Parenting and Safety Skills, Essay Example

Introduction

The existence of a number of cases against young individuals being victimized by abuse or neglect has increasingly gone haywire against all the other types of crimes committed against children. The sad truth is that most of these cases involve the parents as the perpetrators of the said types of maltreatment. The concern for the said rate of incidences occurring in the society specifically emanates the need to create a program that would make a difference on the lives of the children through empowering the parents (Baumrind, 43) to become more positive especially on the process of carrying out their responsibilities to their families and of course to their children.

The occurrence of the problem has long been accounted for so many reasons, however, one particular element remains at the top of the list, stress. Apparently, stress becomes the driving force that makes it easier for parents to simply decide to raise their hands against their children. In the discussion that follows, a program proposal shall be considered in the aim of lessening the different conditions of child abuse at home thus protecting the welfare of the younger generation effectively.

Problem Analysis

Surveys and reports present an identifiably shocking condition by which the young generation are faced with the worst type of challenge to their safety. Aside from being vulnerable to becoming oppressed because of their age and their physical statute, children often become victims of abuse from their own parents. There are many reasons behind the occurrence of such problem and some of the said reasons are as follows:

Stress

With the many things parents have to give attention to, the financial and the physical needs of the family as well as that of the welfare of other members of some extended members of the family, stress often builds up and since the children are the least among those who can fight back against the older ones, they become the shock absorbers hence receiving either verbal or physical abuse from their parents or other older members of the family (Baumrind, 238). Their inability to fight for themselves or at least seek help for their own welfare makes children an easy target with the given easy getaway for the perpetrators of abuse.

Other reactions coming from stressful conditions could also be accounted against the real motivation of a parent to ‘become a parent’ and actually take the said role seriously (Santrock, 54). Personal frustrations often become a contributing factor that elevates stress, thus making it easier for one to boil up even at the slightest mistake of the children.

Misconception about discipline

Children are naturally playful and at times silly. This condition of thinking and acting usually becomes a source of embarrassment for the older members of the family. Such stress is most often than not true for parents who have particular misconception about discipline thus are over reacting on supposedly simple mistakes of their children.

Lack of parenting skills

Young as the parents are, they do not have the right skills or the patience to develop such skills to handle the pressures of parenthood along with the pressures of doing something for themselves. Some young parents need to juggle their jobs with their home responsibilities; when this happens, it is most often than not that one or the other part of their responsibilities become jeopardized and suffers hardly. The sad truth is, it is mostly that the role of parenthood becomes the one trampled down thus making the children the direct target of the problem.

Wrong understanding of the concept of authority and wrong application of control

To some individuals, parenting means exercising authority and power. With such understanding, these individuals usually become attached to the idea of pushing their children too much and when the young ones are not able to reach the standard they are presenting them with, these young individuals becomes subjected to abuse which the parents often view as ‘punishment’.

Conditional Understanding of the Law

There are legal boundaries to a parent’s role and power. However, not all parents know about these boundaries, hence they often go beyond the limitations provided to them by the law. While it ought to be natural for parents to want to care and protect their children from harm, lack of self control often leads to a struggle between the desire to protect and the desire to direct the young one’s towards the supposed right path the parents hope their children would follow.

Needs Assessment

At the beginning of the program, the need to assess the actual matters where the participants need to be helped with should be given attention to. Relatively, for this particular approach, the program shall involve a pre-assessment process that will survey the parents’ understanding of their role and their responsibilities towards their children. This preliminary check up shall help the proctors and the administrators to see what specific issues they should be able to tackle first.

After the survey process applied during the preliminary prognosis of the program, the application of interview process shall be undergone by the participants. This is a one-on-one short talk with the parents which shall help the proctors directly evaluate the situation of the parents based on behavior and the proper understanding that they have about their stand as protectors and as mentors of their children. The reports taken from these two needs assessment tools shall provide a proper foundation as to how the program’s direction shall be focused upon thus addressing what the participants need specifically in relation to the developmental process they ought to embrace with regards parenthood.

Developing Strategies and Objectives

For this particular presentation, a community-based program is proposed which would target the overall population of parents in a specific county. With the population of the participants controlled and their characteristics specifically noted according to record and history that could be garnered from the legal records of the county, it would be easier for the proctors of the program to address the parents with the issues that directly speak to their condition and their attitude as individuals and as guide to their children.

This program shall be called Parental Peer-to-Peer Assistance Approach or the 3P2A program. This process involves proctors who are parents themselves. It is believed that their being parents would make it easier for them to disseminate with others the real deal about parenthood without imposing any superficial suggestions that might not be realistic enough for application. Experience as parents shall be among the strongest basis of the proctors as they handle the need to assist others in the hope of becoming better individuals capable of guiding and protecting their children from harm. The program will then be based on two specific points of intervention:

Educating Parents about Abuse and Discipline [Explanation through lecture and video presentation]

This intervention shall both be lecture and video based to get the attention of the participants and to allow them to get the meaning of what they are being taught about in a more interactive manner. Relatively, animations and powerpoint presentations could also be included in the process of dissemination [or any approaches possible that could enhance the process of understanding of the audience to whom the educational presentation is dedicated to]. The primary objectives of this intervention are:

1. To develop a more established understanding on parents as they view discipline and what line separates it from abusing their children physically or verbally.
2. To help the parents establish control among themselves through understanding the situations that they and their children are going through as the young ones grow up.

