The Parenting Doc

Checking Out Young Kids

2011-09-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

Nearly fifty years ago when I was beginning my graduate work in child psychology, I was one of the first members of my family to notice and want to do something about the strange behaviors of my nephew Dean. He was about two years old, without speech and chewing on the back of his hand. It was appalling and tragic. It turned out that Dean was autistic, and would now be a child who would be considered as being at far end of the autism spectrum.

Dean was given just about all of the therapies and interventions that were then available through UCLA and its neuropsychiatric clinics, as well as the therapy that was part of Dr. Ivar Lovaas in the psych department. Dean eventually had to be hospitalized at the then Camarillo State Hospital and he died in his early 30s at a group home for similarly disabled adults.

Later in my career in the early 2000s when I was in a position to generate funding for the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring for a project that would focus on the needs of special needs kids and their families, I initiated and generated the first online questionnaire for alerting parents of young children to the possibility that their child did have special needs that required professional attention. That questionnaire, the CICC Discovery Tool, then got fairly good usage in LA County where we had funds to publicize its existence.

The Tool asks parents to indicate how their child is currently functioning in terms of his or her
(1) development of Motor skills (physical development),
(2) thinking and learning (cognitive development),
(3) listening, cooling and speaking (receptive and expressive language development),
(4) seeing, hearing and touching (sensory development)
(5) making friends and showing feelings (social and emotional development) and
(6) dressing, washing, and feeding themselves (daily living skills).

Many parents and child care workers have made excellent use of the results of having taken the tool online. In some instances, they have used the results, which come out in the form of a developmental profile, to convince pediatricians and others in the helping field, that a child does need assistance right now. In most instances, parents found out that their kids were developing in line with normative age expectations.

In either cases, they were also alerted to parent training programs that could help them be better Moms and Dads. So the Tool also puts you in contact with really great resources to make family lives richer and more harmonious, whether or not your kids look like they are underdeveloped or disabled in any way.

The Discovery Tool is available online on CICC's website. There is also a book version of the Discovery Tool available from CICC.

Do use this pioneering alerting tool to check out your children five and under, or to have kids in your family or the kids of friends who look like they are not growing at a normal rate

Its use can change lives for the better.

So Much To Tell You

2011-07-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

Good morning, my friends. Though it has been a while since we last posted on here, that doesn't mean we haven't been extremely busy continuing to do our best to play a part in helping parents be the best they can be for their children.

Among the many things going on is the news that we have a new book out that we want to tell you about. The book grew out of our successful "Effective Black Parenting" program and is called "The Soulful Parent: Raising Healthy, Happy & Successful African-American Children." In the book, parents and program instructors share stories about how they have used the teachings of the program to create happier homes and happier and healthier relationships with their children. Their stories are accompanied by illustrations of what the program teaches, so that you too can make use of the skills and parenting ideas of the program in your relationships with your children.

It was an ambitious undertaking but one that we are very proud of and we believe it will make the lessons of the program accessible to a lot more people who might not be able to make it to workshops.

Speaking of workshops, we have a couple coming up to tell you about as well. But more on that later. Here is a link to where you can find out more about the book and purchase it as well:

http://tinyurl.com/3ebwr2g

Have a great day!

Raising Proud and Capable African American Children

2009-12-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

I have just designed and will be conducting a special two-hour webinar about how communities can use the Effective Black Parenting Program to help in Raising Proud and Capable African American Children.

The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 2:00 PM Eastern time.

It will cover the following topics and issues:

The Impact of Barack Obama on Raising African American Children

Program Development Research Findings:Parenting World Views, Parenting Practices, and What Black Parents Share About Being Black.

The Pyramid of Success for Black Children and What Black Parents Can Do to Stay on the Path to the Pyramid.

Pride in Blackness: Positive Communications, Coping with Racism, Avoiding Black Self-Disparagement.

Traditional Black Discipline vs. Modern Black Self-Discipline.
General Parenting Strategies: Pinpointing Child Behaviors, The Thinking Parent's Approach, Family Rule Guidelines, Children's Developing Abilities, Children's Thinking Stages.

Basic Parenting Skills Taught in a Culturally Sensitive Manner Using African Proverbs: Effective Praising, Effective Verbal Confrontation, Time Out, Systematic Ignoring, Special Incentives.

Special Topics: Single Parenting, Preventing Drug Abuse
Research Results on Program Effectiveness.

How to Bring the Program to Your Community

People and organizations who enroll in the webinar will be eligible for receiving discounts on the instructional materials that are needed to run the program, as well as discounts on the fees for enrolling themselves or their staffs in upcoming instructor training workshops where they can be certified to deliver this national model, parenting-skill building program.

To learn more about the webinar and to enroll in it, click here.

Webinar on "How to Help Your Community Raise Its Children"

2009-12-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

A 2-hour webinar which I will be leading on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 2:00 P.M. Eastern Time will provide you with many ideas and resources that you can use to help your community do the best job possible in raising its children.

The event is called, Helping Your Community Raise Healthy Children: A Webinar on Effective Parenting Resources.

Among the topics and issues that I will address and amplify upon are:

How Society Benefits When Parents Are Effective

What Parents Do For and On Behalf of Children

What Constitutes Effective Parenting in Contemporary Society

The Most Productive Pattern of Parenting

Programs that Teach and Support the Productive Pattern, including Special Programs for Parents of Ethnic Minority Children

Research on the Impact of Parenting Programs

Ways to Engage Parents in Parenting Programs

Considerations about Charging Parents for Parenting Programs

Numerous Resources which You Can Immediately Use, including Free and Inexpensive Resources

To learn more about and enroll in this webinar, click here.

We Must Stop Hitting Children! Part 7 -- Are Physically Punished Children Better Behaved?

2009-11-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

Parents use physical punishment primarily to reduce undesirable child behavior in the present and to increase desirable child behavior in the future.

The research findings on the short-term effectiveness of physical punishment in achieving child compliance are mixed. A meta-analysis (which is a method of research synthesis that statistically combines existing data to discern the average strength of the findings) of five studies examining children's immediate compliance with physical punishment found a positive effect on average. However, the findings were highly inconsistent in that one of the studies found no effect and another found that children were less likely to comply when physically punished.

In one of these studies, the authors concluded that “there was no support for the necessity of the physical punishment” to change children's behavior.

The research to date also indicates that physical punishment does not promote long-term, internalized compliance. Most (85 percent) of the studies included in a meta-analysis found physical punishment to be associated with less moral internalization of norms for appropriate behavior and long-term compliance. Similarly, the more children receive physical punishment, the more defiant they are and the less likely they are to empathize with others.

