Educated Parenting

Making Parenting Easier

Some more great news from the research front about the benefits of establishing warm and mutually satisfying relations between children and parents early in life.

Such relationships are characterized by parents and their young children being very affectionate and warm with each other, and communicating a lot with each other.

A recent long term study shows that these mutually satisfying relations early in life predispose children to be more self-disclosing to their parents later in childhood regarding their friends, behavior and activities.

This type of self-disclosure makes it easier for parents to keep track of their children's whereabouts.  Effective tracking and monitoring of children's behavior in later childhood reduces the risk of behavior problems like aggression and delinquency, drug abuse, early and risky sexual activity, and poor academic performance.

The study, which appeared in the September/October 2005 issue of the prestigious research journal, Child Development, also showed

Positive Parenting Buffers Impact of Observing Violence

In some urban neighborhoods, teenagers witness an alarming amount of violence, including watching someone being attacked, wounded or killed. Studies find that witnessing such events can increase the likelihood that teens will engage in violent behavior themselves, thereby continuing "the cycle of violence" in their communities.

However, as researchers from Georgia State and Yale universities report in the July/August 2005 issue of the Journal Child Development, parental involvement and social understanding (the tendency to think about social interactions in a non-hostile way), can protect teenagers from violent behavior, even if they witness violence. These teenagers are referred to as resilient because they succeed in avoiding violent behavior despite living in a dangerous neighborhood.

The researchers gave 1,599 sixth and eighth graders in a large northeastern urban public school system serving mostly low-income and minority families the Social and Health Assessment (SAHA) survey. This survey measures parent support through teenagers' feelings about their parents' involvement and supervision, and social understanding by asking teens to react to hypothetical social scenarios. Overall, the researchers found:

Soothing Crying Babies

I am so pleased to bring to your attention the wisdom and approach of Dr. Harvey Karp regarding how to sooth crying and fussy babies!

If you have had, or currently have, a baby that cries and cries and cries, and is difficult to sooth, you have undoubtedly experienced a torrent of strong feelings, such as helplessness, frustration, fatigue, shame, guilt and anger.  And you probably can appreciate why some parents succumb and end up hurting their infants.

My wife and I experienced such feelings and gained such an appreciation.  One of our daughters had colic for the first two months of her life.  We all survived but it was not easy.

Well, Dr. Karp, a pediatrician from here in California, has figured out what the problem may be, and has come up with an approach that is helping thousands of parents and infants.

His approach includes a series of coordinated actions that parents can take to unlock what Dr. Karp calls the "calming reflex."

Bill Cosby and Parenting African American Children

The year long debate about comedian Bill Cosby's criticisms of the parenting of poor and uneducated African Americans has been strangely devoid of any appreciation of what has been happening over the last twenty years to assist such parents -- and their more educated and affluent counterparts -- to be as effective as possible in raising children of African descent. 

Mr. Cosby's criticisms have been particularly harsh concerning his economically and educationally disadvantaged peers.  They have stimulated heated discussions and even a new book written in rebuttal, "Is Bill Crosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost It Mind?" by University of Pennsylvania professor, Michael Eric Dyson.

Yet neither of these highly educated men has said a word about the most direct way to help African American parents raise proud, healthy and achieving children, i.e., by educating them to be as effective as possible.

The failure to make this approach a part of this important debate is more glaring in light of the fact that for the last twenty years there has existed a parent effectiveness training program created just for African Americans, the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring's Effective Black Parenting Program.  This national model program honors and respects the unique heritage and characteristics of African Americans, directly confronts the racism that has made it so difficult to raise proud and achieving children, and teaches and reinforces basic effective parenting skills and strategies.

Not only has the Effective Black Parenting Program been in existence for over twenty years, but it has also been used with great success by thousands of African Americans who have enrolled in Effective Black Parenting classes that are being taught through local schools, churches and community agencies.

Early School Success and Child Well-Being

Cognitive skills, engagement in school, social skills, and physical well-being are all important for children's early success in school.  However, some groups of children begin kindergarten less ready for school than others and, by the end of first grade, still have not "caught up" with their more successful peers.

Using nationally representative data, researchers from the Child Trends organization found that, on the average, all groups of children make progress on most indicators of well-being and development over the first two years of formal schooling, regardless of their social class and cultural backgrounds.  However, kids from lower socioeconomic levels, those whose parents do not speak English at home, and those who are disabled tend to be less prepared for school upon entering kindergarten.  And these vulnerable little people fail to catch up to their peers by the end of the first grade.

Effectively Raised Women Make Great Mothers

An international consortium of researchers recently reported that girls raised in a positive, nurturing environment throughout their childhood are much more likely to raise their children in the same way.

The lead researcher, Dr. Jay Belsky, Director of the Institute for the Study of Children Families and Social Issues at Berkbeck University of London, said that the findings show that “it is not just problematic parenting, known to undermine a child’s well being, that can be handed down across generations, but also the kind of parenting known to foster healthy child development.”