Videos Show Impact of a Parent Training Program

A fine way to know how parenting training helps parents is to hear it in the words of parents who complete parent training programs.

A recent announcement about upcoming workshops to learn how to deliver the Effective Black Parenting Program includes videos of parents who graduated from the program. Two parents who were chosen to represent all the parents who took the program go before an auditorium full of other garduates and their families. They tell us -- from their hearts -- what they and their families got out of the program, and how important such programs are to communities.

The announcement also contains videos from a professional training workshop where new instructors were prepared to be leaders of the program. These educators, who were brought together at the end of a five day workshop, were equally as revealing and genuine as the parents who graduated from the program (see picture above).

Do take the time to view and hear the type of impact such programs have.

You will also learn about this national model program and how you and others can enroll in workshops in different cities to learn how to deliver the program to families in your communities.

Click here to view video.

Parenting and the President - Part 7 - The Bush Years and the Formation of NEPI

As indicated in Part 6 of this series (September 23, 2009), efforts to create a Presidential Commission on Effective Parenting were moving along nicely in the Clinton White House until the Monica Lewinski scandal stopped everything.

During the George W. Bush years, I and the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring again attempted to encourage the president to become a champion of effective parenting but did so with many similarly committed people and organizations.

A Well-Developed Initiative Proposed

This time we were proposing a carefully developed Effective Parenting Initiative that was based on a comprehensive conceptualization of the central roles that effective parenting and parenting education play in promoting the healthy growth of America’s children, and in preventing such costly and tragic domestic problems as child abuse and neglect, drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, school drop out, as well as a variety of other health, mental health, learning and social problems.

The Initiative included a Department or White House Office of Effective Parenting, along with a National Council, a Research Institute, a Training Center and a Clearinghouse to educate the public. Our contacts in the Bush administration were very positively disposed but indicated that the ideas needed to be shaped as having originated with the president and the first lady, not from Dr. Alvy and CICC. We adhered to their suggestions for nearly a year, rewriting the Initiative as coming directly from the president. Then there was to be a White House Briefing with the Domestic Policy Council leadership which would be the first official step in adopting the Initiative.

Here again, we were on the brink of a briefing that eventually could turn all of these efforts into policies that would be promoted by the president of the United States.

This briefing was to take place in December 2005 while I was in Washington for a national convention. But two weeks before I left for DC, I received a call from our contact in the Bush administration and was informed that the briefing had to be cancelled because key members of the Domestic Policy Council were suddenly called away from Washington.

At that point it seemed wise to use the trip to Washington to meet with other elected officials from both parties to see if they wanted to be involved with such an Initiative. Meetings were speedily arranged with the staffs of Senators from New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and a member of the House of Representatives from Nebraska. The meetings were held and the staffs of all these Congressional leaders were very positively disposed toward the basic ideas and the the reasons for having such an Initiative. They also indicated that it would require a long time to move such ideas through congress but the president could move them forward right now by issuing an Executive Order.

Formation of The National Effective Parenting Initiative (NEPI)

The thought of eventually having to move these ideas through Congress, with elected officials from every state having to be convinced of their merit, led us to conclude that this work required many, many more Dr. Alvys and CICCs to make it happen. That realization led to the founding and formation of an advocacy and membership organization which we called the National Effective Parenting Initiative (NEPI) and which officially started in September 2006.

After founding NEPI and getting the support of many of our nation's top parenting authorities and organizations, I called our contact person in the Bush administration to inform him of the creation of NEPI and to see if the previously cancelled White House Briefing could be re-scheduled.

Within a week I got a call back with an invitation to come to Washington in December 2006 to lead such a White House Briefing. This immediate action undoubtedly had to do with both our contacts positive attitudes toward what was being proposed and also with the fact that more people and more organizations were doing the proposing.

The next article in this series will be concerned with the actual briefing and what it led to.

________________________________________________

How You Can Be Involved...

You can participate by commenting on this and future articles in The Parenting and the President series.

You can become supportive through letting the world know that it would be a better place if all children were raised by effective and sensitive parents who receive excellent parenting education. You can express such sentiments through signing our online Effective Parenting Petition (check here).

And /or you can become a member and supporter of the NEPI, the National Effective Parenting Initiative.

