Parents on a Mission History, Philosophy, and Mission

Hi, I'm Richard Ramos, author of Parents on a Mission. How to win the competition for the heart, mind and loyalty of your children. Parents on a Mission essentially is a parent leadership program. Our mission is to turn the hearts of parents towards their children and the hearts of children towards their parents, because we believe that is the best method for preventing children from choosing a negative lifestyle. And what I believe every parent in America needs to understand is that you are in a daily competition for the heart, the mind, and the loyalty of your children. And the reason that's important or the challenge that we should be concerned about is who is going to win that battle, the battle for the choice of the loyalty of our children. What I mean by loyalty is essentially it comes down to the choices that our children make. And choices are usually the result of influence of the mind and influence of the heart. And there are so many areas that our children are being influenced today by social media, the Internet, friends, peers. Let me give you an example. Like joining a gang, though some of you may not know anything about that or be concerned about that, but it's the same principle. When young people are influenced to join a gang. Essentially, they're being asked to make a decision, to make a choice, really. They're being asked to pledge their allegiance of loyalty to the gang above everybody and everything else. And that includes you, mom and dad, and that includes the family. During the decade of the 90s, I was an at risk counselor at a school where, where I was working with at risk youth that were having all kinds of problems in school, at home, and during our relationship, these students began to open up to me and tell me what was really going on, what was really bothering them, because that's what I wanted to know so I could really help them out. Well, when they started opening up to me and telling me a little bit about what was happening at home, being a young parent myself, I knew that I couldn't believe everything teenager was telling me. So I decided to start doing home visits. And when I went to the homes and there I began to see the dysfunction, the lack of communication, really the lack of relationship. And that's when the light went on for me and I realized that I was fighting a losing battle because everything I was doing at school was being torn down at the home. And if I really wanted to help my students, I needed to go from being a youth mentor to being a parent mentor. And after a while, I began to have a line of kids sitting outside of my office waiting to talk to me. Sometimes the principal or a teacher Would come by and they'd say, hey, Mr. Ramos, these kids need to be in class. And I said, well, I know that, but they came to talk to me. What do you want me to do? So that was the kind of relationship that I was building with these at risk youth. I remember one Sunday I was invited to a birthday party of one of the students. And while I was at that birthday party, the grandfather approached me because a kid or a gang member in our community had been killed during that time. And he knew that at that time I had a reputation for helping gang members out of the gang. So he came over to me and he said, hey, Richard, I want to talk to you. Look what's going on in our city. Why don't you get all these kids together and talk to them? They listen to you. And I said, well, I have done that and I will continue to do that, but I don't really think that's the best way to handle this problem. He said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, let me explain it to you in a way that I know you'll understand. If you were to walk down the street here in your neighborhood and you looked at all the yards of your neighbors and looked at the flowers and you saw that those flowers were dry and wilted and dying, who would you rather spend time talking to, the flowers or the gardener? And he kind of smiled and said, wow, I never thought about it that way, you're right. And I explained to him that the flowers in our yard are just like the children in our home. And the problem in the community was that everybody wants me to be their gardener. And I told them I can't do it by myself. What I need is more gardeners. Or in other words, I need more parents that are going to be willing to take responsibility for their children and raise them in a nurturing way so that they can be contributing positive contributors to the community. Parents on a Mission is basically a leadership program for parents. And I've been teaching parents for many years and I was enjoying and seeing the results that we were getting. But after a while, I began to realize that as one man, one person trying to reach so many parents that it began to outgrow me. I could only go to so many cities or so many states at a time. And so that's when I began to work with other people, other parents who, who wanted to help me and become what I call parents on a mission. Parent mentors. That's a three day training where I'm teaching them my curriculum. And then Helping them to reach into their own community where they teach my curriculum and mentor parents. Hands on. I've been developing parent mentor since 2007, and I've seen this grow and grow and grow and. And we've been really fortunate. We have developed parent mentors throughout the state of California, throughout the state of Colorado. I've worked with parent mentors in Texas, in Connecticut, in New York, and also in Winnipeg in Canada, and in Guatemala, the nation of Guatemala. And what's fascinating to me is that no matter where I go, no matter what the ethnicities are, no matter what the culture is, these principles are universal. And we get the same results everywhere we're teaching it. And I'm excited that we are now having an opportunity this year to go into El Salvador, the Philippine Islands, and potentially also back to Canada. What distinguishes Parents on a Mission from other parenting classes? Other parenting classes focus the parent fixing their child. Parents on a Mission focuses parents on working on themselves. One of the popular myths is that parenting classes are for bad parents, and that is absolutely not true. Parenting classes are for good parents who want to get better. That's the reason that you come to the class. It's like any professional doctor, pastor, principal of a school, lawyer. You go to conferences. Not because you're bad, you're good at what you do, you're a professional. But you want to get better, you want to be relevant, you want to be updated. And parenting classes are no different. And that's the way you should view it by coming to Parents on a Mission. There's a popular saying, it takes a village to raise a child. But what we say in Parents on a Mission, it does not take a village to raise a child. It just takes good parenting. The community does not build your family. It's the family that builds the community. We have a major, serious problem today in our country, and that is parent authority is being undermined. We can't even trust the major institutions in our community. Whether it's political, whether it's educational, whether it's a university, we can't trust that they are willing to support the values that we are raising our children with. And that authority lies simply in the home. And it's being undermined. And you know what? You cannot escape it. It's everywhere. That's the bad news. But here's the good news. Those messages that are undermining your authority as a mother and a father, they can be refuted. We can do something about it. And that's what you're going to learn by coming to a Class or a training in parents on a Mission. Throughout my career, I've had the opportunity to do a lot of things, and I've been really happy about the accomplishments that I've had. I've been an author, I've been a speaker, different things like that. But I have to say, the most rewarding thing I've done in my career is when I see a parent and a child relationship go from broken to reconciliation. And I have seen this over and over again. And I remember when I first started out, I used to go home at night bothered by what can I do with these young people that are telling me about their life, about their problems? And it bothered me. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have an answer. I was a young parent myself. But as I began to search my heart and think about the things that really mattered in my family, I figured, I'm going to start teaching those principles. And I began to teach them and refine them. But here's what happened. As time went on, I began to hear stories, I began to receive letters, I began to receive emails of how lives have been turned around and changed. And that is probably my greatest not only reward, but motivation to keep parents on a mission, on the cutting edge of helping families and building safe and healthy communities. You know, all families have problems. My family had problems. There's a lot of broken relationships out there. And that's the thing that motivates me. I want to help, I want to do something. And I've seen parents on a mission do exactly that. Change broken hearts and broken relationships and reconcile that parent child relationship in a way that is so rewarding. It's really hard for me to put it into words, but I've seen this happen over and over again, and I am so thankful and I am so grateful for parents on a Mission.