The love between a parent and his or her child is the purest, most unconditional love that is ever experienced.
As parents we desire for our children to grow to be the most productive and influential people in our community. We understand that it takes a lot of nurturing and mentoring for our children to be well-versed.
The love and nurturing that we show our children is the first that they will receive, and it sets the foundation of what they will perceive as acceptable.
Every single opportunity that we have as parents, to provide reinforcement to that foundation, should never draw any hesitation.
These relationships are critical to their accomplished abilities to interact with others socially.
The more time that we spend cultivating these skills during their growth upsurges the likelihood of their success in adulthood.
According to the Search Institute, "Young people are more likely to grow up successfully when they experience developmental relationships with important people in their lives. Developmental relationships are close connections through which young people discover who they are, cultivate abilities to shape their own lives, and learn how to engage with and contribute to the world around them."
Never Counted Out is a non-profit organization that my husband and I started almost two years ago because we wanted to do our part within the community.
Our mission statement is "(1) Our mission is to help our youth; to inspire them to want to achieve more positive accomplishments in life by giving them valuable tools to be productive adults. Through education and mentorship, enabling well-rounded youth to grow to mature adults that are significant within the community. (2) Our mission is to eradicate veterans homelessness through mentorship, education, health/nutrition counseling; promoting long term self-reliance."
I believe that having a father and daughter dance annually is an exceptional way to ensure that we provide direct reinforcement to that foundation. There are no other formal opportunities locally, so we decided to take on this tedious, expensive, but necessary event to do our part.
The event was not created to exclude any specific people by no means. It was created to celebrate those critical developmental relationships, particularly between a father and his little girl.
Soon, we hope to be able to replicate this event for our local mothers and sons because celebrating their relationship is just as significant.
I wish that we were able to have these events several times a year on the caliber that we do because our children are unequivocally worth it.
So, if you have the opportunity to attend, or if you would like to donate for another father/daughter couple to attend, please do not hesitate.
There is a place on Eventbrite where the tickets are currently being sold to donate. We have to remember, that it is our responsibility as a community to care for our most valuable assets, our children. They are indeed our future and they need us just as much as we will need them!
"Resilience depends on supportive, responsive relationships and mastering a set of capabilities that can help us respond and adapt to adversity in healthy ways," says Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard. "It’s those capacities and relationships that can turn toxic stress into tolerable stress."