Parent Education Course Writer's Guide

• Cover
• Manual of Style

[edit] Introduction

This book is intended as a writer's guide for pupils who want to write their own parent education course. It is meant to complement the Mentoring Handbook but can also be used in a different context (e.g. in a school class).

This book alone is not meant to qualify an author to write or participate in the writing of a parent education course. Authors are expected to study at least one or two parent education courses before trying to do so.

[edit] Why should pupils write their own course?

"What our parents need to understand" can be a continual research project and every group of teenagers may find widely differing answers. Writing your own course allows to mix established knowledge and personal experience, possibly with a better result than standardized courses. This is not meant to discredit more established parent education courses, however: a group of pupils may be insufficiently qualified to achieve best results, so an established parent education course may even be a sensible supplement when you have finished your own course.

Writing a course on parent education is also likely to be a valuable experience for the authoring group, which is increased through the perception of contributing to an independent work.

Recent studies ^{[WorldVision] [ZDF]} in Germany have analyzed reasons for unhappiness of children, which may have the potential to start a vicious circle. The studies have found that children of poor or less educated parents have a significant disadvantage. Contributing to parent education can have several beneficial effects for the participants and for their social environment.

[edit] Writing a parent education course in school

A rationale why it seems a good choice for teachers to hold parent education courses and/or to write courses with their pupils is that teachers are pedagogues and already have a significant knowledge in this area, which seems likely to be beneficial for a course. The effects of better parent education are also likely to have an immediate influence on the work of the teachers: Pupils with a better socialization and upbringing are likely to make the work of their teachers easier and more rewarding.

For a group of mentors a logical audience would be the parents of their protégés. For other pupils the teacher or chief editor might have to assign an audience, for example the parents of a lower grade at the same school. The authors should probably be at least in grade nine.

[edit] Getting started

[edit] Preparing the authoring group

If you write your parent education course in a team (writing one alone is strongly discouraged) it makes sense to prepare the team by assigning literature to members of the team. What literature needs to be read and who should read it? Giving one parent education course to an author or a group of authors allows every author to be competent in relation to one pedagogical approach, which can promote discussions among the authors later on, when the authors present and criticize "their" pedagogical approach.

[edit] Personal experience

In a group of mentors personal experience and views could be gathered from mentors and their protégés, possibly with anonymization, if protégés were reluctant to reveal their experiences or views. Gathering experiences from protégés allows to address the actual problems of the primary, and possibly only, audience of a course.

[edit] Know your audience

The audience of a parent education course is more complicated than a usual audience. The primary audience are the parents but their children are also a part of the audience and require independent consideration. What do you need to know about the parents? The educational background of the parents in your group may be important. If there are migrants in your audience they may have problems with complicated language and you may need to use easier language, for instance. Migrants may also require cultural adjustment. If the audience are primarily academics it may be tempting to assume they have no need for extensive explanations, which may be wrong. Having studied a specific subject doesn't necessarily make you a fast learner in an entirely different subject, even if it may help. You might also want to know the reading habits of your audience: Can they be expected to read longer texts or should your course aim for a high degree of interactivity between one or several lecturers and the audience?

What do you need to know about the children? The age group of your audience is quite important. Parent education programs often distinguish children from 2 to 6 years, from 6 to 12 years and teenagers. A likely audience for your parent education course is from 6 to 16 years old, which may be a reason to distinguish between children and teenagers.

What do you need to know about parents and children? Obviously you want to form an opinion about the problems they may have. It may also be a good idea to gather the good ideas and recommendations they may have to offer.

[edit] Research methods

[edit] Interviews

Interviews can gather more information than questionnaires because you may be able to learn more things you didn't expect in advance. Interviews can also help to gather issues that should be addressed in questionnaires. An interesting group of educators for interviews are teachers because they have a broad knowledge in pedagogy and experience with many pupils and their parents. Interviews with teachers can also help to bring the view of teachers into a parent education course.

[edit] Questionnaires

Questionnaires can be used to gather information from parents, pupils and teachers or other educators in order to prepare a parent education course. Questionnaires allow convenient anonymization to gather information from people who may be reluctant to disclose personal information otherwise.