Parents often use physical punishment when their children have behaved aggressively, such as hitting a younger sibling, or antisocially, such as stealing money from parents. Thus it is particularly important to determine whether physical punishment is effective in achieving one of parents' main goals in using it, namely to reduce children's aggressive and antisocial behaviors over time.

In a meta-analysis of 27 studies, every study found physical punishment was associated with more, not less, child aggression. A separate meta-analysis of 13 studies found that 12 of them documented a link between physical punishment and more child antisocial behavior. Similarly, in recent studies conducted around the world, including studies in Canada, China, India, Italy, Kenya, Norway, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and the United States, physical punishment has been associated with more physical aggression, verbal aggression, physical fighting and bullying, antisocial behavior, and behavior problems generally.

The conclusion to be drawn from these studies is that, contrary to parents' goals when using it, the more parents use physical punishment, the more disobedient and aggressive their children will be.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NEW Confident Parenting is a book that discusses all of the issues surrounding the use of physical punishment and offers an entire program for raising children without ever having to use physical punishment.

Parenting Classes and Court Referrals

2009-11-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

Millions of parents who are going through divorces, custody conflicts and child welfare hearings are mandated by the courts they are dealing with to enroll in parenting classes. Such "court accepted" parenting classes are not always easy to find and/or are often offered at days and times that parents cannot take advantage of without having to take time off the the job or time away from the home.

Online Parenting Classes that are "court accepted" now exist to fulfill this need.

The Online Parenting Class by Dr. Ari Novick that I recommended in a prior article (Effective Parenting and Online Parenting Classes) fits the bill. It not only teaches solid parenting ideas that everyone can learn from, but also addresses many of the specific challenges that court referred parents are dealing with, such as adjusting to becoming step or blended families, learning how to co-parent, and managing stress and conflict.

If you or your family, friends, or colleagues are raising children during divorces, custody hearings or have been reported for possibly abusing or neglecting your children, this is an appropriate class for you.

To learn more and to enroll, click here.

Effective Parenting and Online Parenting Classes

2009-11-18T05:08:00.000-08:00

Much is known from decades of solid research about what parenting attitudes and practices in combination are the most helpful in raising healthy and achieving children. A pattern or style of parenting that features abundant parental warmth, empathy and responsiveness, fair and firm disciplinary guidance, and making children priorities in our lives has been shown time and time again to be the best mixture or pattern.

The most direct way of learning this pattern, or refining the pattern you are already employing, it to enroll in a parenting class that teaches the skills and attitudes of this Productive Parenting Pattern. Classes that teach the pattern usually run for 7 to 15 sessions of education and require parents to arrange their lives to leave the home to attend the class at a local agency, school or religious institution, obtain babysitters, etc. As a result, not all parents can participate because of not having the time or energy to arrange their lives to get this valuable training, education and support.

However, with the advent of the Internet, and the creativity of parenting program developers, it is now possible to participate in high quality parenting classes from the convenience of your home. And to do so at the times and days that you select.

An Online Parenting class that does that, and which I recommend you take advantage of, is one that has been created by Dr. Ari Novick, Ph.D. Dr. Novick is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and an expert in family relationships and anger management. He is also an adjunct professor of psychology at Pepperdine's Graduate School of Education and Psychology. His Online Class teaches the basics of the Productive Parenting Pattern, including Empathy Training, Rewards and Discipline for Children, and Avoiding Parenting Mistakes.

To learn more and enroll right now, click here.

Why Should Communities Be Committed to Effective Parenting and Parenting Education?

2009-11-16T15:53:00.000-08:00

The reason are both compelling and numerous, and that is why I will be presenting a special webinar on Wednesday, December 8, 2009 at 2 PM Eastern Time. It is called Helping Your Community Raise Healthy Children: A Two-Hour Webinar on Effective Parenting Resources.

When parents are effective in raising children, children are the most likely to reach their full potential as human beings and make positive contributions to community life. Effectively parented children are also more likely to be fine parents themselves when they become parents and perpetuate a cycle of human happiness and productivity, as was reported in a very recent research study that I wrote about on Monday, October 19, 2009 (see Positive Parenting Has Lasting Impact for Generations below).

Effective parenting also promotes good physical and mental health, as well as serving as the surest defense against such costly and tragic problems as child abuse, school dropout, obesity, delinquency, gang involvement and crime.

And parenting education is the most direct means of increasing the numbers of parents who are effective.

These rationales, and numerous examples of the parenting programs that communities can and should be using in abuandance, are the the focus of the special webinar.

So if you want to know exactly what your community can do to help all parents to be as effective as possible, do join me at 2 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday, December 8th.

Click here for enrollment specifics and fee.

We Must Stop Hitting Children! Part 6 -- Hitting Is Used for a Variety of Reasons

2009-11-12T04:15:00.000-08:00

Research has found that parents are more likely to use physical punishment if:

They strongly favor it and believe in its effectiveness.

They were themselves physically punished as children.

They have a cultural background, namely their religion, their ethnicity, and/or their country of origin, that they perceive approves of the use of physical punishment.

They are socially disadvantaged, in that they have low income, low education, or live in a disadvantaged neighborhood.

They are experiencing stress (such as that precipitated by financial hardships or marital conflict), mental health symptoms, or diminished emotional well-being.

They report being frustrated or aggravated with their children on a regular basis.

They are under 30 years of age.

The child being punished is a preschooler (2-5 years old).

The child's misbehavior involves hurting someone else or putting themselves in danger.

Any surprises here?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NEW Confident Parenting is a book that discusses all of the issues surrounding the use of physical punishment and offers an entire program for raising children without ever having to use physical punishment.

We Must Stop Hitting Children! Part 5 -- Approval of Hitting is Declining

2009-11-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

Belief in the utility and even necessity of physical punishment as a method of child rearing has been strong through generations of Americans from at least the early 17th century to the present day. Now, four hundred years later at the beginning of the 21st century, American approval of physical punishment by parents is showing signs of decline.

In the 1960s, 94 percent of adults were in favor of physical punishment. According to the General Social Surveys (GSS), by 1986 84 percent of American adults agreed that children sometimes need a “good hard spanking.” In the latest GSS completed in 2004, the percentage had dropped to 71.3 percent of surveyed Americans as agreeing or strongly agreeing with that statement.

It is clear that although Americans remain more in favor of physical punishment than Europeans, Americans' approval of physical punishment of children by parents has declined gradually yet steadily over the last 40 years.

Do you approve or are you among those who do not?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NEW Confident Parenting is a book that discusses all of the issues surrounding the use of physical punishment and offers an entire program for raising children without ever having to use physical punishment.

We Must Stop Hitting Children! Part 4 -- Hitting Is Very Common

2009-10-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Several recent studies reveal that the majority of parents in the United States continue to physically punish their children.

