Tag Archives: Plymouth YMCA

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Y Helps New Family Cope

Any parent can remember the emotional and physical challenges of those first days and weeks with a new baby…being exhausted, joyful, and in awe of this newly arrived little person. It can also be somewhat scary.

For Macomb YMCA Director Josh Landefeld and his wife Christy, all those emotions of new parents and more were magnified. Christy experienced a host of life-threatening complications and lost her sight while giving birth to their daughter two years ago.

Daughter Emy was fine, despite being a little premature. She spent some time in neonatal intensive care but was able to come home within a week. For her mother, things were not so smooth. Christy spent Emy’s first two months in and out of the hospital with various complications.

That meant Josh was on solo dad duty, learning to do all the things a new parent does while his wife struggled to get better. “It was extremely challenging, trying to take care of Emy at the same time and visit Christy and make sure I was there for her,” he says. “For a couple hours each day either I and/or Emy would go back into the hospital to see Christy and do what we could to have a family connection during those challenging moments.”

That difficult time was made easier by the support from his coworkers at the Plymouth YMCA, where he was director at the time. A few days a week, he had to bring Emy to work with him… not only because of a lack of childcare options but because he enjoyed spending the time with her forging the all-important father-daughter bond. And it wasn’t just her dad she bonded with. “Everyone there was extremely supportive …everyone was wonderful,” Josh says, “They provided care and love in way most babies don’t get at that young of an age.”

It wasn’t just a blessing to Josh and Emy to have the support from the Y staff; they also enjoyed the chance to get to know Emy and see her grow and develop. And all that love and care from a team of very caring people has had a great effect on his daughter, Josh says. “All the interactions with different people and situations in her early life helped her grow into something special,” he says.

Christy continues to improve. She attended a program to help her adjust to life without her vision, and this past fall went back to teaching. She also served as a Girls on the Run coach at her school. Emy, who recently turned two, is a healthy, happy, talkative toddler. And the Y family continues to be very much a part of theirs. “I’m very fortunate to work at a branch and an organization where that kind of love and support and understanding was there,” Josh says. “And they have continued to be supportive through all of it. The whole time you know you’re having a kid, you know it will change your life — we just didn’t know it would change this much.”

 

 

 

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Y Boosts Basketballer’s Confidence

Everyone knows that sometimes all that kids need is a little boost of confidence to spark their success. The Y provided that for PJ, a child who has blossomed into a talented basketball player thanks to the encouragement he found at the Y.

PJ has been diagnosed with anxiety and had been struggling with social situations, says his mom, Lynn Ingram. He wanted to try basketball and finally worked up the courage to join the Y’s team with a friend.  He was smaller and younger than every other player on the team and he was the least experienced basketball player. Lynn says, “It was tough to watch.  He couldn’t dribble well, would always throw the ball to an opposing player, and didn’t get a shot off the entire season….until the last game.”

With only 10 seconds left, he received a pass from a teammate, threw the ball up, and…. it went in!  In a moment straight from a tear-inducing sports movie, his teammates carried him off the court on their shoulders.  “It was a great moment,” Lynn says.

That one shot boosted his confidence enough that he practiced all summer and signed up again the following fall…unfortunately, though, he at first signed up too late to be on a team with his friends from school. He refused to go into the gym that first practice. His mom knew how much PJ loved to play, so she decided to ask for help. “I sent a long letter to the Plymouth YMCA, explaining his condition and asking that they make an exception to the maximum number of kids on the team so he could play with his buddies.  After I submitted some paperwork, they let him play.  And it has changed his life.”

The growth he’d experienced from his time at the Y was obvious in his very first game with his new team. In the first minute of the first game he scored a layup, and ended up scoring 10 points that first game. “I can’t tell you what this did for his confidence,” Lynn says.

She says that while his school team has also been helpful to him, it was the Y where he discovered his passion for sports that allowed him to build his confidence and achieve a goal, and where the people involved were willing to accommodate his anxiety and the sensitivities that go with it. “He wouldn’t be the talented player he is today if not for the Y giving him that opportunity to grow and learn,” his mom says.

 

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Girls on The Run Finishes Strong

More than 800 girls and their coaches, parents and friends descended on Oakland University’s Rochester Hills campus last weekend for the Girls on The Run 5K.

The run is a culmination of months of training for the girls who spent the spring participating in either the Girls on the Run program for ages 8-10 or the Girls on Track program, which reaches middle school age girls. The girls meet twice a week to do training runs, but the focus goes far beyond exercise. Led by volunteer coaches, the girls also learn about self-esteem, stress management, and being true to themselves, among other life lessons.The Girls on the Run philosophy is to teach girls to Honor Their Bodies, Celebrate their Voices, Embrace their Gifts and Activate Their Power

The Y sponsors the program locally; Ashleigh Schiffler directs it from her office at the Plymouth YMCA. Several programs happen at local schools, but many of the local Y branches host teams as well.