There are three types of memberships available, each of which has its own series of educational benefits and involvement opportunities. Click on the membership type you are most interested in learning about:

• Parent Membership
  
• Professional Membership
  
• Organization Affiliate

Your membership dues are not only used to provide the member benefits but to also support the various advocacy actions that are needed to bring these important matters to the attention of the president and the public in general. This entire effort is of a grassroots nature and membership dues, and funds that have been contributed to CICC over the years, are the only monies that are supporting it now.

For those of you who want to make a financial contribution but do not want to become members of NEPI, you can support this grassroots effort by making a tax-deductible contribution to CICC.

Click here to donate.

Parent Training In Schools: It's in Everyone's Best Interests

On October 6, 2009, I will be be leading a two-hour webinar to inform and inspire more schools to offer a wide range of modern parent training programs and become places where parents turn for learning how best to raise their children.

Schools are ideal for providing and facilitating the education of parents. They are first and foremost educational institutions and nearly every child and family has a relationship with them.

A recent report from the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education marshals decades of research evidence from forward-looking schools that are already engaged in educating and involving parents. The report concludes that educating and engaging parents "leads to INCREASED STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, INCREASED SOCIAL SKILLS and BEHAVIOR, and INCREASED LIKELIHOOD of GRADUATION."

If that isn't enough motivation for schools and school boards to make parenting training a priority, there are other excellent reasons for schools to become advocates and providers. In so doing they will also be contributing to the prevention and treatment of numerous health and social problems, such as helping to stop child abuse and neglect, youth substance use, delinquency, gang involvement and crime. Indeed, because schools have the capacity to reach just about everyone in the community, their efforts to educate and support parents can be the pivotal and central means for getting more parents to be the best they can be.

I encourage all of us to encouarge schools to take this type of leadership and sign up for the October 6 webinar!

Parenting and the President - Part 6 - History and Issues Regarding the Effective Parenting Initiative

The idea of a federal government-supported Effective Parenting Initiative (see Part 5 of this series) began germinating when I was honored at the White House in 1995.

As part of the ceremonies to commemorate the signing of the legislation that created National Parents Day, I was invited to the Oval Office to receive a commendation for my and CICC’s work in educating and assisting hundreds of thousands of parents including large numbers of parents of African American children.

That gave me an opportunity to speak with both President and Mrs. Clinton about what I have referred to as an Effective Parenting Movement and to encourage them to champion the movement as part of what their administration was doing to assist families. Both seemed quite interested, and Mrs. Clinton accepted a copy of my book, Parent Training Today: A Social Necessity, where the movement was described. She indicated she would read about it.

The experience at the White House was awesome and thrilling; being appreciated for my life’s work by the President and the First Lady in the home of our democracy. My only regret was that my parents, Jews who had immigrated to this country from Europe before the Holocaust, were not alive to see their youngest child so honored.

I followed up on this visit by trying to find who in the White House would be the appropriate people to work with. I was initially oriented to the President’s Commission for Women.

Over the next year, while I was in Washington to speak at various conferences or to serve as a parenting expert on committees of different government departments (click here to learn more about my background), I had meetings and lunches in the White House with Women’s Commission representatives to discuss how the administration could proceed.

The first idea was to create a Presidential Commission on Effective Parenting, like a Presidential Commission on Physical Fitness. I was asked to write a position paper on this possibility which I gladly did. Then, after about a year relating to the Women’s Commission, I was told they were not the appropriate body in the White House to consider these policy-laden ideas. They apologized somewhat sheepishly, indicating that they had wanted to bring these ideas to the President themselves.

Then they oriented me to the Domestic Policy Council in the White House and to the person on the Council who had responsibility for children’s issues. That person was also on the staff of the First Lady.

She asked me to address the likelihood that such a Presidential undertaking would be criticized as the government telling parents how to raise their children. I shared with her the numerous government programs that had been in existence for over a century that assisted parents in raising children. All of these programs were part of larger efforts to promote health and child safety, alleviate poverty, prevent child abuse and neglect, prevent and treat mental health, substance abuse and juvenile delinquency problems, and to involve parents in the education of their children. Literally hundreds of such programs were in existence already. She was amazed at how extensively the government of our nation had been and currently is in helping parents to support and raise their children.

The next step was to convene a briefing in the White House for the heads of the various government departments and agencies who were currently administering parenting enhancement programs. They needed to be on board and informed about the Presidential Commission that was being suggested. Also during this time, we had invited the President and the First Lady to speak at a national parenting conference that we sponsored. Their schedules did not allow for their participation. Instead, the First Lady taped a message that was played at the conference.

