Leo R. Sandy and Scott R. Meyer

a parent’s capacity for resilience can affect how a parent deals with stress. Resilience is the ability to manage and bounce back from all types of challenges that emerge in every family’s life. It means finding ways to solve problems, building and sustaining trusting relationships including relationships with your own child, and knowing how to seek help when necessary. Parental awareness helps parents reframe stressful events

Social Connections: Friends, family members, neighbors and community members provide emotional support, help solve problems, offer parenting advice and give concrete assistance to parents. Parent awareness is promoted within a supportive group environment that focuses on problem –solving parent-child conflict dilemmas

Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development: Accurate information about child development and appropriate expectations for children’s behavior at every age help parents see their children and youth in a positive light and promote their healthy development. A parent education course designed to promote parental awareness must include a didactic component. Knowledge increases tolerance.

1. Facilitating friendships and mutual support - helping parents to connect with each other and develop social networks . A parent education group should have in it healthy parents who have the capacity for empathy and nurturing

Strengthening Parenting- Providing Guidance, role modeling, and information on parenting & child development, including special support around children’s challenging behavior . A parent education group with competent parents in it provides positive role models and opportunities for problem-solving

Newberger’s interest in child abuse and dissatisfaction with measures of change such as Likert Scales

Fifty one parents were interviewed across gender, educational level, race and social class

Child abusers were most likely to be at level one

Social class, gender, race, and educational level are not related to parental awareness

The greater number of years of parenting was associated with higher levels of awareness

No adult interviewed who was not a parent attained level 4

The highest level 4 was attained by a high school graduate from the lowest social class

Cognitive conflict through a pedagogy of discomfort > cognitive dissonance > cognitive restructuring (seeing old problems in new ways) in a supportive climate

Support and multiple perspectives via heterogeneous group (levels 1-4)

Parent-child conflict dilemmas (problem-solving)

Child developmental information (didactic) Processing time (8 to 12 week course) Increased self-criticalness with enhanced

parental awareness

If parents become enhanced in parental awareness they could become their own experts and rely less on s0-called experts and be less abusive toward their children

If the helping professions engaged in more upstream thinking they would increase their efforts in educating parents thereby promoting prevention

If the helping professions used the PAM, they could identify at-risk parents/families and provide intervention

The helping professions could co-lead parent education groups and develop stronger collaborative relationships (mental health worker with school counselor)

When groups are developed, more care could be given to group heterogeneity so that there could be greater cross-pollenization of ideas and more mutual learning and support

If schools had Parent Education Centers and offered parent education on a regular basis, it would promote parental involvement and diminish adversarial relationships

If child abusers are conceptualized as having low parental awareness and/or a mental illness, then intervention could involve a combination of therapy and parent education

If parents increase their levels of parental awareness and develop greater self-criticalness, they may be more amenable to counseling

Queenie Slapped in a corner (daughter) and you

ruined me (son) Walking a 10 year old to school Having to wait to discuss adolescents I think I need therapy My kids are normal The two best things I ever did My daughter thinks the teacher hates her

We suggest that a parent education group that includes healthy parents, child development information, and problem-solving be a significant part of any intervention to alleviate parent depression and anxiety. Knowledge increases tolerance and decreases stress, and a supportive atmosphere with other parents provides empathy and hope within the process of parenting.

Newberger, C.M. (1977). Parental conceptions of children and child rearing: A structural-

developmental analysis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International

Sandy, L.R. (1983). Teaching child development principles to parents: A cognitive-developmental approach. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International

Thomas, R. (1996). Reflective dialogue parent education design: Focus on parent development. Family Relations, Vol. 45, No. 2, April, pp. 189-200