Practical Parent

The Practical Parent curriculum allows our facilitators to present a variety of 57 topics. Each topic is a one hour presentation. The topics can be presented as a series, or on an individual basis. The lessons are grouped together to show which topics work best together. For example, the first group “Understanding Your Role as a Parent” shows 4 topics. As a series, this would be a four hour training, which could breakdown to 4 one hour sessions or 2 two hour sessions.

These topics are perfect for meetings in the community, such as PTA’s, faith-based organizations, and other parent support groups. Another opportunity is for corporations to offer various topics during employee lunch hours.

Module Topics

1. Understanding Your Role as a Parent
• Understanding the family system as a whole
• Recognizing traits in a healthy family
• Identifying your role as the primary model for your child
• Creating meaning in the family relationship
2. Developing Trust Within the Family
• Developing and maintaining trusting relationships within the family
• Understanding attachment and bonding between parent and child
• Rebuilding trust that has been broken
• Parenting from a distance
3. Communicating within the Family
• Communicating effectively with children at all stages
• Allowing for closeness and separateness within the family
• Expressing and communicating feelings and emotions
• Identifying family communication patterns
• Communicating with children about sexuality
• Dealing with anger in the family
• Helping children learn to manage and resolve conflict peacefully
• Diffusing family disagreements
• Imparting family values to children
4. Building Self-Esteem within the Family
• Building and nurturing self-esteem in children
• Knowing and valuing the child as an individual
• Building and nurturing self-esteem in parents
• Encouraging children’s growth in social skills
• Helping children learn to make healthy choices
• Teaching children to value and respect diversity
• Teaching children kindness and respect for other children
• Helping children learn to handle competition
• Understanding the powerful influences of gangs on children
• Helping children give back to their community
• Understanding the complexities of bullying and social cruelty in children
5. Understanding Parenting and Power
• Establishing authority as a parent
• Choosing effective discipline techniques
• Giving children responsibility for themselves
• Dealing with sibling rivalry
• Encouraging motivation in children
• Developing teamwork in a child’s educational experience
• Resolving homework issues
• Understanding how parenting patterns in the early years set a course for the future
• Building a powerful parenting role to prevent youth substance abuse
• Recognizing and responding to child behaviors outside the norm
• Raising children of character
6. Accepting and Growing through Natural Transitions in the Life Cycle
• Understanding developmental stages in children
• Moving through the stages of parenting
• Dealing with stress in the family
• Helping children handle peer pressure
• Easing transitions into adolescence
• Adjusting to the empty nest transition
• Strengthening the father/child relationship
• Strengthening the mother/child relationship
• Parenting the second time: Grandparents rearing grandchildren
7. Accepting and Growing through Unexpected Transitions in the Life Cycle
• Coping with mobility and relocation
• Helping children cope with change and loss
• Growing through single parenting
• Growing through step-parenting
• Understanding the complexities of teenage parents
• Balancing parenting and a career
• Meeting needs in the family with a special child
• Building resiliency in children
• Creating cultural harmony in the family: balancing the challenges of bi-cultural parenting