Personal Readiness

To Understand children, their development, needs, and uniqueness is vital for parents. Each child is different not only in abilities but also in the extraordinary way that he or she sees the world. Understanding children can result in less conflict in relationships with them. Understanding is also an important part of helping children become secure and healthy people. Children are not likely to become caring, loving people if they have not experienced understanding from people who are close to them.

FRAME includes the philosophies, perspectives, theories, frameworks, paradigms, schools of thought, worldviews, and models to guide parenting professionals in designing programs of education and in making recommendations for children, parents, and families. Many different frameworks are used by parenting educators to understand parent-child relationships.

GROW is the process by which parenting educators become professionals and associate themselves with colleagues through professional development activities. GROW involves educators learning about themselves and their values while building knowledge, skills, and connections as educators.

EMBRACE means recognizing, respecting, and responding to ethnic and cultural diversity, different family forms, and multiple environmental contexts of families raising children. EMBRACE also means reaching out to parents and caregivers who differ in preferred communication and learning approaches, sexual orientation, English language proficiency, access to basic resources, and levels of literacy.

EDUCATE is the process of building relationships with participants to help them more effectively solve problems, resolve conflicts, set goals, and gain knowledge and skills to guide and nurture their child(ren). EDUCATE involves knowing and using a variety of effective teaching strategies, skills, techniques, and methods. It includes adapting these teaching tools to meet specific learner needs.

DEVELOP is the process of creating a parenting education program before and after actual program delivery. The process includes all elements of the program development process for adult education in community-based settings, from need assessments through evaluation.

To BUILD relationships with other professionals working with children and families may be one of the most effective ways to increase parenting options and resources. Building networks and partnerships that support children, parents, and families at local and state levels and sometimes at regional, national, or international levels will ultimately BUILD the field of parenting education. While many of these affiliations are informal in nature, membership in professional associations or organizations will provide critical linkages with others working toward similar goals.

Managing Stress focuses on helping families manage stress using the timeless model developed by Reuben Hill and a new program developed by Wally Goddard and James Marshall. The session equips participants to better manage their own stress and help those they serve do the same, providing practical skills and useful materials.

Proceedings of the CYFAR Competency & Capacity Building Virtual Summit: Evidence-Based Practices and Strategies for Working with Vulnerable Populations. Engaging video presentations by experts pondering emerging issues and evidence-based strategies in the areas of economic stress, poverty, and programming with cultural competence, followed by lively discussion and links to related papers and resources.

This 90-minute webinar focused on what it takes to establish parent education programs in prisons and the latest research-based program resources. It is aimed at educators interested in creating programs for incarcerated parents and providing support to nurture relationships between these parents and their children.