Developing Application Procedures [through case analysis and role playing exercises]

Right after the presentation of explanations, lectures and visual aids, application procedures are to be encouraged among the participants. This activity shall allow the parents to group with their peers, take case samples [short realistic situations about parenthood] , and have them present how they are going to deal with the situations through a role play. This interaction between the parents shall give them an idea whether or not their personal decisions about interacting with their children based on particular situations is actually agreeable or not. This activity is based upon two common objectives as follows:

1. To help the parents see through their peers’ opinions as they apply what they have learned from the first part of the program
2. To make the parents realize on themselves the importance of what they have learned from the workshop program they have attended and how these lessons could actually be applied at home as they interact with their children.

Both forms of intervention are directed towards helping parents understand their children better. It also entails to help them understand why they react the way that they do and how they could avoid over reaction or wrong situational responses when dealing with their children later on.

Program Design

The program is community-based. The head offices of the communities in the county shall be asked to submit a rough draft of their population survey taken at the latest time. From here, parents from each community are to be asked to attend a week-long workshop of the 3P2A program. Each session would be handled within an hour. This would be the most convenient span of time for the parents as they are to be viewed as busy individuals accordingly. The schedule would be set at the most convenient time that most number of parents could attend. The first three days of the program shall involve lecture and presentations, while the last two days shall consist of the role-playing procedures. During the role playing activities, interaction between the presenters and the audiences shall be encouraged to be able to discuss the cases that each group presents. This design aims to involve all the parents in the community not singling anyone out. This would help avoid the notion that the participants invited are bad parents thus reducing the possibility of developing stereotyping among the participants and other members of the community being served.

The proctors are expected to have ample experience as being parents. This will make it easier for the proctors to relate to their audiences as the issues they would be discussing are the ones that personally afflict them as well. Through this program design, it is expected that the participants would not only develop a well informed understanding of parenthood but would also be able to see the practicality of applying what they have learned from the workshop.

For the sake of creating an evaluating element that the program would be based on, it is important that the proctors along with the ones who would administer the program pursue a follow-up survey both on the parents who have attended the week-long workshop and those who did not. This shall be considered at least a month after the application of the program in a particular community. Through the collaborative help of other community agencies dedicated to family assistance programs, the parents from the [specific] area in concern shall be asked to respond to a random survey that shall be passed on from house to house. The response of the parents to the questions shall determine whether or not there is a difference between those who attended the program and those who did not based on how they react to particular parent-child issues presented in the questionnaires handed to them.

Performance Measurement and Monitoring

The last two days of the program already serves as a preliminary performance measuring method. The case analysis and role playing approach shall identify whether or not the parents were able to grasp the real meaning of the workshop. Interaction between the parents with regards the resolutions they have presented in relation to the situations they were given shall serve as a manner of establishing a monitoring process that the parents are expected to carry on even after the end of the workshop’s program.

As based from the previous section, the survey approach to be considered after a month of applying the program in the community shall be used as the quasi-measurement tool that would determine the success that the program has garnered in accordance to its established goals (Kettner, 98). With this approach of program analysis, the administrator would be able to determine what elements of the program worked best for the operation that needed to be covered for the participants considered and what else could be done to increase the program’s competence accordingly.

Performance Evaluation

Has the program successfully done its part? This could only be determined through a survey report that shall be handled a month after the workshops implication on the community. This survey shall include an interview and survey questions directed to the participants in relation to how much of the lessons they have learned have they actually applied in their parenting procedures. After which, quarterly reports are to be completed hence creating a graphic-based visual presentation on the statistical record on abuse occurring in each community being served (Kettner, 96).

Repetitive visits to the communities addressed are important parts of the program. This consideration will allow the community’s administrators to see to it that the parents in their area are able to respond accordingly to their role as mentors to their children instead of being dictators to the young ones which often lead to violent verbal and physical abuse. This will make it easier for the program being experimented to be established as the foundation of good parenting among different communities that are relatively on the list of areas which the program is supposed to serve.

Conclusion

It is strongly imposed through the application of the 3P2A program for parents that protecting the children’s welfare is based on community effort. Without the collaboration of the community, parents could be at a loss on how they are supposed to provide protection to their children, at times from themselves. Helping parents see their mistakes, accept them and practically change them shall be the primary basis of success that the program suggested herein could be dependent upon. True, with proper education on what abuse it and how to avoid it in relation to applying parental roles among families for the sake of improving the way children are treated, it is expected that a lesser percentage of children would have to undergo moments of being abused and mistreated by their own parents or other older members of the family.

Experimenting through comparison of results between the parents who have undergone the 3P2A program shall provide this approach to developmental parenting to become more effective in conveying its mission to the public. The response of the parents shall determine whether or not it is indeed able to deliver according to expectations and likely be presented with what else needs to be improved to make the whole program specifically affective of the growth of the parents, the children and the whole community as well.

References:

Performance Measurement, Monitoring, Program Evaluation. Reading Requirement.

Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 43-88.

Baumrind, D. (1978). “Parental disciplinary patterns and social competence in children“. Youth and Society 9: 238–276.

Kettner, P.M. , et al. (2013) Designing and Managing Programs: An Effectiveness Based Approach. Fourth Edition.  Sage Publications.

Santrock, J.W. (2007). A topical approach to life-span development, third Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.