South African Institute for the Family

Families are the touchstone of our society, and both the successes and problems, within our families irrevocably shape our societies, and most importantly our children. We feel that much good can be done for ourselves, our children and our world by providing personal enrichment and development at the fundamental level of family living.

Family Enrichment Courses

The great love and emotion within our families is invaluable and irreplaceable, but does indeed sometimes hinder our judgment when it comes to dealing with challenges within the home, SAIF aims to provide tangible guidelines that are practically applicable, through meaningful discussion, and with which we can grow our families into the fundamental pillars of society that they are, while still filling them with love and light.

Marital Love

This course is designed for engaged couples, and all couples looking to enrich their married life. Using discussion groups guided by our moderators, we aim to bring about understanding of the true meaning and essence of marriage as well as holistically improve the relationship between husbands and wives. We touch on areas including life-long commitment, better communication and the balancing of professional and family life.

First Steps

Deals with parenting children aged 0- 3 or 4 years, and is aimed at discussing and understanding the needs of our children, and how best to meet them at this age. At this age establishing order in the life of a child in crucial, and thus this course touches on areas such as: how to establish a routine in the life of little ones, understanding the differences between the influences of heredity and temperament, as well as how to understand and provide for other developmental needs.

First Letters

Deals with parenting of children aged 4- 7or 8 years. This stage involves the beginning of schooling years and thus we focus on: socializing (especially outside the home), emergence of individuality and the beginning of the age of reason.

First Decisions

Deals with parenting of children aged 8-10 years. Discussions in this course target intellectual development and individual interests such as sports and games. Furthermore this is the age at which parents need to understand the importance affections, and the emergence of emotions as a more important factor in the child’s life, as well as the onset of puberty.

Pre-Teen

Deals with parenting of children aged 10-13 years. Here, course discussion gear towards helping parents to properly allow their children to complete their childhood years and development, while preparing them for them for parenting of teenagers.

Teen Years

Deals Parenting of Children aged 13- 16 or 17. This course deals with parenting of teenagers, through focusing on discussion areas including: Accommodating the teen’s need to develop their own value systems, while being more demanding through the giving of responsibilities. This will prepare both parents and teen’s for greater independence of the children.

Contact Us

If you have any queries, questions or would like more information about SAIF you are more than welcome to contact us.

Johannesburg
Marié Davies
0849485005
Mariephysio@gmail.com

Pretoria
Betty Oloo
0828588906
apondis@gmail.com

The IFFD

Family Enrichment activity began in the mid-sixties with the development of support programs for parents based on the case method: a useful way of promoting dialogue about real situations which avoids imposing our own ideas or dismissing other people’s.