Parenting Now!

Overview

The program was designed to address the stress, isolation, and lack of adequate parenting information and social support that many parents experience. Make Parenting A Pleasure begins by recognizing the importance of parents as individuals. The curriculum focuses first on the need for self-care and personal empowerment, and moves from an adult/adult focus to a parent/child/family emphasis. Its content is adaptable and flexible to a wide range of parent education programs. It contains sufficient material for a several-month program to a year-long program.

The style is positive, encouraging, and, at times, humorous. The program builds on family strengths and helps parents develop a strong support network. The curriculum is interactive and uses discussion and experiential activities in both large and small groups. The material and format used in Make Parenting A Pleasure has broad appeal to families from a wide spectrum of socioeconomic, educational, cultural and geographic conditions. The content addresses issues that all families face at one time or another, and can be adapted to most populations.

Professional Parent Educators bring parents together and

Learn the importance of taking care of themselves so they can better care for their children
Learn practical stress management and communication skills
Gain greater understanding of their children
Learn effective parenting skills and positive approaches to discipline
Build a support network

This curriculum is built on the following assumptions:

Parents love their children and want what's best for them
Parenting is the most important and challenging job there is
Parents and children are all learners
Parents are their children's first and most important teachers
More is expected of parents than children
There are many positive ways to parent
Every parent and child is unique

Curriculum Contents

Facilitator Guide with overview of the curriculum, tips for starting a Make Parenting A Pleasure program, and material to help leaders work most effectively with parents in a group setting. Most practitioners can use the curriculum as is, however training is available if desired.
13 individual modules that focus on important parenting skills and issues. Each module is easy-to-use and includes goals, agenda, materials list, preparation guide, session content, and addition material that allows you to tailor the session to your parents' needs.
General Appendix with valuable supplemental materials such as articles, group forms, parenting goals, charts, etc.
10 individual videos in DVD format, each spotlighting a segment of the curriculum's sessions, helping to focus the topic and provide the "real life" situations for discussions. The topics are presented in 4-10 minute segments.
15 Parent Booklets with class activity sheets, handouts, and recap information for each module.
Evaluation materials.

Evaluation Summaries

Make Parenting A Pleasure was named as a national family-strengthening model by the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention after rigorous review. It is also listed on the Western CAPT Promising Practice website. There have been two empirically designed evaluations of the Make Parenting A Pleasure program, one when the curriculum was completed in 1996, and one in 1999, as a dissertation project.

1999 Evaluation
Design: Seventy-four participants were randomly assigned to a wait list or one of six MPAP groups.

Results: Post hoc analysis showed significant results in (1) Parenting Sense of Competence (POSOC)— parents showed an increase in self-esteem and in positive feelings about their parenting; (2) Parenting Scale (PS)—parents showed a decrease in inappropriate discipline practices. In addition, those who scored in the clinical range on having problems with their child(ren) at pretest reported a significant reduction in over-reactivity, verbosity, and laxness when interacting with their children after the completion of the MPAP class.

1996 Preliminary Evaluation
Design: Fifty-two subjects participated either in one of two MPAP groups or were in a wait list group.

Results: Significant results on Parent Stress Index (PSI)— less parental stress and less stress between partners; and Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAPI)— a decrease in abuse potential, in parental stress, in parenting rigidity, and an increase in unhappiness.

Key Concepts and Goals

Make Parenting A Pleasure

Authors

Overview

Professional Parent Educators bring parents together and

Curriculum Contents

Facilitator Guide with overview of the curriculum, tips for starting a Make Parenting A Pleasure program, and material to help leaders work most effectively with parents in a group setting. Most practitioners can use the curriculum as is, however training is available if desired.

13 individual modules that focus on important parenting skills and issues. Each module is easy-to-use and includes goals, agenda, materials list, preparation guide, session content, and addition material that allows you to tailor the session to your parents' needs.

General Appendix with valuable supplemental materials such as articles, group forms, parenting goals, charts, etc.

10 individual videos in DVD format, each spotlighting a segment of the curriculum's sessions, helping to focus the topic and provide the "real life" situations for discussions. The topics are presented in 4-10 minute segments.

15 Parent Booklets with class activity sheets, handouts, and recap information for each module.

Evaluation materials.

Evaluation Summaries

Key Concepts and Goals

Authors