KEY POINTS:
It's a toddler-eat-toddler world out there in the mean preschools of Auckland.
A woman from Papakura in the front row is worried about her three-year-old only child making friends among the fickle cliques of her kindergarten.
One day, it seems, another little girl will latch on to hers and the two will be inseparable. The next day her daughter will run up to her new friend only to be told, "You're not my friend today.
I'm so-and-so's friend today." Says the concerned mum: "She'll come home and say, 'No, I didn't play with her; she wouldn't be my friend today'." It's become so cut-throat that her daughter is starting to approach unfamiliar children in playgrounds and demand, "Will you be my friend? Will you play with me?"
But the forward approach is frightening the other children off. "She's just desperate for people to play with." The small lecture room in Greenlane's new Parenting Place murmurs in sympathy. The three other mothers attending this workshop - entitled "Teaching children how to grow friends" - and the presenter, primary school teacher Raewyn Miller, wouldn't be here if they didn't feel her pain.
One woman suggests she invite some of the children from kindergarten home to play, another wonders if teaching her daughter a less forward approach at the playground would help.
One of the mothers has the opposite problem: "I've got a four-year-old who would make friends with a tree. But what if it's a child you don't like? [One who] hits and plays with guns?"
Another admits that she has spied on her child at school at lunchtime because she was so concerned that he wasn't making friends. "People laughed at me, but I needed to." The good-hearted Miller doesn't think any of it is at all laughable. "Children can be very fickle, your child can be flavour of the month one day and then a new child comes along with a new toy or something.
It's really hard if your child says to you, 'No one likes me'. As women and as mums we're so protective of them, it's easy to get caught up. They need the armour against the world." That armour is self-esteem, says Miller.
Liking yourself, knowing yourself and being who you are is the foundation of any friendship. She says every child goes through a stage in which he or she doesn't have friends but if it goes on too long it can be a concern.
On a brand-new white table behind Miller is a pile of books: It Takes Character, Sticks and Stones, I Can Handle It - How to have a Confident Child, The Secret of Happy Children, Self-esteem Games.
On an equally new projector screen is an excerpt from another book, Hauora, about "friendship fertilisers" - smiling, remembering people's names, listening to and commenting on what they say, inviting them to share something, giving honest appreciation, asking questions and using manners.
The next screen will show the "friendship killers" - always talking about yourself, taking things too personally, showing off, expecting too much, complaining, being selfish, being mean and gossiping. The women are enthusiastically appreciative of the workshop, for which they each paid $10.
But then even the air-conditioning is overly enthusiastic at this bright new drop-in centre for parents, the dream-come-true of self-styled parenting gurus Mary and Ian Grant.
It opened in early March on the edge of an industrial area on busy Great South Rd in Greenlane with a bustling timetable of workshops, from "Teaching babies to sleep" and "Storage ideas for kids" to "Talking to aliens - how to communicate with teenagers" and "Mastering your digital camera to capture family moments".
Among the speakers are the Grants, who have become renowned for their evangelical travelling parenting lectures, Diane Levy of TV's Demons to Darlings, TV presenter Pio Terei and Newstalk ZB Real Life host John Cowan. There are a few workshops on faith - a nod to the Grants' strong Christian ethic - but they're mostly secular.
There are also cooking classes taken by Rae Candy and "Destitute Gourmet" Sophie Gray, run in the centre's modern cafe, which is open every day for hot drinks and muffins. The entrance is marked by a pillar of stones that water cascades down - to create a sense of peacefulness, says Mary Grant - and a mantra is printed onto the glass doors and windows: "Children are the message we send into the future."
Just inside the doors two blond-haired preschoolers are doing laps around a cafe table where two women sit, one breastfeeding a tiny baby. Further in is a reception desk and several stands of books for sale - more of the kinds of titles Miller had on her table, including several written by the Grants.
Past the reception desk is a comfy lounge with cosy chairs and large touch-screen computers. These are targeted primarily at fathers, who centre manager Tim Cleary acknowledges might feel more comfortable accessing the information they need without having to approach the staff or volunteers.
Three large, silent TV screens flick between photos of clean-faced families and quotes from inspiring people, including Oscar Wilde's "there is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up". In a children's play area, a woman is sitting in a huge red bean bag reading a book to a toddler, while another child clambers over a long, curved red seat.
There's a touch-screen for some high-tech colouring-in and a wooden rocking horse and toy train that Ian Grant made himself but there is no creche and the centre is not geared to host children.
This was a deliberate move on the creators' part - staff will gladly mind children momentarily while their parents do what they need to, but the idea is that parents come to the centre while their children are at preschool or school to attend a workshop, seek advice, support or a referral or just have a coffee and relax.
The Parenting Place was funded mostly by a $6.5 million donation from Timaru businessman and philanthropist Allan Hubbard, the chairman and major shareholder of South Canterbury Finance, with top-ups from businesses and donations from the community.
