How can I support the Head Start community in its parenting education efforts?
I can act on the knowledge…
Last year Hillsdale Head Start hosted a series of parenting education workshops, once a month on Thursday afternoons. Despite careful planning and offers of transportation and child care, attendance was minimal. This year's planning group knows they will need to offer more than afternoon workshops to reach more parents but aren't sure where to begin.
Cityside Head Start staff are in the process of rewriting their job descriptions so everyone has some role and responsibility for engaging parents. The topic of parenting education has come up but staff don't agree on what “parenting education” means and whose job it is.
Mt. View Head Start offers an eight week parenting education course using the curriculum they purchased years ago. Although they still have a good turnout for the sessions, parents have indicated they would like to pursue topics that are not part of the curriculum. The planning team knows they need to make changes, but aren't sure if they should adapt the current curriculum or buy something totally new. Funds are limited so they want to make a wise choice.
The parent center committee in Northwood Head Start has volunteered to plan and facilitate several parenting education events for the upcoming year. They have asked the director for some training to build their skills as a support for this volunteer effort.
After reviewing this year's enrollment information, the staff at Plainville Head Start realize they have many more single parent fathers, grandparents, and foster parents than ever before. And, with the start-up of Early Head Start, they anticipate an increase in young teen parents. They're not sure where to begin planning parenting education activities for such a diverse group.
Parenting a child is one of the most critical jobs there is. Children's sense of self, their values and their perspectives on the world are all shaped by parents. However, parenting is not an innate skill and children do not come with a set of instructions. This means that all parents, regardless of their skills and former experience, need support from time to time to parent. Head Start can play a critical role in providing parents access to the information and skills they need to do their job.
Every Head Start program already offers many types of parenting education opportunities. But like the scenarios above, most programs must continually strive to make changes in their parenting education efforts to meet the needs and interests of today's parents. Just as parenting is often a challenge, creating a menu of parenting education opportunities that are inviting and accessible can be a challenge for those responsible for planning activities.
It is not easy to define parenting education because the areas in which parents seek knowledge and skills vary considerably. Years ago when the field was new, experts believed there was a formula for “good” parenting that, if implemented appropriately, would yield “good” children. Of course that rarely worked, but the model of the expert telling parents what to do and say persisted for a long time.
Head Start led the shift away from seeing only professionals as the “experts” on parenting to seeing parents as the child's first teacher. This model of thinking has inspired today's attitudes toward parenting education and serves as an underlying assumption for this guide on designing parenting education opportunities.
Parents come to Head Start from a range of backgrounds and experiences. Some are very young, others are older and parenting their grandchildren; some are first-time parents and others come with years of parenting experience; some come with rich support networks and others come alone; some come with confidence and others come uncertain and feeling powerless. They come from different cultural backgrounds, they come in different genders and they come with different ideas about what it means to be a “good” parent. Yet all come wanting what's best for their children.
The challenge of meeting the parenting education needs for such a diverse audience can be daunting for any program. Certainly no one person in a program can manage it alone. The activities in this guide will enable a team of participants, working together, to develop a comprehensive parenting education plan tailored to the interests and needs of their particular Head Start group. The plan that is developed by a team in any given year will undoubtedly need to be revised the following year as the population and interests of parents changes. The planning team must continually gather information, review resources, and create new materials and activities to make the best possible matches with the parents currently in their program.
The Head Start Program Performance Standards require programs to:
- Provide regular opportunities for parents
to work together with staff and with other community members on
activities they have helped develop and in which they have
expressed an interest;
- Provide opportunities for parents to
enhance their parenting skills, to extend their knowledge and
understanding of the educational and developmental needs of their
children, and to share concerns about their children with program
staff;
- Respect each family's uniqueness,
particularly in regard to their cultural and ethnic background;
and
- Promote children's mental and physical wellness by providing group and individual parenting education in health, mental health, dental, and nutritional issues.