Questionnaires are also a good way to get feedback and to promote involvement. Parents who have to fill in well-considered questionnaires may experience a similar beneficial effect as the authors of the parent education course themselves: Being brought to think about the issues and to phrase your own experiences and views has the potential to provoke further thoughts than just reading a text and can also promote involvement. The feedback from the questionnaires can be used to extend and enhance a parent education course for the following lessons. A course that makes extensive use of questionnaires is kess-erziehen.

[edit] Experiments

A school class may be able to conduct psychological experiments in a course on psychology or pedagogy. A group of mentors trying to write a parent education course may profit from cooperation with a school here: Without a teacher conducting experiments may be too difficult for many young teenagers.

[edit] Educational goals

[edit] Citizenship education

An important part of citizenship education can be to offer children or teenagers problems to be solved under controlled conditions. Ideas for groups of pupils can be found under civic education in the Mentoring Handbook.

[edit] Democratic education

For the democratic education of pupils a mentoring organization or other organization with sufficient democratic participation may be a sensible recommendation. That is, however, not what can be written in a parent education course. "Send your children to a mentoring organization" as the sole recommendation of a mentoring organization somehow isn't enough. The question here is what parents can do and what parents may have to learn in order to promote democratic education. A good hint is the family council.

see: Democratic education (Wikipedia), Citizenship education (Wikipedia)

[edit] Concepts of parent education

The concepts explained in this chapter are not meant as a substitute for reading a parent education course. The concepts are supposed to serve as an introduction to the topic of parent education and to raise the interest of the reader for the topic.

[edit] Behavior window

The behavior window is a concept of the Gordon Model which allows to determine acceptance and problem ownership. If a behavior is acceptable for the observing parent but not for the child the problem is with the child and the method of resolution is active listening. Is the behavior inacceptable for the observing parent it can be a conflict in needs or a conflict in values. If it is a conflict in needs the parent can use I-messages to communicate his or her needs. In the case of a conflict in values the parent may have the problem of not being able to explain a legitimate interest. In this case powerless conflict resolution is the recommended method of resolution.

[edit] Way of life

"Way of life" is a term introduced by Alfred Adler; he declared that each individual has an individual way of life. An individual's way of life determines his or her outlook and priorities.

[edit] Basic needs

The course kess-erziehen identifies four basic social needs, which are:

• to belong and feel loved
• to be important
• to be able to influence
• to feel protected and secure

[edit] Mistaken goals

The term mistaken goals was used by Rudolf Dreikurs to refer to the four goals power, attention, revenge and avoidance of failure, which he identified as four common motivations for misbehavior of pre-adolescents. The goals are called mistaken goals because the child doesn't actually achieve exactly what it really wants, unless the parent understands the psychology of the situation.

The course kess-erziehen assigns needs to each of the four mistaken goals:

[edit] Time, devotion and endearment

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi phrased the needs of children, or rather the obligation of parents, as time, devotion and endearment.

[edit] Pyramid of influence

The pyramid of influence is a concept from Starke Eltern - Starke Kinder. The pyramid of influence clarifies that advice is a weaker influence on a child than the type of relationship and the type of relationship is a weaker influence on a child than the parental example as a role model for the child.

[edit] Natural and logical consequences

Children can learn from natural consequences when parents allow children to experience the real consequences of their actions under controlled conditions. Natural consequences are most effective without any kind of comment from parents, so that the child can work out the meaning of the experience by himself.

Logical consequences are consequences that follow from choices parents offer their children. The course kess-erziehen refers to the "four R criteria" for logical consequences:

• The consequences should be directly related to a choice offered.
• The consequences should allow children to take responsibility for their own actions.
• The consequences should be reasonable.
• The consequences should be presented respectfully.

Logical consequences should not be confused with punishment, a child should be able to understand the reasoning behind a logical consequence.

[edit] Patterns and anti-patterns

Patterns and anti-patterns are desirable and undesirable situations or behavior patterns a parent education course could help to promote or help to a avoid. More specifically the term anti-pattern is used to refer to a commonly reinvented bad solution to a problem but here it is used in a broader sense, also including undesirable situations that "just happen".