Nearly two-thirds of parents of very young children (1- and 2-year-olds) reported using physical punishment.

By the time children reach 5th grade, 80 percent have been physically punished.

By high school, 85 percent of adolescents report that they have been physically punished, with 51 percent reporting that they have been hit with a belt or similar object.

How about you? Were you hit as a child? Do you hit your kids?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NEW Confident Parenting is a book that discusses all of the issues surrounding the use of physical punishment and offers an entire program for raising children without ever having to use physical punishment.

New Parenting Program Teaches Basics

2009-10-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

The NEW Confident Parenting Program from the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring, of which I am the primary author, provides parents with the basic information about about how children learn and how to use this knowledge in raising healthy, happy and achieving young people.

The program clarifies the two major ways children learn:

(1) They learn from observing the models they are exposed to, including parents, sibling and peers, and, especially, through what happens to these models when they act the way they do. The five ways that the actions of these models influence children are indicated.

(2) The program also clarifies that children learn from the consequences of their own behavior, from what happens to them after they act the way they do. A wide range of both positive and corrective consequences are shown, and these influence how likely they are to repeat the behaviors they now engage in.

These basics are supplemented by helping parents appreciate the important distinction between "learning" and "performing" new behaviors, a distinction that helps to explain why just telling children how to behave is of minimal effectiveness.

The program builds on these basic understandings to then teach parents a series of very effective and easy-to-learn parenting skills and strategies to use immediately with their children. These include how to promote positive relations with children through effective praising, praising that is specific to the actions that parents would like to see more of. It includes learning how to set limits and discipline children without having to hit or yell. Parents are oriented to role play the skills before using them with their children, and further taught how they can determine if the skills are getting the job done.

Other features of the new program have to do with helping parents cope with their children's use of cell phones, the Internet and social networking websites, as well as what parents can do to help their children resist peer pressures to use drugs.

Altogether the NEW Confident Parenting is an extraordinarily helpful and practical program that every parent should have an opportunity to learn from and use.

The Parents Handbook of the program can be obtained by clicking here.

A Leader's Kit for those who would like to teach and share the program with other parents is available by clicking here.

We Must Stop Hitting Children! Part 3 Countries Who Stopped

2009-10-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Increasingly, countries around the world are prohibiting physical punishment of children. As of January 2009, 24 countries have passed laws to ban physical punishment:

Sweden (1979),
Finland (1983),
Norway (1987),
Austria (1989),
Croatia(1994),
Cyprus (1994),
Denmark (1997),
Latvia (1998),
Bulgaria (2000),
Germany (2000),
Israel (2000),
Iceland (2003),
Romania (2004),
Ukraine (2004),
Hungary (2005),
Greece (2006),
Chile (2007),
the Netherlands, (2007),
New Zealand (2007),
Portugal (2007),
Uruguay (2007),
Spain (2007),
Venezuela (2007), and
Costa Rica (2008).

These laws are not aimed at prosecuting parents, but at setting a clear standard of caregiving. Their primary purpose is to protect children by sending an unambiguous message that hitting them is wrong and not allowed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NEW Confident Parenting is a book that discusses all of the issues surrounding the use of physical punishment and offers an entire program for raising children without ever having to use physical punishment.

Parenting and the President -- Part 9 -- Potential Funding Source for Parenting Projects

2009-10-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time, officials from the Obama Administration will be conducting a telephone briefing for nonprofit organizations about the President's new Social Innovation Fund. The monies that will be available through this Fund could be used to support parenting education projects.

To learn more about this possibility and to be part of the telephone briefing, call 1 (800) 920-5564 a few minutes before 3PM on the 22nd.

Positive Parenting Has Lasting Impact for Generations

2009-10-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

A new study that looks at data on three generations of families shows that “positive parenting” – including factors such as warmth, monitoring children’s activities, involvement, and consistency of discipline – not only has positive impacts on adolescents, but on the way they parent their own children.

In the first study of its kind, David Kerr, assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University, and project director Deborah Capaldi, and co-authors Katherine Pears and Lee Owen of the Eugene-based Oregon Social Learning Center, examined surveys from 206 boys who were considered “at-risk” for juvenile delinquency. The boys, then in elementary school, and their parents were interviewed and observed, which gave Kerr and colleagues information about how the boys were parented.

Starting in 1984, the boys met with researchers every year from age 9 to 33. As the boys grew up and started their own families, their partners and children began participating in the study. In this way, the researchers learned how the men’s childhood experiences influenced their own parenting.

”This study is especially exciting because we had already identified processes by which risk behaviors and poor parenting may be carried across generations,” Capaldi said. “Professor Kerr has now demonstrated that there is an additional pathway of intergenerational influence via positive parenting and development.”

The study will be published in the September issue of the journal Developmental Psychology in a special issue devoted to findings of some of the few long-term studies of intergenerational family processes. The journal is published by the American Psychological Association.

Kerr said there is often an assumption that people learn parenting methods from their own parents. In fact, he said most research shows that a direct link between what a person experiences as a child and what she or he does as a parent is fairly weak.

“Instead, what we find is that ‘negative’ parenting such as hostility and lack of follow-through leads to ‘negative’ parenting in the next generation not through observation, but by allowing problem behavior to take hold in adolescence,” Kerr said. “For instance, if you try to control your child with anger and threats, he learns to deal in this way with peers, teachers, and eventually his own children. If you do not track where your child is, others will take over your job of teaching him about the world.

“But those lessons may involve delinquency and a lifestyle that is not compatible with becoming a positive parent,” Kerr pointed out.

The researchers’ prior work showed that children who experienced high levels of negative parenting were more likely to be antisocial and delinquent as adolescents. Boys who had these negative characteristics in adolescence more often grew up to be inconsistent and ineffective parents, and to have children with more negative and challenging behaviors.

“We knew that these negative pathways can be very strong,” Kerr said. “What surprised us is how strong positive parenting pathways are as well. Positive parenting is not just the absence of negative influences, but involves taking an active role in a child’s life.”

The researchers found that children who had parents who monitored their behavior, were consistent with rules and were warm and affectionate were more likely to have close relationships with their peers, be more engaged in school, and have better self-esteem.

“So part of what good parenting does is not only protect you against negative behaviors but instill positive connections with others during adolescence that then impact how you relate with your partner and your own child as an adult,” Kerr said

“This research shows that when we think about the value of prevention, we should consider an even wider lens than is typical,” he added. “We see now that changes in parenting can have an effect not just on children but even on grandchildren.”