The building is mortgage-free and some of the upstairs offices are leased out to commercial tenants for extra income. If it all sounds like a bunch of do-gooders doing good, well, yes it is. "It was our dream to have a place where people could just drop in and we could encourage them," says Grant, who has popped down from his office upstairs for a coffee.
"We wanted it to be nice because the biggest thing you need in parenting is hope. Some people have said to us, 'Oh, you're too flash. Why are you so flash when it's a place of help?' Well, when you come in it's like saying, 'hey, you're important to us and parenting's important'."
The Grants have been holding parenting seminars for more than a decade and they calculate they've spoken to 180,000 parents in that time. The Parenting Place seemed like a natural progression.
"[When we started the seminars] it felt like there was a whole new generation of parents who were coming on stream who were quite bewildered about the world that their teenagers were growing up in, which was very different from the world they had grown up in," says the exhaustingly positive Mary Grant.
"What we kept coming across were single mothers who were stressed and exhausted. They were coping - they weren't Winz cases - but they would have their meltdown days and they'd say, 'there's nothing out there when we just need to talk with a grandma or a little bit of space or someone to tell us we are doing okay, or someone to give us a little bit of insight on how things could be better.'
"We're a social welfare state, which is great, but a lot is being poured in that end, and there are a lot of people falling off the edges in mainstream. We need to strengthen those families - the ones who are coping, as well as the ones who aren't coping.
We just wanted to be that sort of informal situation where you could come in, and you could go out with a solution, even if it was just a cup of coffee and a cry and someone to talk to." The two workshops Canvas attends are attended exclusively by white women, most of whom wear the crisp clothes, neat hair and shiny jewellery of the middle class.
But Mary Grant says the centre has attracted a cross-section of visitors since it opened in March and its position in Greenlane means it's within reach of most Aucklanders.
They're happy to waive the workshop fees for people who don't feel they can afford it, and they'll spring for a free coffee if it's needed. Ngai Tahu has hosted a big event there and health and social agencies have promised to tell their clients about it.
She says one young woman from west Auckland took two buses and a train to get there. "More and more people are finding us. We want the parents from Greenlane to sit next to the parents from North Shore and the parents from Otara to sit next to the parents from Remuera, because [parenting] is such a common experience."
One of the thousands of people who popped into the centre's gala opening in March was Lesley Max, chairwoman of advocacy group The Parenting Council. She says she walked in the door and immediately walked back out to read the sign and check she was in the right place.
"I thought, 'oh no, this has got to be an architect's office, this can't be just for parents. It's a beautiful place. And it is just for parents. And that says something about value. I'm a real enthusiast for what they're doing.
"I think it's a wonderful idea. The research tells us that a large number of parents really want and appreciate some help, some advice, some encouragement, some motivation in their parenting. And that's what this place is really good at doing." Max says she has seen the effect of the work of the Grants and John Cowan in a range of population groups, from the most privileged to the least privileged.
"They make connections. They reach very well across the spectrum. They lift spirits, and I think that's a really important thing." She paraphrases a quote on the wall of her office by Professor James Ritchie: "Parenting is not instinctive to the human species to any significant degree.
It's something that we learn and we learn it through observation, through coaching, through all kinds of means, but we need some help in it. It's an infinitely complex assignment and the more complex our society, the more parents need some assistance, some guidance, some inspiration, some reassurance."
However, the Children's Commissioner, Dr Cindy Kiro, has reservations about the Parenting Place. Kiro says anything that provides support for parents is a good idea but, despite Mary Grant's assertion that Greenlane is accessible to most Aucklanders, she points out that the suburb is a "rather wealthy part of Auckland".
"I'm worried that the 'worried well' will be the ones who access it. Which is nice but are they the ones who most need it? I don't want to come across as saying it's bad because I think anybody who makes an investment in a resource that's going to help parents feel confident about parenting and give them some tools is a good thing, but I just don't think that this is the right way to have gone. I think if you're going to make that investment you would have been better to have supported community-based organisations such as Parents Centres, with a track record, who are spread across the country and are in more diverse communities, where the need is actually highest."
Back in the small lecture room at the Parenting Place, the mothers at Raewyn Miller's workshop have far fewer reservations about the centre. They are impressed at the range of workshops on offer and say they are affordable and easily accessible.
"It's meeting our needs, really, isn't it?" one says. "We have issues, as parents. We are trained how to do our jobs, we're trained how to drive a car but we're not trained how to be a parent. And then we get thrown into it."
"I told my mum I was coming to this," says another. "And she's all like, 'Why do you need to go to these things?' And I said to her, 'Well, it's always good to learn more about how to do the job well.'
And I know, from what she's said, that when she was a young mum she had all these young mums in her street, they were all at home and right next door to each other. Well, we just don't have that. So we have to look for a wider community support group, if you like, through things like this, and reading books."
"Instead of being a good parent," says the first mother, "you want to be a fantastic parent."
