About Us

VandS

Our Mission

The mission of Parenting Skills Institute is to help parents and children. In a supportive way, we guide you through the divorce process. Our commitment to you is to provide the best and most recent information to help you and your family as you face the challenges of divorce.

Qualifications

Dr. Virginia Taylor, Ph.D. is the Director of Parenting Skills Institute. She received her training from Vanderbilt University at the George Peabody College of Education. She is a certified professional counselor, author, an educational specialist, as well as a court-approved mediator. During her years as a distinguished educator, Dr. Taylor has been a devoted teacher of youngsters at several different age levels: middle school, high school, and college. As a professional counselor, she has enjoyed working with thousands of parents.

Dr. Taylor has received recognition as an educational leader. Particularly heart-warming for her were the several occasions when the students themselves honored her with awards for teaching excellence. In addition to her instructional work and writing, Dr. Taylor has served as an educational consultant and family relations expert on television.

Her professional counseling work involved both youngsters and their parents. As her work evolved, she focused on the effects of divorce on children and parents. Dr. Taylor’s love and concern for parents and children motivated her to provide this course in order to help as many parents as possible.

Dr. Taylor comments, “Through the years we have enjoyed teaching divorcing parents. We have laughed and cried with our participants as they were going through one of the most difficult periods in their lives. We have had some fun and they tell us they have had some too. We have tried to inject some humor into the class though we know we are dealing with some very serious subjects.”

TEAM MEMBERS

Dr. Taylor’s principal associate, Sandra Sutton, is an educator, counselor, court-approved mediator, and one of the jolly healers of humanity. Her laughter has cured “many an ill.” Mrs. Sutton has taught and counseled with youngsters from preschool age through high school. She is especially talented in teaching adults to read and has changed many lives in this respect as well.

Other professional team members include three Master teachers, a licensed clinical social worker, a psychologist, and even a skydiver who has kept us believing that we really could design this online class. We appreciate the parents who freely volunteered to act out the scenarios of real parents in the videos. We are grateful for their efforts, their input, and their humor. They have encouraged us and helped us to take time away from the physical classes so we could complete this important work.

Why did we decide to design such a course?

Our answer to this question is personal as well as professional. As we grew older, our focus changed from career-climbing to wanting to make a difference in the lives of others. We wanted to leave a legacy of sorts. It was our goal to design a class that could change your life, your children’s lives. and their children’s lives.

Have We Helped Anyone In This Life?

We wanted the answer to this question to be a resounding “Yes!” for us. With that goal, we put our collective experience together and designed a fast-paced, powerful, inspiring class for parents. As our reputation has spread, we have been asked to provide the parenting classes for the court systems in an ever-widening area. Wonderful responses from thousands of parents who have taken our class tell us we have done it right. As one fellow commented. “I planned to doze through the class, but enjoyed it so much I never closed my eyes.”