The study was funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

We Must Stop Hitting Children! Part 2 Definition of Physical Punishment

2009-10-16T08:38:00.000-07:00

Physical punishment is defined as the use of physical force with the intention of causing the child to experience bodily pain or discomfort so as to correct or punish the child's behavior. This definition includes light physical force, such as a slap on a child's hand, as well as heavier physical force, including hitting children with hard objects such as a wooden spoon or paddle.

However, physical punishment does not refer only to hitting children as a form of discipline; it also includes other practices that involve purposefully causing children to experience physical discomfort in order to punish them. Physical punishment thus also includes washing a child’s mouth with soap, making a child kneel on sharp or painful objects (e.g., rice, a floor grate), placing hot sauce on a child's tongue, forcing a child to stand or sit in painful positions for long periods of time, and compelling a child to engage in excessive exercise or physical exertion.

In the United States, physical punishment is known by a variety of euphemisms, including “spank,” “smack,” “slap,” “pop,” beat,” “paddle,” “punch,” “whup/whip,” and “hit.” The term “physical punishment” is often used interchangeably with the terms “corporal punishment” or “physical discipline.”

Physical punishment is distinct from protective physical restraint. Whereas physical punishment involves causing the child to experience pain as a form of punishment, protective physical restraint involves the use of physical force to protect the child or others from physical pain or harm. Examples of protective physical restraint include holding a child to prevent them from running into a busy street, pulling a child's hand away from a hot stove, or holding a child who has hurt another child to prevent him/her from doing so again.

Have you ever used physical punishment in raising your children or in your work with children? I have felt like doing so on some occasions but have restrained myself. How about you?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NEW Confident Parenting is a book that discusses all of the issues surrounding the use of physical punishment and offers an entire program for raising children without ever having to use physical punishment.

We Must Stop Hitting Children! Part 1

2009-10-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

With this article, I am starting a new series on why it is so important to stop hitting children, whether at home, school or any other place.

This series is based on a fundamental and simple value: people are not for hitting and children are people too.

This basic value about what is not acceptable in human relations is at the core of these articles. A corollary to this value is that there are many nonviolent and effective ways of to gain the cooperation and respect of children, and that these can and should be taught to everyone who raises and works with children.

This series is also based on the deliberations of international organizations who advocate for the abolition of all forms of physical punishment with children, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. These articles will also reflect and share the mountain of research evidence that points to both the social injustice and ultimate destructiveness of using physical punishment to discipline children.

In my latest book for parents, The NEW Confident Parenting, which I wrote with my colleague, Dr. Camilla S. Clarke, an entire chapter is devoted to the findings of hundreds of research studies that document how destructive and ineffective physical punishment ultimately is. This chapter appears at the end of the book after having demonstrated numerous effective and nonviolent ways of obtaining and maintaining the respect and cooperation of children.

The chapter on physical punishment makes the point that many people continue to believe in and make use of physical punishment because they believe it really works. That is because, in some instances and in the short run, it does work in stopping children from engaging in behaviors that make us adults uncomfortable. But the vast majority of studies that follow children for years find that the use of physical punishment, and especially physical punishment that happens frequently and harshly, results in numerous negative consequences, including life long mental, physical, sexual and interpersonal problems.

While very few people believe that hitting children so hard that bruises and broken bones happen -- here the hurt is too obvious to overlook -- most people are simply unaware of the insidious, hidden damage that physical punishment leaves in its wake.

Subsequent articles in this series will present the findings of these studies in greater detail, including studies that have been done after I and Dr. Clarke wrote The NEW Confident Parenting. The second article will define physical punishment.

Your comments are appreciated and will be responded to.

The Emotional Needs of Children

2009-10-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Dr. Gerald Newmark’s classic book on How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children, which has been available in many languages including English and Spanish, and which now has an audio CD version in English and Spanish, clarifies what are the basic emotional needs of all children. These are the fundamental needs that parents, teachers and schools need to address in raising and educating children.

The Five Critical Emotional Needs of Children: Definitions and Examples

Emotional health provides a foundation for success in school, work, marriage and life in general. Accoring to Dr. Newmark, failure to recognize and satisfy these five needs jeopardizes our children's future and that of succeeding generations.

Need to Feel Respected

Children need to feel respected. For that to happen, they need to be treated in a courteous, thoughtful, attentive and civil manner. One of the best ways for children to learn about respect is to feel what it's like to be treated respectfully and to observe their parents and other adults treating one another the same way.

If we want children to grow up feeling respected and treating others with respect, we need to avoid sarcasm, belittling, yelling; we need to keep anger and impatience to a minimum; we need to avoid lying; we need to listen more and talk less; we need to command less and suggest and request more; we need to learn how to say "please," "thank you," "excuse me", "I'm sorry"- yes, even to children. We need to become conscious of our mistakes, willing to admit them and ready to make corrections. This will help us cultivate these values in our children.

Need to Feel Important

Feeling important refers to a child's need to feel: "I have value. I am useful. I have power. I am somebody." This need is evident at a very early age. Pressing a button in an elevator - me, me. Children want to do things for themselves, and so often we get in their way.

Parents need to avoid being all powerful, solving all family problems, making all decisions, doing all the work, controlling everything that happens. Involve your children - ask their opinions; give them things to do; share decision-making and power; give them status and recognition, and have patience with mistakes when it takes a little longer or is not done as well as you could have done yourself.

If children do not feel important, if they don't develop a sense of value in constructive ways, they may seek negative ways to get attention, to feel "I am somebody."

Need to Feel Accepted

Children have a need to feel accepted as individuals in their own right, with their own uniqueness, and not treated as mere reflections of their parents, as objects to be shaped in the image of what parents believe their ideal child should look like. This means that children have a right to their own feelings, opinions, ideas, concerns, wants and needs. Trivializing, ignoring or ridiculing a child's feelings or opinions is a rejection which weakens the relationship. Paying attention to and discussing them, even when you do not like or disagree with some, strengthens the relationship.

Need to Feel Included

Children need to feel included. They need to be brought in, to be made to feel a part of things, to feel connected to other people, to have a sense of community. It happens when people engage with others in activities and projects, when they experience things together in a meaningful way. It is important for the family to create these opportunities. People who do things together feel closer to one another. Family activities offer a way to become closer and also to have fun, learn, and contribute to others.

Need to Feel Secure

Children need to feel secure. Security means creating a positive environment where people care for each other and show it, where people express themselves and others listen, where differences are accepted and conflicts are resolved constructively, where enough structure exists for children to feel safe and protected, and where children have opportunities to actively participate in their own and family evolution through family planning and decision making, problem solving and feedback activities.

Dr. Newmark’s book, which has already sold more than 300,000 copies, details the many ways that parents and teachers can act so as to meet and not thwart children’s needs. Now that it is available as an audio CD it can be listened to in the car or while relaxing. It is a truly important book that every parent, teacher or anyone who works with and loves children should spent time reading, listening to and learning from.

