Effective Parenting and Online Parenting Classes

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?

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

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?

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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

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?

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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

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?

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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

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

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.

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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.