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Los Angeles County, CA November 6, 2007 Election
Smart Voter

Opportunities to increase our Parenting Skill-Building Programs

By Aleta Pottenger

Candidate for Governing Board Member; El Segundo Unified School District

This information is provided by the candidate
Parenting is too important to leave to chance. Good parenting can be enriched with training classes that give clear goals and techniques.
I would like to see the El Segundo Unified School District increase the number of parenting programs that we presently offer for our families. The importance of educating parents to be as effective as possible in raising children has been recognized in the United States since as early as 1815, when the first parent group meetings were reported. These and other early efforts allowed groups of parents to gain emotional and social support from each other and to learn about child development.

In the early 1970's, a new approach to educating and training parents emerged - the creation and use of carefully constructed parenting skill-building programs. These programs are designed to improve parental effectiveness by providing a clear parenting philosophy and a set of positive parenting skills and strategies that can be used immediately to address a variety of child-rearing challenges and problems.


As I looked at the Parenting Programs that are on the web I came across the following 9 steps. I believe these steps will strengthen our family units and ultimately improve the self esteem and behavior of children in the classroom.

9 Steps to more Effective Parenting
1. Nurture your child's self-esteem.
2. Catch your child being good.
3. Set limits and be consistent with your discipline.
4. Make time for your children.
5. Be a good role model.
6. Make communication a priority.
7. Be flexible and willing to adjust your parenting style.
8. Show that your love is unconditional.
9. Be aware of your own needs and limitations as a parent. These steps are found at http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/nine_steps.html

Additional websites worth visiting include ValuesParenting.com Like me, they believe that Parenting is the most important thing we do. The Values Parenting website changes monthly with different ideas and methods to help you STRENGTHEN YOUR FAMILY.

Parenting.org will answer your parenting questions with resources and guidance on how to successfully raise, praise, discipline, teach and love your child.

The South Bay Adult School's Parenting Education offers a lecture series called Parent Talk held at Mira Costa High School, 701 S. Peck Ave. in Manhattan Beach. The dates for programs this year are 10/16/07, 1/15/08, 3/19/08 and 5/13/08. For more information call 1-310-376-6211 x 15.

The benefits of a parenting skills programs are impressive. Parents increase their own parental confidence and reduce their own stress and anxiety while working on improving parenting skills. Parents will improve their relationship with their children while they improve child cooperation and child self-esteem and studies show improve child academic performance.

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