While the unseasonably warm weather on race day provided some hurdles, overall it went very well, Ashleigh says. Girls and their families and coaches enjoyed face-painting and hairdo stations, refreshments and other fun things in addition to the race. And most importantly, it showed hundred of young girls the importance of goal setting and gave them a taste of what they can accomplish if they set their minds to something.

 

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Kids and Dads Bond in Adventure Guides

In his 2005 book “Last Child in the Woods” author Richard Louv coined the term “nature deficit disorder”, claiming that kids who don’t get enough time in nature suffer a host of problems with behavior. Whether that is true or not, what is true is that most families don’t have enough time to spend together out in the natural world.

The Y’s Adventure Guides program aims to change that. In Adventure Guides, a small group of 7-10 parent-child pairs gathers biweekly or monthly to participate in an activity together. Sometimes a larger group of circles will gather for a bigger activity, called an Expedition, like a campout, parade or party.

Adventure Guides is aimed at children ages 5-9 and their parent or other significant adult in their life. The idea is to create a stronger bond between the parent and child through fun, adventurous activities. Parent-child pairs earn patches for each activitity.

Tom Montgomery was in the program through the Plymouth YMCA with both his children, but spent the most time in it with his daughter Jessica, now a senior in high school headed to the University of Michigan in the fall.

“There’s so much that kids do that’s about developing the child — all your sports teams and school activities,” Tom says. “Guides is about the bond between the parent and child, which is so important.”

He and his daughter did everything from singing carols at nursing homes to bowling to annual campouts. They filled vests with the patches they earned, and will still take them out and remember all the fun things they did together over their time in the Guides.

One of the nice things about the Guides program is that it provides an opportunity for dads to bond with their kids in a way few other opportunities do.

Tom got to know a number of fathers whose daughters were in the program with their mothers when they were little, and then mom insisted that the dad take over as way to have some dedicated time with their child. “These were guys that were incredibly busy, some were auto execs and the like,” Tom says. “Once they got into it, they realized they just had to make that time, and they’d end up being leaders and volunteering even more time.”

For Tom and Jessica, as with other families in Adventure Guides, the program allowed them a chance to do all those things they always wanted to try doing with their children, but busy schedules — and life –  just gets in the way.

“What was great was that we did all sorts of things we might have done anyway, or could have done anyway, like going to museums and going bowling, but without the structure of the guides time passes, and  kids grow up — before you know it’s all passed,” he says.

Taking a pause in a busy life and spending time with the people who mean the most is something we all want to do — and the Y lets families do that in all sorts of ways.

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Volunteering Broadens Teen’s World

To Meaghan Schiffler, the world is bigger than just her family, her school, her city. The high school junior from Holland has been volunteering with her family since she was very young. This past summer, she took it to a new level with two stints in the Plymouth YMCA’s Youth Volunteer Corps.

Meaghan had a personal connection to the program — her older sister, Ashleigh, directs the metro Detroit Girls on the Run program headquartered in the Plymouth Y.  Meaghan was visiting her sister this summer for a week, and Ashleigh wanted her to have something rewarding to do while she was working during the day. Youth Volunteer Corps was a perfect fit.

“I’ve seen Ashleigh go off into the Peace Corps, which I thought was really cool,” Meaghan says. “With YVC I got to go off and volunteer on my own too. It helped me see that I can make a difference myself.”

Meaghan worked with other teens at the Matthei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, at a community garden in Detroit, and at a Gleaners warehouse. They also made recycled art pieces that will hang throughout Downtown Detroit.

Meaghan really loved the experience of volunteering for the first time in Detroit, she says, and it allowed her to broaden her horizons in a way volunteering around her hometown did not. “I think having that experience helped me advocate with other people to go somewhere new and not just stay in my little world,” she says.

She liked it so much, as a matter of fact, that she returned for another week later in the summer. She’d had hip surgery right after her first stint, and came back as soon as she was off crutches.

Meaghan said she met several people who had an impact on her, but found a true role model in YVC leader Heather Jones. A recent college graduate, Heather was old enough to have authority with the YVC group but young enough to relate to them, Meaghan says. “I loved her point of view on everything –she was very open and had a lot of positive energy.”

Meaghan wants to perhaps start a similar program in Holland — and she plans on coming back to volunteer with YVC next summer.