A way to find patterns and anti-patterns with a group of authors is concept mapping or mind mapping. The authors can draw concepts they recognize on a map and connect concepts they see as related. It may be useful to add to one or several concept maps over several days in order to allow sufficient time for reflection. In a following discussion phase the group can refine and thin out the concepts and relations found. Concept maps can start with some of the concepts found in parent education courses and can connect examples, patterns, anti-patterns and other concepts. Colors or symbols can be used to distinguish different types of concepts or types of relations between concepts.

[edit] Pedagogical patterns

[edit] Parent Effectiveness Training

The following patterns can be found in Parent Effectiveness Training.

[edit] Active listening

Active listening describes the ability to reflect back in your own words the opinions and emotions of group members. An important goal of active listening is to enable a group member or a child to understand his or her own problems and to deduce solutions independently.

[edit] I-messages

I-messages are non-blameful, non-judgmental descriptions of the addressee's behavior, especially where it collides with the speaker's interests. I-messages describe how the unacceptable behavior affects the speaker and how it makes him or her feel. I-messages confront the behaviour of the addressee but do not attack the person. An example of an I-message is:

"If you throw sand from your sandbox on my carpet I have to spend some time cleaning it and I don't like to do that."

[edit] No-lose conflict resolution

The No-lose conflict resolution (Win Win conflict resolution) is based on John Dewey's six steps to creative solutions for conflicts. The goal is to find a solution all involved parties can agree with and to invite all parties to the conflict resolution because children, and people in general, are more motivated to comply with decisions which they had a part in reaching.

[edit] kess-erziehen

Alfred Adlers individual psychology and the work of Rudolf Dreikurs are the scientific foundation of kess-erziehen. The abbreviation refers to cooperative, encouraging, social and situation-oriented. The goal of the course is to promote a cooperative, democratic educational style through common rules for family life and consensus that is reached in a family council.

The course promotes the ability of the participants to understand the social needs of children, the disregard of which can lead to undesirable behaviors. Adults and children are seen as equal and the mutual approval of needs is emphasized. Parents and educators learn to develop cooperation, conflict management and to set borders through logical consequences. Consistent, encouraging action is used to promote independence and to allow children to accept responsibility for their own actions.

The participants are guided to act situation-oriented, to offer choices to children and to notice positive behaviors, instead of reacting primarily to undesirable behaviors. Thereby self-esteem and responsible action in partnership are promoted.

[edit] Special moments

"Edelsteinmomente" (jewel moments) mean the child is given special attention with a special quality of dedication at certain times. Special moments are meant to convey a special degree of esteem to children.

Special moments can take the form of frequently repeated rituals that convey affection. For younger children such rituals can, for instance, encompass well-known rituals like a round of cuddling in the morning, come-to-my-arms games on reunion or reading a story at bedtime.

[edit] IRIS strategy

IRIS strategy means "Interrupt. Respect. Ignore. Self-determined action" and is a strategy, or rather a set of strategies following a common scheme, to deal with disturbing, aggressive and other types of unwanted behaviors of children. The common scheme is for the parent to stop himself (Interrupt), to consider and respect the perspective of the child (Respect), to ignore the unwanted behavior in order not to reward the behavior (Ignore) and to react, possibly much later, with behavior the parent has considered and sees as appropriate to respond to a potential problem (Self-determined action). Special moments can, for instance, be a reaction to a child that may feel rejected.

[edit] Encouragement shower

For children who need encouragement the pattern "encouragement shower" is a way to increase self-esteem: In a circle of relatives or friends everybody tells the child what he likes about the child, what the child does to please the relative or friend or similar encouragements. The child thanks everybody individually and ends with his own assessment of his strengths.

[edit] Ten point strategy for conflict resolution

The course kess-erziehen offers a ten point strategy for conflict resolution.

• Phase I : Explain position and acknowledge feelings
  • Make an appointment - this can be part of a family council.
  • Find out about the feelings of the child.
  • Show sympathy or, at least, understanding for the feelings of the child.
  • Explain your own position - an opportunity to use I-messages.
• Phase II : Find solutions
  • Invite the child to participate in the search for solutions.
  • Write down the proposals on a piece of paper.
  • Remove inacceptable proposals.
  • Select the best proposal or find a compromise.
• Phase III : Implement the solution
  • Negotiate a try-out time.
  • Verify the success of the chosen solution.

