One night a week last month, civil servant Tan Hui San and her husband attended intensive classes that covered material neither of them had learnt in school.

The couple, along with eight other parents, had enrolled themselves in a course specially meant to teach them better parenting skills and techniques.

Called Parenting With Confidence, the course was organised by non-profit group Focus on the Family, and is one of at least a dozen such courses being run here.

Ms Tan, 38, says the course was helpful to her as it allowed her to see various parenting issues from different perspectives and hear from other parents.

"It was very valuable to just know that we were not alone in our struggles," adds the mother of an eight-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl.

The course she attended has proved popular, with more than 8,000 parents singing up for it since it was introduced in 2003, says Ms Agnes Goh, Focus on the Family's content strategist for parenting.

Community organisations and hospitals here say they have been running the courses to strengthen family bonds and equip parents with the necessary skills. They have also seen an increase in demand for such classes.

Ms Audrey Lau, director of corporate development at KK Women's and Children's Hospital, says there is an "increasing number of couples wanting to hone their parenting skills and forge stronger bonds with their children".

She adds: "We believe they hope to empower and educate themselves to provide the best possible care to their children."

The hospital's Patient Education Centre routinely organises workshops for parents of children of different ages, teaching a variety of skills including effective communication, discipline, boundaries and growing a child's self-esteem - similar themes to the parenting courses and workshops organised by other organisations.

Ms Josephine Loh, training manager for Morning Star Community Services, also says her centre has seen an increase in demand for such classes.

About 4,500 parents attended its parenting programmes between February last year and January this year. These participants include both individuals and corporate organisations, she adds.

"More parents are aware of the need to equip themselves with parenting skills in order to strengthen their relationships with their children," says Ms Loh. "And organisations are more proactive in looking after their employees' work-life harmony."

Focus on the Family's Ms Goh says that the classes are important because each child is unique, and the issues parents face at various stages of their child's life will be different.

"Parenting is life-long learning," she says.

"Those who attend such classes will gain knowledge about their role and goal as parents, learn specific skillsets in parenting their child, and gain new perspectives and attitudes towards their child's behaviours and actions, and even about themselves as parents."

Many of these workshops are grouped according to the ages of the children that participants have.

Focus on the Family's courses, for example, are divided into the age groups zero to six years, seven to 12 years and 13 to 19 years.

While parents of children in the first group learn skills such as expressing love through discipline, parents of primary school-age children in the second group tackle issues such as emotional intelligence and building a child's self-esteem.

Those whose children are teenagers learn how to set boundaries and communicate effectively with them.

Ms Tan says the classes felt much more useful than the parenting books and blogs she had previously read because of the human element.

"I found the workshop useful because there were other parents there. They were Singaporeans, so we got a local perspective on issues," she says.

"Most parenting books I've read are from the United States, so I'm not always sure if they would apply to us. It's reassuring to talk to other local parents and helpful to hear their views and ideas."

She adds that the course had an added benefit for her and her husband, who works in the IT line. "The workshop provided a good excuse to spend a few evenings together because we were becoming too preoccupied with work and the kids," she says.

"Apart from the parenting side of it, the classes were useful in enriching our marriage too."

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