By Arturo Miguel Serrano and Adreanne Marquee Serrano
* Family Life Education Certificate Program offered by the UA&P Institute for Marriage and Family Development
For us, Saturdays are always busy family days. We do things like play badminton and tennis, or play the violin and do some enrichment
classes. Then one day, Mom and Dad told us that they would be attending a whole-day class for 20 Saturdays. It was a shock! That meant a change of routine for us. We had to fix our schedule, arrange our tasks, and prepare our needs ahead of time. It also meant a whole day of Saturday without parents. We had to be responsible, prudent, and strong to take care of each other and our household. It was an adjustment and a challenge, but this was truly an exciting time too… I could do anything for 8 hours! Wow! But only so I thought…
The first reason why we agreed to have our parents attend the FLE was that it was their first time to be classmates. My parents have a 10-year age gap, so there was no way that they could have been classmates. It was quite exciting to see how they worked together as classmates, not just as our parents. We wondered, who would do the homework? Who would be the first one to read the assigned readings? We were also excited that we were all students in the house. We got to check on each other. We got to help each other finish the tasks at hand. We were their tutors too. We even checked if they were done with their homework.
Another reason was that when they took the FLE, they had the opportunity to make new friends. After all, the point of school is to learn new things and to make new friends, right? It’s been a long time since they had classes and went to school, so I’m sure that they made a lot of new friends during the FLE. We were eager to see their projects done individually or together. We knew and understood that they both love families, are for families, and come from families with service in their mind. We looked forward to stories regarding school and new friends.
Lastly, we agreed because it will help our family be better persons. The lessons that the FLE taught them will help us in the future. Someday, we may have a family and kids of our own, so the knowledge that they picked up will help our family to be not only better people but also better children of God for generations to come.
The FLE class was my parents’ own version of Saturdates. It was their chance to go out on dates while learning something new, gaining new friends, and growing together. Those Saturdates were also our chance to practice order in the house and be responsible for our household. All in all, the FLE class was our own hack in making #familylove a reality with ready sacrifice and love for our family, friends, and community.#
Arturo and Adreanne, ages 12 and 9, are the hearts’ delight of Art and Mona Serrano, who completed the Family Life Education (FLE) Certificate Program last February 23 along with 55 other participants of FLE Batch 2. Art is a consultant and business owner while Mona is an entrepreneur, homemaker, and professor.
Banner photo by Dimitri de Vries on Unsplash.
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