[edit] Commune

The commune pattern adds mostly an attitude to the family council; the attitude is to change roles and to trade obligations to create a different social environment for a while. Older children can be treated as adults living in an (apartment-sharing) living community with their parents and can assume adult obligations and social roles. A goal can be to make children accept responsible roles like taking care of maintaining order and actually deciding on the necessity of certain household tasks and affairs.

[edit] Family council

A family council is a democratic council of a family. The pedagogical purpose is to allow children to experience co-determination, responsibility, involvement, fairness, encouragement and support (See: Mistaken goals). The purpose of a family council can also be citizenship education. The family council is the logical counterpart of the class council and both councils can learn from each other. Educators in both councils can intentionally use references to the respective other council; to avoid Lack of consistency teachers and parents should communicate requirements and ideas concerning citizenship education and pedagogy in general.

See also: Teachers' handbook: Parenting (Assistant teacher course, Wikiversity)

[edit] Empathy

Empathy can be trained by appreciating, rewarding and otherwise promoting behavior that respects the feelings or perspective of others, including that of animals where appropriate. Empathy can also be shown by an educator in order to offer a role model (see: Pyramid of influence) that appreciates empathy. I-messages are a way to communicate a demand for empathy for the educator him - or herself.

[edit] Guidance to question things

Guidance to question things is meant to promote the attitude to form an independent opinion that is not inappropriately influenced by the opinions of others. The educator can occasionally make up something and allow the child or teenager to form an independent opinion whether the invention is real or just a made-up thing. The educator should, of course, also question opinions, prejudices and facts, otherwise the behavior is easily seen through and incomplete. Especially opinions should be discussed with children and teenagers. A Family council can be useful to discuss opinions that are relevant for family life.

See also: Theory Design Lab (Assistant teacher program, Wikiversity)

[edit] Questioning behavior

A child may learn to accept parents questioning his behavior if parents who question the child's way of doing something are learned to be an introduction to something interesting. To accomplish that a parent can offer advice on an activity that is primarily in the sphere of interest of the child and is mostly irrelevant to the parent. If the parent offers useful advice to the child unostentatiously and in an activity the child perceives as important the parent becomes a natural mentor. A phrase like "Should this be done the way you are doing it?" or similar phrases can invite the child to reflect on his own behavior and the parent doesn't have to show an unwelcome interest in enforcing certain behaviors in situations were the child can deduce what it should be doing and may be willing to do so, if not pressured. The child can learn to appreciate the benevolent nature of the request. In a sufficiently understood situation a child may be able to deduce or offer logical consequences a parent might otherwise offer.

[edit] Constructive culture of criticism

A constructive culture of criticism is a set of behavior patterns and attitudes that promote and appreciate constructive criticism in general. Constructive criticism differs from mere criticism in making recommendations how to alleviate a problem or how to improve a situation.

[edit] Positive role models

Parents who aim to be positive role models appreciate the fact that the role model a parent offers is a strong influence on a child (see: pyramid of influence).

[edit] Pedagogical anti-patterns

This book is not a parent education course itself. If anti-patterns are presented without solutions that can be interpreted as an invitation to the authors of parent education courses to invent their own solutions.

[edit] You-message

The you-message is the opposite of an I-message. A you-message in a conflict puts blame on the other instead of asking for understanding for your own view in the conflict situation.

[edit] Lack of parental dedication

Wikinews reports ^{[study: „Children in Germany 2007“]} that 13% of all children, 28% of the children of unemployed parents and 35% of the children of employed single parents in Germany complain about a lack of parental dedication. In families with two parents working full-time this applies to 17% of the children, in families with one parent working full-time and one parent working part-time or both parents working part-time it applies to 8% of the children and in families with only one of two parents employed it applies to 6% of the children.

[edit] Lack of respect

Lack of respect can be lack of respect of children for parents or of parents for children, more precisely respect can be lacking in the interpersonal communication of any two persons in any direction. Lack of respect can lead to Functional social behavior and can cause aspects of the Alien ecology of extraterrestrial behavior patterns.

Respect is often assigned to a person according to academic accomplishments or a job title, which is where sole housewives and househusbands may not receive the greatest amount of respect. Parents can invite teenagers to either respect the work that is being done or to do it themselves for a while (see Commune). Parents (and teenagers) can also decide to leave work that isn't being respected undone. In a capitalist society, where people are likely to require an employment, somebody is bound to do almost any necessary work but in a family a higher standard of motivation can be sought.