Here is that message...



The planning with the people from the Domestic Policy Council was happening during the last half of 1997. It came to an abrupt halt early in 1998 when the Monica Lewinsky scandal overwhelmed and consumed the Clinton Presidency.

It took me and CICC years to forgive President Clinton and to want to go back to Washington to promote an effective parenting agenda.

But we did. Next you will learn about our efforts during the George W. Bush administration.

________________________________________________

How You Can Be Involved...

You can participate by commenting on this and future articles in The Parenting and the President series.

You can become supportive through letting the world know that it would be a better place if all children were raised by effective and sensitive parents who receive excellent parenting education. You can express such sentiments through signing our online Effective Parenting Petition (check here).

And /or you can become a member and supporter of the NEPI, the National Effective Parenting Initiative.

There are three types of memberships available, each of which has its own series of educational benefits and involvement opportunities. Click on the membership type you are most interested in learning about:

• Parent Membership
  
• Professional Membership
  
• Organization Affiliate

Your membership dues are not only used to provide the member benefits but to also support the various advocacy actions that are needed to bring these important matters to the attention of the president and the public in general. This entire effort is of a grassroots nature and membership dues, and funds that have been contributed to CICC over the years, are the only monies that are supporting it now.

For those of you who want to make a financial contribution but do not want to become members of NEPI, you can support this grassroots effort by making a tax-deductible contribution to CICC.

Click here to donate.

Advocacy Project Proposed, Based on The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.

A ten year research effort known as The ACE Study by Drs. Vincent J. Felitti and Robert F. Rada is one of the most revealing and important studies ever conducted. This pioneering study, which is being supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been showing over and over again that the most powerful precursors of a vast array of health and social problems is the number of adverse experiences that one encounters during childhood.

The key concept underlying the study is that stressful or traumatic childhood experiences such as abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence, or growing up with alcohol or other substance abuse, mental illness, parental discord, or crime in the home (which are termed adverse childhood experiences—or ACEs) are a common pathway to social, emotional, and cognitive impairments that lead to increased risk of unhealthy behaviors, risk of violence or re-victimization, disease, disability and premature mortality. It is now known from breakthroughs in neurobiology that ACEs disrupt neurodevelopment and can have lasting effects on brain structure and function—the biologic pathways that likely explain the strength of the findings from the ACE Study.

The study has been showing that the more ACEs a child is exposed to early in life, the higher the likelihood that the child as a teenager will abuse drugs, engage in sexually promiscuous behaviors and become pregnant. Also, the more ACEs early in life, the higher the risk for an array of health and social problems, including smoking, alcohol abuse, illicit drug abuse, sexual behavior, mental health, risk of revictimization, stability of relationships, and performance in the workplace.

ACEs have also been shown to increase the risk of heart diseases, chronic lung disease, suicide, injuries, HIVs and STDs, and other risks for the leading causes of death.

Based on these findings, the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) which I direct, has just submitted a proposal for a project to use these findings to advocate for improvements in how young children exposed to such conditions and their families are being helped by their communities. For example, are there enough treatment and prevention services being made available? Do existing community services deal with all of the conditions or only one or two? Do laws and referral procedures of courts perpetuate isolated and therefore inadequate services? Do doctors take medical histories that encompass all the adverse conditions?

CICC is proposing to look closely at these questions and do it with the judges, doctors and other health and social service professionals who are involved. Then a Policy Paper on the ACE Study and Its Community Service Implications will be prepared, as will a White Paper on Return on Investment that indicates what sorts of human suffering and money can be saved by investing in comprehensive early intervention. Then the project will work with these groups and with elected officials to make the needed public policy changes and will also create a training program for advocates for making such early interventions societal priorities.

The proposal was submitted last week to one of the most creative funding sources for early intervention, an entity called First 5 LA, which is a quasi-government funding body that utilizes tobacco taxes to support early childhood health and educational programs and projects.

An array of top professionals were involved in conceptualizing, developing and supporting the proposed project and to whom we express our appreciation: Dr. Margaret Lynn Yonekura, the Director of LA Best Babies Network and an Associate Clinical Professor at both the UCLA and USC Schools of Medicine; Dr. Vincent Felitti, the Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study: Cindy Harding, the Director of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Programs in the LA County Department of Public Health; Dr. Leah Ersoylu of Ersoylu Consulting Inc.; Don Schilling and Gary Oltman from CICC; and Dr. Ron Fischbach of the Health Sciences Department of the California State University, Northridge, who will be hosting the training program for policy advocates, and his colleagues from the University, Drs. Akers, Badrkhan and Malec.

