Offering a parental shoulder

Maureen Dalton of Framingham called Parents Helping Parents 19 years ago. She's now its president. (ellen harasimowicz for the boston globe)

Nineteen years ago, when Maureen Dalton became overwhelmed by caring for her infant son, she called the Parents Helping Parents 24-hour stress hot line for someone to talk to. Today she is the nonprofit organization's president.

Based in Watertown, Parents Helping Parents offers free support groups in more than 25 locations across Massachusetts, and a caring ear around the clock, seven days a week.

"We are as reflective as we can be on the phone, but not prescriptive - which is why we never give advice," said Randall Block, executive director of the organization. Hot-line workers are trained to help callers express what's happening, identify their strengths, then come up with a plan. The volunteers participate in a mentoring system as part of their training, paired with an experienced hot-line worker until they are ready to field calls on their own.

"We get about 3,000 calls a year," said Block, or an average of roughly eight per day.

While some of the volunteers have a background working in the mental health field, most do not. If callers need therapy, Block said, they are provided with resources.

Dalton meets monthly with each of the Parents Helping Parents committees, such as personnel, training, board development, publicity, and marketing and fund-raising. She also works full time, as the store manager at Zales Jewelers in Marlborough.

Her involvement on the mentoring side of Parents Helping Parents began when she volunteered to help plan a conference years ago. Soon after, she was asked to join the organization's board of directors.

"I was so surprised that someone in that position thought that I could be of value and was impressed by anything that I had to say," said Dalton. She served on all of the committees as well as in the positions of secretary and vice president before assuming her role as president in 2004.

But Dalton recalls the days when life wasn't so on track, when her son was colicky and often cried throughout the night.

"The girl in the apartment upstairs would stomp on the floor and slam drawers," said Dalton. As a single mother with no help, she found that sleep deprivation also added to her frustration. She learned about Parents Helping Parents through a newspaper advertisement. Eager to speak with someone, she called the hot line and was invited to join a support group.

"It was a good fit right away," said Dalton, a lifelong Framingham resident now in her mid-40s. "The director even told me to bring my son if I needed to."

Dalton said she found the group meetings to be incredibly helpful as everyone shared their stories. Some, she said, were extremely painful.

"We always say that Parents Helping Parents is like the family 'that you never had' because so many people come from dysfunctional homes where there was abuse of one kind or another," said Dalton. She said the organization stresses that while abuse is often passed from generation to generation, it is a cycle that can be broken.

Three years after joining the group, Dalton had a second child. But once again, she received no emotional or financial support from the father, who eventually moved out of the country.

Dalton said there were times when stress would rob her self-control.

"I would say things to my kids that were mean," she said. "I didn't like to speak to my children that way but felt as if I couldn't help it." Dalton said she learned how to speak differently to her two children with the guidance she got through Parents Helping Parents.

The organization first began in 1972 as Parents Anonymous Organization of Massachusetts, which was started by a Newton resident, Mike Turner, and Joan Wheeler, who at the time was living in Weston. The current name came in 1999.

The Parental Stress Line was started in 1979 by Parents' and Children's Services, which merged with the New England Home for Little Wanderers in 2003; the new group continued manning the hot line until 2005, when officials decided it no longer fit with their strategic plan, and Parents Helping Parents took it over.

The hot line is often used by parents in crisis or looking for guidance in a difficult situation.

Block said he remembers a 2 a.m. call from a divorced father who had his children for the weekend. The man said that his former wife had just called him drunk from the side of the road, had no way to get home, and wanted a ride. He was scheduled to return his kids the next day and didn't know what to do.

"He really didn't want to call the police" or the Department of Social Services "because his ex-wife had custody and he feared they might be placed into a foster home," said Block. "This was a pretty well-educated person who had an attorney, but just really wasn't sure what to do."

After talking it over with Block, the man decided to return the children to his ex the next day and call her best friend to check on them.

One thing that hotline volunteers have to remember, said Block, is that they are only getting part of the story, which is why they never give advice.

"We also get a lot of calls from grandparents parenting children who have been given to them by the Department of Social Services system, and women with postpartum depression," said Amy M. Brinn, a licensed social worker and program director at Parents Helping Parents. "I sometimes have people who call screaming in frustration about their children; I'm sort of a calm presence that can help them calm down and come up with a plan to deal with the specific thing that triggered the phone call."

Dalton said she believes it's important to get the word out that organizations like hers exist.

"When I needed help, I was 27 years old, had a bachelor's degree, and could advocate for myself," said Dalton. "But there are teenagers out there who have children and no parental support. If people don't know who we are, they'll miss out on how we can help them."

For more on Parents Helping Parents, call 800-882-1250 or visit its website, parentshelpingparents.org.

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