To order, click here.

Parenting and the President - Part 8 - The Bush Years and a White House Briefing

2009-10-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

The long sought after White House Briefing took place on December 12, 2006 at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, D.C. It was attended by an invited audience of executives from that major White House Office and from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Included was the executive who facilitated the briefing, the Associate Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families in HHS, Harry Wilson (shown on the far left in the accompanying picture).

I delivered the presentation on the proposed Initiative. Also participating from the National Effective Parenting Initiative (NEPI) was Dr. Karol Kumpfer of the University of Utah and the former director of the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and one of my daughters who was then doing an internship in Washington at NOW (I am on the left of Harry Wilson, then my daughter and then Dr. Kumpfer).

However, the representative from the President's Domestic Policy Council, who was the person who was to convey the substance of the briefing to the president, called to cancel at the last moment. Shortly after the meeting, Mr. Wilson was informed that that person had taken another job in a federal agency and was no longer involved with the Domestic Policy Council.

Mr. Wilson then decided that it would be better to form an Interagency Task Force on Effective Parenting and conduct an audit of the federal agencies who were running various programs and initiatives for parents. It was his wisdom that a report from such a internal and cross agency Task Force based on a full government audit would be the best way to involve the president. So he put in motion the creation of such a Task Force and he began exploring the audit.

Initial meetings of several agency directors from within his own department were conducted and there was much initial interest. An initial audit was also attempted.

Then there were problems continuing to convene the Task Force and deciding on who would be the Task Force leader. The initial audit actions led to finding out that a comprehensive audit of the numerous federal agencies in numerous cabinet level government departments was beyond the resources of this Task Force. And key administrative officials announced they were leaving the administration soon.

The practical result of all these internal developments was that the Initiative was, to our knowledge, never presented to the president. The effort stopped when the campaigning for the next presidential election started.

Once President Obama was elected, NEPI regrouped and developed the four-part National Effective Parenting Plan that is currently being advocated with the Obama administration (see Parenting and the President - Part 1 - August 18, 2009). The fourth part of the Plan is the Effective Parenting Initiative that was proposed at the White House Briefing.

Details of the various components of that Initiative will be the subject of subsequent articles in this series.

________________________________________________

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:

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.

Children are People

2009-10-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

Movies about families that stay in theatres for more than a couple of weeks usually do so because they shed different and more compelling light on child-parent relationships. Such is certainly true of the film "My One and Only" with Academy Award-winning actress Renee Zellweger.

In a period piece set in the 1950s, Ms. Zellweger plays an engaging but self-centered mother who is forced to put her and her two teenage sons' lives back together after a philandering husband goes too far. She takes her sons out of the prep schools she realizes they have been going to, loads them into a car they can barely drive, and sets off on a cross country journey to find a new life and a new husband.

During the trip she is forced to face the reality of her relationship with a son she loves dearly but hardly even knows. In one of the finest scenes in the film, the son confronts her egocentricity by asking her such questions as does she know his favorite color. Unable to respond with anything other than random guesses, she begins to realize she has done little to get outside of her own needs and wants to find out what sort of a person her son is.

An almost tragic and certainly poignant realization is this -- a realization that resonates with all too many other parents and teenagers.

Bravo to the film makers for bringing such painful truths to the screen. Caution to my fellow parents who do not allow the people who are our children to be the people they are.

Videos Show Impact of a Parent Training Program

2009-09-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

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.

________________________________________________

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

2009-09-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

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.

________________________________________________

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

2009-09-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

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.

________________________________________________

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

2009-09-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

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.

________________________________________________

Parents As Financial Mentors

2009-08-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Kathy M. Kristof in an excellent article in the Los Angeles Times recently wrote about the value of parents becoming what I have termed financial mentors for their children. The article appeared on the front page of the Business section earlier this August. It began with Kathy using a real life illustration with a parent friend of hers:

"David Strauss knew he needed to do a better job teaching his children about money, but the layoff notice he received in January gave it a sense of urgency. He indicated that it made the discussion a lot more real."

"Knowing that the downsizing was coming, Strauss had already started talking to 17-year-old Daniel and 12-year-old Alexandra about wants versus needs and discussing how the family expected to cut back. Strauss further indicated that the kids were much more interested in talking about money now."

The rest of this excellent article went on to show how parents of kids in their teens and preteens could go about being helpful financial mentors to these children.

Begin Early

Kathy was not, however, aware that there is much that parents can do to financially mentor even much younger kids, an issue that I address in my book, The Positive Parent: Raising Healthy, Happy and Successful Children, Birth through Adolescence. There I provide guidelines for Teaching Children to Be Financially Successful and Giving. I suggest and illustrate the following overall approach:

•Begin early in teaching your children the value of money.

•Use four piggy banks in which your children can keep their money – one bank for monies they will spend for themselves, one for saving, one for investing, and one for the money they will give to charities, causes, disaster relief, civic, political and lobbying efforts.

•Teach them about saving and interest.

•Teach them about investments.

•Teach them about charities and causes they can support and about other ways they can use their money for humanitarian purposes.

•Teach them that contributions can be made to political and advocacy organizations as a way of promoting a person’s values and beliefs through supporting and electing like minded politicians, citizen action and lobbying.

•Have your children earn their allowance.

•Teach them how to generate other sources of money.

•Discuss the purchases your children want to make with their money and help them make wise decisions.

•Give and read books on financial literacy to children.

•Give and play games with your children about financial literacy.

•Orient them to financial literacy websites for children.

•Draw their attention to your own budgeting, checking, and credit card, saving, investing and giving activities.

•Involve your children as your assistants in managing household finances, saving, investing and giving.

I also orient parents to a variety of items they can obtain to help in becoming top financial mentors. Here's a list where you can click on the name and learn about and/or purchase the helpful items:

Money Mama Piggy Bank

Money Mama and the Three Little Pigs Children's Book

The Money Mammals: Saving Money Is Fun

The Money Mammals: Value of Money Package

It's Only a Dollar...Until You Add It Up! Allowance Chart

To read the entire article by Kathy Kristof, which has been archived at the LA Times under the title of Giving Kids the Talk About Money, click here.

Parenting and the President - Part 3 - Involving the Obama White House

2009-08-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

After developing a National Effective Parenting Plan that pivots around the involvement and support of the President of the United States (see Part 1 in this series), the next step was to figure out how to contact President Obama. Such contacts or access are not easy to come by, and lobbyists and well-heeled special interest groups spend millions of dollars seeking access.

