Parenting and the President - Part 2 - Honoring Parents

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.

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How You Can Be Involved...

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

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

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

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

• Parent Membership
  
• Professional Membership
  
• Organization Affiliate

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

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

Click here to donate.