“Gail La Vassar of the Family Resource Center will teach the free parenting course, Self Esteem and Family, starting next week.Kate Poss photoAbout the courseSelf Esteem and Family, a parenting course, will be held for eight weeks on Mondays starting Feb. 12, from 1-3 p.m. at the Family Resource Center, a portable classroom outside South Whidbey Intermediate School. The class is free; to register call Gail La Vassar at 221-6808, ext. 4602. Lord knows that being parents can be a downright mystifying experience: They want their kids to be happy, but often scratch their heads in frustration when they feel their best intentions aren’t appreciated.The Family Resource Center and South Whidbey Parent Teachers Association are hoping to help, with a free eight-week parenting course starting Feb. 12. The sessions will allow an exchange of ideas and offer communication and problem-solving techniques that may help save parents’ sanity and give them tools to use when the inevitable conflict comes up. Gail La Vassar, project coordinator for the Family Resource Center, has taught Self Esteem and Family for the past nine years. It’s a lot about structure and nurturing and creating a healthy blend of each, said La Vassar. It’s a balancing act of when to apply which. Parents will learn that kids are going to act certain ways at certain times in their lives: 2-year olds will have tantrums; teenagers are going to test the limits of their independence. The course covers ways parents can deal with these trying times, by first realizing that their offspring are not going to act like adults and then by dealing with the child according to what he/she may understand at that point.It’s all about interacting so kids can make good choices for themselves, La Vassar said.The course offers many practical tips, creating a household job chart for example. Parental self-care – the need for parents to recharge their batteries so they have energy to parent — is also covered. The classes are interactive: There is role-playing and movement to keep parents’ imaginations active.The course was created by Jean Ilsley-Clarke, author of Self Esteem – A Family Affair. LaVassar and her husband John took the course 11 years ago. It inspired her enough to want to share its workable ideas with others, she said.We took the class in Seattle when my children were two and three (now they are 13 and 14), La Vassar said. I learned there were choices to being a parent. The course opened my mind to the power parents have. It helped me understand the developing stages of my children. I was a new mom then and I knew I wanted to be part of a profession that gave positive support to families. (La Vassar had worked in human resources fields before.)The family moved soon afterwards to Whidbey Island. La Vassar took training courses from Jean Ilsley Clarke and began teaching Family Self Esteem courses on Whidbey sponsored by the PTA and the Rotary Club. The Family Resource Center, which is funded federally and locally, grew out of these initial Family Self Esteem courses. In starting the center, La Vassar said, she found there are solutions and resources to seemingly insurmountable problems. The center works to link families with what they might need, from computer training to court-mandated anger management classes, communication with school officials and sharing the experience of raising teenagers.La Vassar said she will consider offering an evening parenting course if interest is great enough. “