I, CICC and NEPI had previously gained access to the presidents of the last two administrations through finding and following personal contacts and through taking advantage of invitations to the White House for special events. These will be mentioned and described in subsequent articles in this series. Suffice to say that in trying to reach President Obama we are trying similar routes.

As was described in some detail in Part 2 of this series, an aspect of the Plan is to encourage the president to include honoring parents who enroll in and complete parenting programs in the annual Parents Day Proclamation. Parents Day fell this year on July 26th. We began in May of this year to find out who in the Obama White House had some responsibility for proclamations.

We enlisted the offices of our congressional representatives to get us the appropriate contact, as a cold contact to the newly forming White House was likely to result in transfer after transfer. Our idea was to use the contact person that was given to our congressional representative’s office as someone who could subsequently put us in touch with the appropriate policy people who relate directly to the president, such as persons who work on the Domestic Policy Council.

The preferred mode of relating to the contact person who handled proclamations was via email. That person not only brought our ideas about the proclamation to the attention of the group who decides about such public communications, but also indicated that he would locate for us an appropriate staff person to whom we could share the entire Plan.

Then to our great surprise and disappointment, our contact person reported back that it was decided NOT to issue a Parents Day Proclamation. We tried to convince them that this was a poor decision, as it made President Obama the first president in history to not issue such a proclamation. This certainly seemed a contradiction for a president who has spoken so eloquently about the importance of parents in the lives and futures of children.

We, of course, have no idea whether the president himself or the first lady were involved in such a decision.

In terms of the other aspect of the Plan that has to do with acknowledging parents for participating in parenting programs, the issuing of Certificates of Appreciation, we have not had an opportunity to discuss this yet.

Medal of Freedom Contact

We continue to pursue whatever avenue of access that comes our way and are confident that it is just a matter of time before we get the ear of the President, the First Lady or someone in the policy making chain of command. Indeed, just last week we had a representative bring to a White House event packets of information about the Plan and related documents, brochures and DVDs. The event was the ceremony to award Medals of Freedom to national and international dignitaries. Our representative was a family member of one of the Medal recipients.

We have been informed that the packets were passed on to people who are senior advisers and who have indicated that they will share them directly with the President and the First Lady.

Subsequent articles in this series will report on this promising contact situation.

The next few articles of this series will be devoted to explaining the other aspects of the Plan, such as the idea for a White House Conference on Effective Parenting and the multi-faceted Effective Parenting Initiative that is being proposed.

________________________________________________

Parenting Programs, Culture and Being Well-Educated

2009-08-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

Being well-educated (bien educados) has several meanings in the homes of children of Hispanic descent. In a meaning that is particularly important in such homes, it often refers to being educated in a social and interpersonal sense, such as knowing ones place and role in the family, and being respectful to others and particularly respectful to elders. It can also mean being well-educated in an intellectual and academic sense, such as maintaining and achieving high grades and academic standards.

These meanings are brought to the forefront in a child management program designed especially for parents of Hispanic children, the Los Ninos Bien Educados Program of the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC). The first session of this 12 session program begins by an exploration of the meaning that the parents give to the Spanish term for well-educated, "bien educados." For some parents this is a term that they often use in relating and referring to their children; with other parents it is a term that was and/or is used by grandparents and other elders. Inevitably, the definition that parents of Hispanic descent offer always includes the social/interpersonal meaning, with its emphasis on proper social behavior.

Then the instructor engages the parents in defining exactly what they mean by referring to a child as "bien educados." The instructor asks them to indicate the specific behaviors that a child who is "bien educados" would display, such as cooperative and respectful ways of relating to parents, sisters, brothers and classmates.

Then the parents are informed that the program is designed to provide them with additional skills and strategies for bringing out more of the child behaviors they define as reflective of a child who is "bien educados." These skills include the art of effective praising, and providing attention and other rewards after and not before the child does chores and homework (the "first you work, then you play" skill).

The instructor further indicates that the program also helps parents deal productively with those behaviors they define as reflective of a child who is "mal educados," where limit-setting and verbal confrontation skills are taught. In a particularly illuminating session, the program promotes a discussion of the ways that traditional male and female roles are changing and the conflicts and misunderstandings that result.

Thus, what is taught throughout the entire program is framed around a value and meaning that has particular cultural importance to the parents, and which makes the program and its teachings familiar and relevant.

CICC created this national model program in the early 1980s and has trained over 1500 instructors from schools and agencies nationwide to run it with the parents they serve. Most of the skills that are taught in the program are from a basic child management program for all parents, called the Confident Parenting Program. Thus, the Los Ninos Bien Educados Program would be considered as child management program that is culturally-adpated.

CICC has found that the program's emphasis on the social/interpersonal meaning of being well-educated with its focus on knowing ones place and role in the family, also resonates extremely well with families of Asian descent. Indeed, several agencies and schools that serve Asian American families have selected Los Ninos Bien Educados as their parenting program of choice, because of these cultural similarities.

How You and Your Community Can Benefit from this Program

To learn how you can bring the Los Ninos Bien Educados Program to your community through having instructors trained to deliver it, click here.

To learn how CICC can send an instructor to your area to lead a one-day seminar in this program for groups of parents, click here.

To obtain the Parents Handbooks and other materials from the program in English, click here.

To obtain the Parents Handbooks and other materials from the program in Spanish, click here.

Parenting and the President - Part 2 - Honoring Parents

2009-08-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

The four part National Effective Parenting Plan (which was outlined in Part 1 of this series, which appeared on August 18, 2009) is intended to provide the President of the United States and other elected leaders with a series of actions they can take to make effective parenting and parenting education community and national priorities.

The first two parts have to do with acknowledging and honoring those parents who are already involved in seeking out and receiving parenting education to be the most effective and knowledgeable mothers and fathers they can be. When someone is honored for something, it reflects that that "thing" is very important to the community.

There now exists in the United States the best parenting skill-building programs in the world. These are programs that teach excellent nurturing and disciplining skills, and which help parents to raise responsible and caring children. These types of programs, which are often taught as classes through schools, churches, synagogues, hospitals, and community agencies, first became available in the late 1960s with the grandaddy of parenting skill-building programs, P.E.T., Parent Effectiveness Training, which was authored by the late, great psychologist, Dr. Thomas Gordon.

P.E.T. was designed as a program for all parents, regardless of cultural background, age of children and the life circumstances of parents (social class). Since then an amazing array of similar skill building programs for parents of specific cultural backgrounds and different aged children have been developed. They too have proven to be very helpful to those fortunate enough to have them available in their communities. (See the following books for descriptions of many of these excellent programs, Parent Training Today: A Social Necessity, and The Positive Parent: Raising Healthy, Happy and Successful Children, Birth-Adolescence).

