4 November 2010

A Positive Parenting Programme run by Pact West Coast is continuing to receives accolades from both health and education professionals.

Child and youth support worker Diane Aitken runs what is called the Triple P programme, which promotes good communication and strong relationships between parents and children.

"This positive approach to parenting helps parents promote their children’s development and manage their children’s behaviour in a constructive and caring way."

Diane says Triple P helps parents recognise causes of common child behaviour problems and encourage desirable behaviour in their children.

There are five key principles of positive parenting.

• Ensuring a safe, interesting environment where children can explore, experiment and develop their skills.
• Creating a positive learning environment by being available when children need help, care or attention.
• Using assertive discipline by being consistent and acting quickly when children misbehave.
• Having realistic expectations for children and for you as a parent.
• Taking care of yourself as a parent and ensuring personal needs are met.

Triple P:

• offers suggestions and ideas to help parents
• builds positive relationships with children
• suggests praise and encouraging behaviour
• helps parents teach children new skills and set rules and give instructions their children will follow
• encourages parents to respond to misbehaviour immediately, consistently and decisively
• encourages parents to use discipline strategies that work, and
• teaches the importance of taking care of themselves as parents.

Triple P can be done individually or in a group setting. There are two programmes - Under 11s and Teenagers. Parents sometimes take longer to complete Triple P doing it at an individual level.

Diane says parents often take awhile to engage, but once they start using the Triple P strategies and see changes in both their own behaviour and their child’s behaviour, they begin to realise that their children’s behaviour is really not as bad as they first thought.

"Parents come to realise that they had stopped looking at the positive things that their children often do and have only been focusing on the negative. Parents learn about involving their children in family meetings. Children need to learn new skills as they grow older - and teenagers need to start doing more chores around the home."

Diane says all children like praise and parents learn about descriptive praise that encourages the behaviour they like seeing and less of the behaviours they don’t like.

Parents doing Triple P Under 11 learn about things like how important it is to get down to a child’s level when making a request and how children often learn from parents bad behaviour eg yelling, not listening to what their child is trying to tell them.

"All children need to have boundaries and honesty. They need to feel safe and cared for and loved. I enjoy delivering the positive parenting programme as you always see changes whether big or small. You also see happiness again in the family unit."