent to qualify or confirm they are attending (our) sessions and tell the court about them - about the person's change in their attitude and their self-esteem."

While the busiest period is in April - when Parents Anonymous runs a seal appeal to raise funds and draw awareness to Child Abuse Prevention Month - on average, the facility aids around 200 families each year.

"We usually have a lot of ads during the month of April which open the floodgates; we get lots of people calling. This year, the numbers have gone down because our full-time facilitator returned to college to do graduate work and as most of our volunteers have regular jobs, they're only able to work after 5 p.m.

"So we haven't been able to do as much. But we have served about 27 families this year. With an average of two parents and a child, that's 81 people we've helped. It's down from our usual numbers, but again it's understandable. So we are looking for volunteers, for full-time people who can help us out so that we can see people during the day and not just in the evenings."

The group has tried to share its information with the public through a variety of arenas, Mrs. Brown says. A problem it has faced, however, is how to help residents overcome the idea that it's a sign of weakness to ask for help. "We've been trying to (offer a parenting skills course)," she said. "The Community Education programme did call this year but it was a bit too late for us to get everything together, but I recall (previously) trying but we didn't have sufficient people enrolling. We found more success by going through the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meetings.

"There seems to be a stigma attached to self-help groups. But if you go to a PTA meeting, and the information is provided, no one knows that's why you were there. No one knows that you've gone there for help. I think that needs to change. I don't know whether it's our culture or what, but it seems that people believe that by asking for help, you're saying that you're a failure. What we try to tell them at meetings is that asking for health is (a display of) strength."

There is no easy way to end the cycle of abuse, Mrs. Brown says. For many it's a habit that has been learned from their own parents. "We don't have one solution for it. There are so many variables. People who have been abused themselves may not know how to do it any other way; they might continue with the cycle. But this is where we come in. We try to break that cycle so that they don't pass it on to the child.

"Bermuda is very similar to what they call the 'Bible Belt' of the United States - the parent does correct their child. What we say is, when you try to discipline a child in anger it can get out of hand. You could injure the child. You've forgotten why you're hitting the child. You're taking your anger out on the child.

"Maybe you shouldn't be doing it at all. What we suggest, as a means of discipline, is that parents are consistent. You've heard about the terrible twos, start out when they're young. You'll have to repeat it over and over again. That child's going to test you to see if you really mean it.

For more information on Parents Anonymous, or to find out more about volunteering, telephone 292-6148.