Many parents in the communities where these programs have become available have and continue to arrange their lives to enroll in these programs in order to become the best moms and dads they can be. They deserve to be recognized and applauded.

The first two parts of the Plan are directed at this type of acknowledgement. Part One is to have the President and other elected officials reward such parental commitments to effectiveness by providing special mention in their annual Parents Day Proclamations. Parents Day is a national holiday (enacted into law during the Clinton Administration) and it falls on the fourth Sunday of every July.

The second part is to begin issuing Certificates of Appreciation to parents who enroll in and complete such programs, just as some presidents and other government leaders have issued certificates of appreciation to students who perform well in school.

The next post in this series will indicate what has and is happening in regard to these two parts of the Plan, including our first efforts to directly engage President Obama in these matters. Then we will move on to parts three and four, White House Conferences on Effective Parenting and a government-supported Effective Parenting Initiative.

________________________________________________

Parenting and the President - Part 1 - A National Effective Parenting Plan

2009-08-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

The United States has some serious parenting-related problems that are costing billions of dollars to treat and manage.

These include...

Child abuse and neglect,
School dropout,
Delinquency,
Childhood obesity,
Drug abuse, and
Gang warfare.

These problems are making life in many of our communities unsafe and intolerable. These problems are wasting an amazing amount of human potential.

However, if we make it a child’s birthright to be raised by effective parents and we make parenting education available to every parent in every community, we can not only make our country an even better place to raise children, we can save billions of dollars in having to manage the consequences of ineffective parenting.

Those are some of the major goals of the National Effective Parenting Initiative (NEPI) and its hosting organization, the 35 year old, not-for-profit Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC). It has been my great pleasure and pride to have founded both of these important organizations, and to be working to carry out their missions.

In terms of making it a child’s birthright to have effective parents who receive the best parenting education, it is necessary to (1) create the conditions and opportunities in every community where parents can receive such education and support, and (2) motivate all parents to take advantage.

To that end, we have generated a four part approach that involves our elected leaders in helping to create the needed conditions and services. This includes asking the President of the United States to play a primary leadership role.

Part One - Acknowledge parents who do receive parenting education in annual Parents Day Proclamations.

Part Two - Issue Certificates of Appreciation to parents who enroll in and complete parenting classes.

Part Three - Convene White House Conferences on Effective Parenting to showcase the best parenting education programs and research.

Part Four - Establish a federal government-sponsored Effective Parenting Initiative with appropriate departments, institutes and training centers to insure that all communities have available the best possible parenting education information and programs.

Other institutions, such as the business community, the entertainment industry, philanthropy and the faith community, also can and should play important roles. But government, because it has the ultimate responsibly for insuring that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness becomes a reality for all citizens, is where we have chosen to focus our efforts at this time.

Together we have termed the four part approach a National Effective Parenting Plan. In subsequent posts in this series, I will detail the parts of the plan, and indicate what progress is being made. This will include updating you on our efforts to reach and involve President Obama.

________________________________________________

Effective Parenting = Dropout Prevention

2009-08-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

The dropout rate in many inner city schools that serve African American children is a shockingly high 50 percent. What a horrible waste of life and human potential!

The best place to begin to turn this unacceptable situation around is where children learn the value and importance of education, the home.

When the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) created the Effective Black Parenting Program 25 years ago, we incorporated this motivational necessity by framing the parenting skills and strategies that are taught in the program within what we have called The Pyramid of Success for Black Children (shown above).

Indeed, the first session of this 15 session educational program begins by engaging the parents in a “call and response” dialogue that has the parents asking themselves what are their life goals for their children. The program then discusses the qualities and characteristics that the children need to develop in order to achieve the goals and indicates what parents need to do to in order to bring out those qualities in their children. Two of the goals that invariably emerge from this teaching approach are “good jobs” and “good educations.”

Then the program goes on to teach parents such skills and strategies as Effective Praising and the Thinking Parents Approach. The instructor lets the parents know that by learning and applying these with their children they are insuring that they are on “The Path to the Pyramid of Success for Black Children.” And parents get it, and begin using the skills and strategies with their children. And then they see fine improvements in their children’s behavior and in their relationships with them.

Such insurance should be the birthright of every child, regardless of culture or life circumstance. If we made sure that all parents received this sort of inspiration and training, it would not be unrealistic to expect the dropout rate to decrease and that more young people would lead productive and healthy lives.

To learn how to bring the Effective Black Parenting Program to your community through having local instructors trained to deliver it, click here.

Parenting and Children's Social Networking

2009-08-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

Common Sense Media has released the results of a national poll of teens and parents on social networking behaviors. The poll, conducted by The Benenson Strategy Group, illustrated that kids increasingly connect with friends, classmates, and people with similar interests through social networks - and that parents are out of the loop.

According to the article, "Teens are using social networks to share information, make connections, and develop their identities in new, exciting ways. But when teens communicate either anonymously or through a disguised identity, the doors are left wide open for them to not be held accountable. That kind of communication also leads to a disconnect between actions and their consequences, which is how irresponsible behaviors like cyberbullying become a reality."

It goes on to say, "Parents are the first line of defense when it comes to helping kids use the same senses of responsibility and self-respect in their online worlds as they do offline. Common Sense Media urges families to keep up regular conversations about life in a digital world and what it means to be safe, smart digital citizens."

To gain broader insights on how parents can relate to their kids involvement with the world of technology see my book, The Positive Parent: Raising Healthy, Happy and Successful Children -- Birth through Adolescence, for relevant guidance (http://www.positiveparent.info/).

Also see a wonderful book by my good friend, Dr. Larry Rosen, an expert on Internet Psychology, wrote recently. It is titled http://ciccparenting.org/catalogitem.asp?ci=709&cid=&c=1Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation. It is not only full of good advice for parents but also contains the results of numerous studies Dr. Rosen has conducted himself.

To read the entire Common Sense Media article, click here.

Family Time-Out from Technology

2009-08-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

Author and Parent Advocate Sue Scheff writes on the Examiner.com website, "As a parent we need to be sure our teens are prepared not only with school supplies, but more importantly, with the self-esteem and motivation to have a fantastic academic and social year."

She goes on to say, "Parents and their teens need to take the time to open their lines of communication and turn off technology. Creating a “family-time-out” as part of your evening schedule can help you become more in tune to your child’s life; both at school and socially."

According to Sue, "Take at least 15 minutes each evening and turn off all electronics. Including TV, cell phones, Computers, telephones (don’t answer), radio, Ipods, etc. Many families find that doing this in the later evening is easier; around 8:30-9:00pm after dinner when parents are home from their jobs and have had time to unwind."

This is great advice. Give it a try.

