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Crowd National Effective Parenting Initiative Newsletter for Professionals
Spring 2008
In This Issue...
Community-Led Parenting Initiative Off to A Great Start
Parent Training Program Components That Have The Most Impact
Six Secret Strategies for Writing Dynamite Publicity Materials
Children's Media Use and Sleep Problems
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Click Here for NEPI Membership Information
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Here's a Book That's Related To The Newsletter Articles In This Issue!

The Positive Parent contains descriptions of many of the parenting programs that were evaluated in the article Parent Training Program Components.

 

It also has descriptions of the programs that are being promoted and used in the Community-Led Parenting Initiative article.

 
To order, click here
 
Become a Parenting Instructor 
Click here for information on how to receive training to deliver parent training programs.
 
(If you would like to forward  this newsletter to a friend, go to the end of the newsletter  and click "forward email" in blue on the left-hand side.

Community-Led Parenting
 Initiative Off to a Great Start

       by Don Schilling

NEPI and one of its affiliates, the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC), have begun a community-led initiative in and for the residents of Los Angeles County. 
 
Called, Uniting Los Angeles for Effective Parenting, the initiative brings together a variety of local partners to work toward improving and expanding the parenting enhancement infrastructure of this county of 13 million people.
 
The overarching goal of this five year undertaking is to make it possible for it to become the birthright of every child in the county to be raised effectively by loving and skillful parents who receive the best possible parenting education and support.

To find out more, click here.

Parent Training Program Components That Have The Most Impact
by Kerby T. Alvy, Ph.D.
 
Book
An enlightening article about which features of parent training programs are most helpful was published in 2008 in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: A Meta-analytic Review of Components Associated with Parent Training Program Effectiveness, 36: 567-589, by Jennifer Wyatt Kaminski, Linda Anne Valle, Jill H. Filene and Cynthia L. Boyle.
 
The authors preface their study-of-studies by noting that the presence in the early years of high levels of child disobedience, aggression, impulsivity and inattentiveness is often the precursor to delinquent, aggressive and risky behaviors in adolescence.  In some instances, the early presence of such disturbing behaviors also predicts later criminality and violence.
 
The authors reason that intervening early in the lives of children through teaching parents how best to cope with such behaviors, and how best to promote cooperative and warm parent-child relations, is a really good idea.  Not only do they contend that it is a good idea but they show that there is a great deal of evidence about the effectiveness of parent training approaches and there are many carefully crafted parent training programs available to use for such health-promoting and preventative purposes.
 
In addition, they mention that these programs are being widely used in certain sectors of our society. For example, they indicate that over 800,000 families whose parenting problems have been brought to the attention of child welfare authorities are being referred to such programs.
 
The authors further indicate that it would be of high practical value to know exactly what features or components of these programs seem the most helpful.  Then those could be emphasized or they could be incorporated in other programs that do not contain such features.
  
To read the complete article, click here.
Six Secret Strategies for Writing Dynamite Publicity Materials
by Jody Johnston Pawel, LSW, CFLE

 

Book Whether you have a college course or degree program, private therapy practice or community-wide family life education program, you want people to know you exist. You also want them to know your service is valuable - even superior - to what others offer. Unlike tangible products, which people can see, touch and compare to similar products, services are intangible - essentially invisible!
 
Your publicity materials are the primary way you make your services visible and tangible. As prospects read it, they look for something firm to evaluate. This allows them to compare your service to similar services and determine which will best meet their needs.
 
To make your publicity materials stand out in the crowd, use these Six (no-longer) Secret Strategies.
 
To read the complete article, click here.

Children's Media Use and Sleep Problems:
Issues and Unanswered Questions
from The Kaiser Family Foundation

 

Pediatricians have long stressed the important role that sleep plays in ensuring children's physical and mental well-being, with inadequate sleep linked to everything from obesity to aggression to hyperactivity in children. However, research shows that most children and adolescents do not get enough high-quality sleep, and that their sleep times appear to have declined over the last two decades.
 
Coinciding with this trend has been the rise in popularity of new media forms including the Internet, video games, cell phones, and DVDs. Because of the immediacy and interactivity of these new technologies, young people are using media at times and in ways that might interfere with sleep quantity and quality.
 
To help inform this health issue, the Kaiser Family Foundation has released a new research brief that examines different aspects of how media use may impact sleep. The brief reviews and summarizes the limited body of research on this topic, including studies on whether media use directly displaces sleep, and how media content can have either an exciting or calming effect on children.
 
The brief also highlights key unanswered questions that emerge from the prior studies on children's media use and sleep. For instance, little is known about the effects of using media as a sleep-aid for children. There is also a lack of information about whether new forms of media affect sleep differently from traditional forms. Finally, many questions remain about the potential long-term effects of media use on sleep and whether children's media habits are reversible.

To read the entire brief, click here.

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