For Bonnie Harris, parenting has been nothing less than her life’s work.
“Ever since I had children, it became a real passion,” she said. “And I’ve always expected it to sort of run its course and it never has. T that passion just gets stronger and stronger.”
Harris founded the the Parent Guidance Center in 1990, which eventually became what is now The River Center in Peterborough. And now, for the first time since its founding, she is stepping away from the organization.
To be clear, Harris said she is not retiring. She plans to continue her work in the field, including counseling parents, recording her podcast and giving talks on parenting, but leaving The River Center is still a big shift.
Margaret Nelson, executive director of the River Center, said that she and everyone else there will miss her.
“It’s been a privilege to work with her,” she said. “I think she’s accomplished quite a bit and continues to have an incredible influence on parenting.”
The passion began for Harris when she had her own children, after being an actress in New York City. The career shift was hard, she said, but she knew what she wanted.
“I knew that if I was going to do something else with my career, it was going to have to do with parenting,” Harris said.
So she went back to school, got her graduate degree in early childhood development and started creating counseling programs. Once she moved to New Hampshire with her family, she began teaching at Monadnock Community Hospital before branching off on her own to found the Parent Guidance Center.
“I knew what I wanted to do was work with parents – talk to them, support them, advise them, learn what they wanted and what they didn’t want,” she said.
Shannon McNamara, now the family support program director at the River Center, took Harris’s classes before she taught them herself.
“Bonnie’s classes were really a place where I could go, and be with other people who were struggling in the same ways or similar ways as I was,” McNamara said. “It really became a community space. We’re all in this together and we love our children.”
For Harris, it was this sort of response that made the work worth it.
“My work is in helping parents do the best job they can with their children,” she said. “Helping them do what they want to do in their heart of hearts with their children, and become more and more aware of all the other forces getting in the way of doing that.”
“She just hasn’t stopped,” said McNamara. “Once she started on this path, she hasn’t stopped.”
According to McNamara and Nelson, Harris’s approach to parenting and her outlook on guiding parents through the process was game-changing, and ahead of its time.
“I remember talking to her about how, when she started doing it, she just realized that nobody was doing this,” Nelson said. “Nobody was talking about parenting classes.”
“In terms of being connected with your child, and understanding them as a human instead of just enforcing law – that’s not something you see a lot,” said McNamara. “It’s really amazing that she’s done this with her life and that she’s affected so many of us younger people in the field.”
While Harris did this work, she also wrote books. Her first was published in 2003, titled “When Your Kids Push Your Buttons and What You Can Do About It,” and her second was in 2008, titled “Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids: 8 Principles for Raising Kids You’ll Love to Live With.” Over this time, her organization grew and morphed, combining the Parent Guidance Center with Families and Communities Together in the 2002 and becoming the Family Center of Greater Peterborough, before joining with the River Center in 2010 to make the organization that exists today.
Harris continued to do the work that mattered most to her on an even larger scale, as she was asked to talks internationally and counsel a wide range of people. She has found new and fresh ways to engage with her audience, from writing a blog to starting a podcast, called “Tell Me About Your Kids.”
And she is far from giving up the work now, as she intends to keep up her counseling via Zoom. She also will be going to Tennessee to be with her daughter when she has her baby.
“She loves working with the parents and doing what she does,” Nelson said. “She has stuck with it all these years, and really made sure that the parents and families continued to be served through this organization into the future.”
Harris compared the River Center to having a baby. She “gave birth” to the organization, guided it through merging and growing and expanding and watched it take on a life of its own.
“It has grown to be very independent of me, and I’m extremely proud of it,” she said. “It’s in very, very capable hands. It has flown the nest, quite a long time ago.”
She intends to stay in touch with the River Center, something McNamara said she is grateful for.
“I adore her, I look up to her, and I hope to do many, many more things with her,” she said. “She’s put her whole life and her whole heart into this, and all of us. She really believes in us as parents, and so I think I really appreciate that and I appreciate her.”
“I’ll never tire of it,” Harris said. “I absolutely love working with parents, and my mission, I always say, is changing the world one family at a time.”