We will learn within a few weeks whether First 5 LA decides to approve and fund the project. I will keep you informed. Wish us, and the children and families of Los Angeles County, good fortune!

Parenting and the President - Part 5 - Effective Parenting Initiative

The fourth and most detailed feature of the National Effective Parenting Plan is a proposal for a multi-faceted Effective Parenting Initiative that would be reflected in the creation of a new Department or Office within the federal government.

Creating such government structures as departments, offices or institutes are common ways to carry out the agreed upon agendas of a democracy. The agenda being offered here is to make both effective parenting and parenting education national priorities.

This will eventually require the creation of such structures within our federal government as a Department or Office of Effective Parenting that will he headed by a presidential appointee who would be directly responsible to the President. That department will be charged with the responsibility for facilitating and engaging in actions that will create the conditions in our nation that will allow effective parenting and parenting education to become priorities.

Actions that federal government agencies customarily engage in can include bringing individuals and groups together who can further the overall agenda (a convening function that often is embodied in some sort of council). Such departments can also engage in research activities to create and summarize the knowledge that is needed (a research function that can be carried out through an institute), and these departments can provide training of various classes of personnel that are needed to actualize the agenda (a training function in the form of a center). They also can engage in a public education function by operating clearinghouses of relevant data and information.

The diagram herein provided outlines the possible structure of a Department or Office of Effective Parenting and the related councils, institutes, training centers and clearinghouses. Each of these will be described in future articles in this series.

The next article will share the history of these ideas, and our efforts to bring them before both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Important and controversial related issues, such as whether the government should be involved in helping parents raise their children, will be addressed.

________________________________________________

How You Can Be Involved...

You can participate by commenting on this and future articles in The Parenting and the President series.

You can become supportive through letting the world know that it would be a better place if all children were raised by effective and sensitive parents who receive excellent parenting education. You can express such sentiments through signing our online Effective Parenting Petition (check here).

And /or you can become a member and supporter of the NEPI, the National Effective Parenting Initiative.

There are three types of memberships available, each of which has its own series of educational benefits and involvement opportunities. Click on the membership type you are most interested in learning about:

• Parent Membership
  
• Professional Membership
  
• Organization Affiliate

Your membership dues are not only used to provide the member benefits but to also support the various advocacy actions that are needed to bring these important matters to the attention of the president and the public in general. This entire effort is of a grassroots nature and membership dues, and funds that have been contributed to CICC over the years, are the only monies that are supporting it now.

For those of you who want to make a financial contribution but do not want to become members of NEPI, you can support this grassroots effort by making a tax-deductible contribution to CICC.

Click here to donate.

Parenting Issue: When Is It Safe to Leave Children Alone?

I was interviewed by Jessica Meyers, a writer from the Dallas Morning News, about when is it safe to leave children home alone.

The interview was stimulated by a news story of a 13-year old who was at home with her 6-year old sister and a robber entered their house. The 13-year old acted in a grand fashion to thwart the robber by locking herself and her sister in the bathroom and calling the police.

The article that Jessica wrote includes a discussion of the issues to consider when deciding whether or not to leave children home alone, as well as some guidelines that I and other parenting authorities suggested.

The article can be obtained by clicking here. Give it a read.

Parenting and Parenting Education: Why Both Are So Important

A recent report from Partnership for America's Economic Success clearly shows why parents are so important in how children develop and turnout, as well as showing that parenting education is the best way to help parents to be as effective as possible.

Authored by Drs. Sharon M. McGroder and Allison Hyra, the report is called Developmental and Economic Effects of Parenting Programs for Expectant Parents and Parents of Preschool-age Children.

They indicate that an extensive literature, generated by researchers from a variety of scholarly disciplines, addresses the ways in which parents affect children.

Children are influenced by...

1. Who parents are (e.g., with respect to gender, age, race/ethnicity, intelligence, education levels, temperament),

2. What parents know (e.g., about child development and normative child behavior),

3. What parents believe (e.g., attitudes toward child rearing),

4. What parents value (e.g., education, achievement, obedience, interpersonal relationships),

5. What parents expect of their children (e.g., age- developmentally-appropriate expectations for behavior, achievement expectations), and

6. What parents ultimately do (e.g., their parenting practices and overall parenting "styles").

The authors further indicate that "decades of research describe the implications of these multiple dimensions of 'parenting' for their children's cognitive, social, emotional and physical development.