I have also written about the need for parents to become managers of their children and teen's exposure to and use of technology and media. The best place to find my views on this particularly contemporary parenting challenge is in my latest book, The Positive Parent: Raising Healthy, Happy and Successful Children, Birth-Adolosecence (www.positiveparent.info).

The Monetary Costs of Parenting

2009-08-05T10:01:00.000-07:00

The costs of raising kids these days is higher than ever. A federal government report (Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion) indicates that a middle-income family with a child born last year will spend about $221,000 raising that child through age 17. The largest single expense is housing, followed by food and child care/education. The $221,000 in expenses rises to about $292,000 when adjusted for inflation.

For parents below the middle class and who are employed, i.e., working parents with incomes of less than $35,463 (or less than $40,463 if filing a joint income tax return), there is at least an Earned Income Tax Credit that can be used to offset these expenses. They can receive up to $160 per month if they know how to apply. Unfortuntely the vast majority of working parents do not take advantage.

The nonprofit, parenting organization I founded in 1974, the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring, (www.ciccparenting.org) is working on a project to facilitate such parents knowing how to apply and therefore obtain these badly needed monies.

I will keep you informed in future posts.

Parental Poignancy, Home Videos and Fiddler on the Roof

2009-08-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

The musical "Fiddler on the Roof" always evokes in me strong parental emotions. Seeing a stage version last saturday night with my wife and one of our daughters, 23 year old Brittany, was no exception, especially after having viewed home videos of Brittany and sister, Lisa, as little girls dancing and prancing on the beach in Lake Tahoe during an annual family vacation. Their beauty and joyfulness were as majestic as the shimmering lake itself!

Then to see and hear the great actor, Topol, play the beleagured daddy, Tevye, was almost more than this proud papa could take. I cried throughout the excellent performance and especially during the singing of "Sunrise, Sunset."

Cultures Helping Cultures to be Better Parents

2009-08-03T07:18:00.000-07:00

Parenting training and education that is specific to a particular cultural group is both highly valued and somewhat controversial. It is valued because parenting programs designed for specific groups include education and skill-training that relates to and improves those facets of parenting that are particular to a specific group, whether or not these aspects are consciously or unconsciously recognized. They are also highly valued because they respect and honor the traditions and life circumstances of the families from a specific cultural group. Such targeted programing is somewhat controversial because some people, including professional parent educators, believe that parenting poses the same challenges and demands for everyone, and therefore any good parenting program should be sufficient.

The Feather River Tribal Health organization in Oroville, California is a firm believer in making parenting services culturally-specific, and not just for their own people. Their mission is "to elevate the health status of the American Indian people in our service area and all people in our communities to the highest level possible through a comprehensive system of preventive and therapeutic services." Last year they sponsored a workshop in their area to train educators and instructors from their and other agencies to deliver the Effective Black Parenting program for parents of African American children. They are now in the process of preparing to offer instructor training workshops in the Los Ninos Bien Educados program for parents of Latino-American children, and in the Asian American Parenting Program for those agencies and schools that work with the parents of Hmong and other Pacific Asian cultures. The Feather River Tribal organization clearly appreciates and acts to ensure that the rainbow of groups in their area receives culturally-specific parenting services and programs.

What do you think about creating and using culturally-specific parenting services?

National Effective Parenting Plan

2009-07-31T06:25:00.000-07:00

On behalf of the National Effective Parenting Initiative (NEPI), an advocacy organization that was established in 2006 (www.effectiveparentingusa.org), I was pleased to announce a plan to make the United States of America the premiere nation for educating parents to be as effective and successful as possible in raising children. The announcement can be seen at http://ciccparenting.org/NewsLetters/NEPIPLAN.htm. This is the Plan that I was interviewed about on CBS Radio News.

It involves a series of actions directed at encouraging the leadership in this country, our president and other elected officials, to become champtions of effective parenting and parenting education. The encouragement is intended to move them to engage in actions within their spheres of influence and control that will stimulate and honor parents for seeking out and obtaining the best possible parenting education. The Plan is based on the reality that this nation possesses the finest parenting education programs in the world but that the vast majority of parents have not used and/or heard about these programs. These programs have a proven track record in educating parents to be more sensitive and successful in promoting their children's growth and development, and making family life more peaceful and pleasant.

Our elected officials and our government can and should play a significant role in promoting effective parenting and creating the conditions in all communities where parents can obtain and receive the best possible parenting education. This is a democracy and we elect qualified neighbors to represent the interests of citizens and communities. These elected representatives certainly should be in the forefront of motivating parents to become the best mothers and fathers they can be, as well as ensuring that the educational resources to do the best job possible are available to every parent in every community. The Plan puts the focus on these leaders and suggests and provides vehicles for how they can be most helpful.

All other groups and individuals who are concerned about children -- our schools and their boards, our religious institutions and their leaders, our businesses and their executives -- should be equally involved and supportive. The future of our nation is in the hands of America's parents. We all have a stake in parents being able to raise the next generation in as fine a fashion as possible.

Jon and Kate: Life After Divorce

2009-07-29T05:51:00.001-07:00

I was interviewed by Valerie Nome of OK! Magazine for a story on the impact of divorce on the many children of Jon and Kate Gosselin. The article appears in this week's issue of the magazine. My contribution was to draw attention to the need to be very sensitive in how Jon's relationship to the woman he is now spending time with is conveyed and discussed with the children. Their ability to make sense out of what role this "other woman" may be playing in their lives, and what she means about potentially replacing their mother, is, of course, influenced by where each of the children is in their own stage of development and in their ability to understand in general. Given how visable this family is, this will be an especially challenging task. From what else is conveyed in this rather sensitive piece of reporting, it sounds as if Jon and Kate are really doing the best for these children during this trying transition period by putting the children's feelings and needs first.

School District Mobilizes Support for Parenting Education

2009-07-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

This week I accompanied Superintendent Robert Watanabe of the Bassett Unified School District to lunch with Donald Sachs, the Executive Director of the Industry Manufactors Council in their area. The purpose was to help the district gain business support for the effective parenting project we are conducting with them as part of the Uniting Los Angeles for Effective Parenting Project. Terrific meeting and Mr. Sachs offerred insider advice how to proceed with the business community and was very supportive of the helping parents be more effective. Great example of mobilizing an important sector of the community to be involved in and supportive of educating parents to promote their children's development.

Here's some exciting news!

2009-07-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

CBS Radio News called this afternoon to set up an interview with me about the National Effective Parenting Plan. The interview will be aired on Parents’ Day this Sunday. I will post a link next week so you can listen.

Also click here to view a piece by Rose Ann Haven of WKRG, Channel 5 News on the work the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (http://www.ciccparenting.org/) has been doing in Mobile, Alabama with a number of local churches.