Possible mistakes concerning respect are not to demand respect at all or to demand too much respect.

See also: Respect economy (Assistant teacher program, Wikiversity)

[edit] Lack of community

Lack of community can be distinguished as Lack of quality time or Lack of socializing.

[edit] Lack of socializing

Lack of socializing is a lack of social events or social contacts. Different persons perceive lack of socializing differently, consequently one has to assume the perspective of the person concerned when evaluating lack of socializing; the culture and habits of a person may lead to widely different perspectives.

[edit] Lack of quality time

Lack of quality time is different from lack of community because community doesn't always mean quality time. A lack of quality time may happen, for instance, if teenagers watch too much TV or play computer games without really enjoying them. Almost anyting can be overdone and teenagers are quite good at exaggerating behavior because they may not yet have learned to limit behavior as appropriate. Lack of quality time can also happen to adults who grow into habits that do no appreciate quality time sufficiently.

A measure to avoid lack of quality time are time schedules and scheduled events that appreciate quality time as such and arrange for community events that are generally appreciated.

[edit] Unsuccessful discussions

[edit] Silently rejecting arguments

Any argument that is rejected silently or that is assumed to be valid or true notwithstanding the counter-arguments brought against it has the potential to lead to unsuccessful discussions. Obviously the importance of the arguments that are rejected without refutation influence the degree to which the anti-pattern has potential for discordance. Dogmatic religion can in one aspect be seen as an example of arguments that are not meant to be questioned.

[edit] Lack of consensus

Lack of consensus between educators causes Lack of consistency and lack of consensus between parents and children may lead to open conflict. Ways to establish consensus are a Family council, No-lose conflict resolution or the Ten point strategy for conflict resolution. A failure to establish consensus can appear for a teenager as Allowing problems to persist, even if the educators do not perceive a problem, because it is easy for the person(s) making the rules not to perceive a problem.

[edit] Negative role models

According to the Pyramid of influence the role model of an educator is a very strong influence for a child or teenager. Negative role models are role models who show behavior patterns that could be seen as anti-patterns, who show Alien ecology behavior patterns or who show behavior that is not properly understood by the observer and may lead to detrimental or otherwise undesirable behaviors that are learned as acceptable behavior by the observer.

[edit] Lack of consistency

Lack of consistency can be related to Unsuccessful discussions with children but includes inconsistent pedagogical ideas or lack of communication between educators. An African proverb says "It takes a village to raise a child". While the idea to have many natural mentors may sound appealing one of the possible problems with a large group of educators is lack of consistency. Lack of consistency can cause educators to contradict each other or, possibly worse, to contradict each other's pedagogy, which can be confusing for teenagers and also has the potential to teach teenagers to look for loopholes.

Lack of consistency can be intentionally employed as Guidance to question things.

[edit] Positive feedback

Why is positive feedback an anti-pattern? Giving children feedback they perceive as "positive" is seldom an anti-pattern but the term can also refer to a vicious circle, which is the sense that is meant here. The anti-pattern occurs whenever educators allow vicious circles to exist in social communication. Simple as that may sound detecting a vicious circle that reinforces a psychological effect may require psychological insight and imagination.

One example is a teenager who understands a remark as an encouragement to do the opposite of what is being asked and that behavior again provokes the same or a similar remark, closing the feedback loop. Negativism is, for instance, used by adolescents as a way to assert their autonomy from their parents. An adult might also decide to compliment a teenager on behavior not shown and leave it to the teenager to understand that the compliment was a complement and the teenager didn't actually behave as described; this can, however, lead to the very same problem, if the teenager understands this as encouragement to pretend to show a preferable behavior and derives a license to show the objectionable behavior. The intended educational effect (understanding the false compliment) may be inverted into undesirable positive feedback here.

Trying to apply reverse psychology intentionally to motivate a certain behavior may also be easily seen through, which can cause reactance against the intended behavior instead of the verbalized offer, which may again result in a positive feedback.

Positive feedback can be categorized as a failure to anticipate, to measure or to understand the influence of one's own actions on others.