For example, a solid base of research suggests that parenting characterized by both warmth and firm discipline ('authoritative") predicts better self-control, self-reliance, and exploration in children; parenting characterized by coercive and harsh discipline and lacking in warmth ('authoritarian') is associated with distrust and withdrawn behavior in children; and parenting characterized as 'permissive' or 'uninvolved' (lax discipline and low warmth) or 'indulgent' (lax discipline but warm) predicts worse self-control, self-reliance, and exploration in children."

On the basis of these realities and findings, the authors affirm that efforts to assist more parents to be more effective and to learn the actions and attitudes of an authoritative style of parenting are well worth the effort. They then go on to document findings from numerous studies that show how beneficial parenting education has been for those parents who were enrolled in high quality parenting programs.

This report and its resounding confirmation for parenting education is further reason to support the the National Effective Parenting Plan that is being advocated by such groups as the the National Effective Parenting Initiative and the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (see my August 18, 2009 post on Parenting and the President - Part One - The National Effective Parenting Plan).

The entire report by Drs. McGroder and Hyra can be obtained by clicking here.

Parenting and the President - Part 4 - White House Conferences on Effective Parenting

The third feature of the National Effective Parenting Plan (see Part 1 in this series) consists of White House Conferences on Effective Parenting.

These highly visible events would bring together the leading authorities and researchers on effective parenting to share state-of-the-art thinking and results, as well as showcasing the top parenting programs and resources.

By supporting and hosting these events the President will be indicating loud and clear that effective parenting and parenting education are crucial to the quality of life and future of the nation. These conferences would also serve to educate the public about what is being done to assist parents, and recommendations from the conferences will help set the effective parenting agenda for the nation.

There is ample precedent for these types of conferences.

The first was a White House Conference on Children and Youth in 1909, which was followed by similar conferences every ten years through 1970. There have also been White House Conferences on Aging which started in the 1960s and have continued every ten years since. The most recent of the Aging conferences were accompanied by 900 state and local gatherings which were held independently from the conference, but were recognized for their input and suggestions. In addition there have been a White House Conference on the Family and one on Child Care during the Clinton administration in which I was proud to participate.

The Child Welfare League of America, whose origins can be traced back to the 1909 conference, is in the process of spearheading an effort to have a White House Conference on Children and Youth in 2010. That conference would focus on the most vulnerable children and youth. The League has generated a nationwide network of groups like CICC and NEPI to be involved, and they already have several members of congress from both sides of the political aisle on board to support the necessary legislation. Our goal with that possible conference is to make sure that effective parenting and parenting education are issues and services that are included.

Our participation and support, however, will not in any way stop our efforts to move the President to convene the White House Conferences on Effective Parenting that were described above.

Like the first two features of the Plan, discussions about these White House Conferences will begin to take place once we have the official ear of the Obama administration.

The fourth part of the National Effective Parenting Plan, a multi-faceted, federal government supported Effective Parenting Initiative, is the most detailed part of the Plan. This Initiative, which will be described in several upcoming articles in this series, is similar to what we proposed to the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations during our previous attempts to engage presidents as effective parenting champions. These stories will include details of how both administrations were accessed and the historical happenings that influenced the outcomes of those attempts.

________________________________________________

How You Can Be Involved...

You can participate by commenting on this and future articles in The Parenting and the President series.

You can become supportive through letting the world know that it would be a better place if all children were raised by effective and sensitive parents who receive excellent parenting education. You can express such sentiments through signing our online Effective Parenting Petition (check here).

And /or you can become a member and supporter of the NEPI, the National Effective Parenting Initiative.

There are three types of memberships available, each of which has its own series of educational benefits and involvement opportunities. Click on the membership type you are most interested in learning about:

• Parent Membership
  
• Professional Membership
  
• Organization Affiliate

Your membership dues are not only used to provide the member benefits but to also support the various advocacy actions that are needed to bring these important matters to the attention of the president and the public in general. This entire effort is of a grassroots nature and membership dues, and funds that have been contributed to CICC over the years, are the only monies that are supporting it now.

For those of you who want to make a financial contribution but do not want to become members of NEPI, you can support this grassroots effort by making a tax-deductible contribution to CICC.

Click here to donate.