In 2020, I (Emil Therianos, the founder) finished my master’s degree in community leadership. Part of that degree program included a thesis research project. I began my research and was in the midst of analyzing my research data and working toward preparing my thesis paper when COVID-19 changed everything around us. This led to the thesis project being terminated–I was able to graduate without fully completing it.
My thesis research was focused on the parenting environment in Tooele County. Because this subject was important to me then and remained important to me, I continued my work on the project. But I completed the final portions as part of the work of Lightward Bound, rather than as a college project. The report on my findings is available on this site (see the research page). The information gained from the research is intended to shed some light on how we are doing in Tooele County in the area of parenting.
This research, however, is very limited and can only give us a tiny pinhole view of a few parents that I spoke with during my research. Now that the thesis project is finished and the report publicly available, I plan for this organization to eventually work on additional research in Tooele County to assess more broadly how things are going, where our weaknesses and strengths are, in the realm of raising Tooele’s children. As we learn more about our parenting environment, we will work with organizations throughout the county to work out a strategy to optimize parenting and raising children here. Every city, every county has room for improvement, so I want to work to make improvements in our community.
This work is important because the way parents raise and treat their children can have lifelong impacts on them. In turn, those children who grow up with harmful outcomes may contribute negatively to the community they are part of. If we can bring more light into the lives of children, we will likely see various improvements in our community as these children become adults.
The case of child abuse probably leads to some of the worst outcomes for children. But there are parenting practices that may not be classified as child abuse that are still detrimental to children. Abuse and lesser negative actions generally bring darkness into a child’s life. Our goal is to reduce the darkness and bring more light into their lives. Along with various ways we could bring light into their lives, I also envision a paradigm shift in the way we deal with child abuse in families. While this organization is not involved in child advocacy work, bringing more light into such work is within our mission. I believe we need to move from a punitive approach to a more uplifting and inspiring approach to dealing with domestic challenges that affect children. This is something we will need to develop in time.