[edit] Functional social behavior

Why is functional social behavior an anti-pattern? The term could be interpreted to mean function-oriented social behavior, which is the sense that is meant here. Function-oriented social behavior (this is probably the better term) reduces interaction with persons to the function of a person in a specific context. Further consideration for the person and his or her needs are not required. While this type of behavior may be appropriate in some situations (e.g. in a busy waiting queue in a supermarket) it can be seen as an anti-pattern in many other situations. Let's retain the title "functional social behavior" to make the point that functional (function-oriented) social behavior is more usually not considered functional (functioning) social behavior.

[edit] Allowing problems to persist

Allowing problems to persist is a motivation for children to learn to tolerate the problem state. An example is that parents sometimes mean well but fail to communicate their good intent properly. Behavior that appears aggressive and is allowed to persist can motivate a child to learn to tolerate and even expect the aggressive behavior, which is not a desirable outcome. Any behavior that is socially difficult from a person that is an attachment figure for a child can disturb the relationship. A conclusion from this anti-pattern should be that parents should recover their role as positive role models consciously and should not allow problems to persist for a longer time. An avoidance strategy can be to deliberately inquire about perceived problems during a family council.

[edit] Alien ecology of extraterrestrial behavior patterns

The wording of this pattern may make it especially accessible for some teenagers. The "alien ecology" is an ecology of behavior patterns that can grow and reproduce themselves like an alien ecology, if left unchallenged. The means of propagation are psychological effects like unreflected imitation and psychological reactance but the behavior patterns can have almost any complexity or relevance and affect areas of life one could expect to be controlled by reason. The implication here is that the "alien ecology" is brought forth through the absence of higher-order volitions, metacognition and collective intelligence (and probably the presence of an alien-nation somewhere) and functions like another ecology or civilization, competing with proper civilization. The implication means that no person can be seen as an alien but that everybody can contribute to the "alien ecology" through absentmindedness or general lack of higher-order volitions, metacognition or collective intelligence.

[edit] Anti-parents

Anti-parents are not an anti-pattern because this is merely an inappropriate generalization. Adding the word to a parent education course is the anti-pattern, which this section is meant to prevent. The word is a pun and therefore bound to be invented by some pupils. If pupils insist on inventing the word "anti-parents" one can deduce two types of problems:

• The pupils haven't thought enough about their work because including this word is not conducive to the goals of a parent education course.
• The proposers may be experiencing major problems, which makes a successful parent education program even more important.

[edit] Mentoring

You can find more on ideas for mentoring organizations in the Mentoring Handbook. Parent education ideas are, for example, an actual parenting driver's license and parenting awards or a variant of a school system that combines mentoring and parent education.

Mentoring is likely to be a valuable experience for the participating protégés and for the participating mentors beyond the scope of a parent education course. Mentors can also write their own mentoring handbook.

[edit] Literature

• UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Wikipedia article: Convention on the Rights of the Child)

[edit] Programs

• Parent Effectiveness Training is based on person-centered psychotherapy
  • Gordon, Thomas (October 2000). Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children, 1st rev., New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0609806939.
• Kess-erziehen is based on individual psychology and the work of Rudolf Dreikurs
  • Horst, Christof, Erika Maaß-Keibel, Rudolf Mazzolla, Regina Raulfs (2005). Erziehen mit Kess – Der Elternkurs, 1. (in German), München: Droemer/Knaur. ISBN 3426667681.
• Starke Eltern - Starke Kinder is based on humanistic psychology
  • Honkanen-Schoberth, Paula (2003). Starke Kinder brauchen starke Eltern: der Elternkurs des Deutschen Kinderschutzbundes, 2. (in German), Freiburg: Urania. ISBN 3332013467.
• Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) is based on individual psychology
  • Dinkmeyer, Don, Gary D. McKay, Don C Dinkmeyer, Jr (August 2007). The Parent's Handbook: Systematic Training for Effective Parenting. Impact Pub. ISBN 0979554209.

ToDo: More information on Triple P and STEP

[edit] See also

• Wikijunior:Children's TV Lexicon
• Meta-schoolbook Writer's Guide
• Teachers' handbook: Parenting (Assistant teacher course, Wikiversity)
• Category:Parenting (Wikipedia)