LNBE's initial development in the late 1970's and early 1980's was stimulated by criticisms of the then-existing parent training programs that they were insensitive to the unique histories, values and traditions of Latino American parents.

The main programs that existed at that time included two programs that had become relatively popular with the general population of parents, the Humanistic psychology-based Parent Effectiveness Training Program (P.E.T.) which taught such parenting skills as active listening and I-messages, and the Adlerian psychology-based Systematic Training for Effective Parenting Program (STEP) which taught the use of such skills as logical and natural consequences, and how to conduct family problem solving meetings.

The then-existing programs also included several that were based on behavioral or social learning theory and which taught a variety of child management skills like behavior-specific praise, time out and the use of special incentives or home token economies. There were several behavioral programs existing at the time, some of which were geared for use with one family at a time and some, like the Confident Parenting Program, that were designed for use with groups of parents. All of the behavioral parenting programs were initially created for use with parents whose children were behaviorally, emotionally or developmentally disordered or challenged, and they were mainly delivered in clinical settings.

CICC was extremely familiar with P.E.T., STEP and Confident Parenting as it had created a national model instructor training program, under grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, to teach mental health, social service and educational personnel to deliver these programs through their clinics, hospitals and schools (Alvy and Rubin, 1981, Journal of Community Psychology).

Though these programs had been translated in Spanish to make them accessible to monolingual Spanish-speakers, they did not address child rearing issues that are specific to Latino Americans; they did not honor and respect cultural traditions and values; and they did not teach their skills in a culturally-sensitive manner.

In a culturally-adapted or transculturated version of a program, the entire program is reframed within themes and values that are particular to a specific cultural group. New content or instructional units are added to the program, which address child rearing issues or challenges that are particular to that cultural group. And the parenting skills from the original program are taught in a manner that makes them feel familiar to the group and its history.

For example, in the culturally-adapted version of the Confident Parenting Program that CICC created for the African American community, the teachings of that behaviorally-based child management program were cast or framed within an achievement orientation to raising African American children that stressed the importance of cultural pride. That program also includes instructional units that explore the slavery origins of certain disciplinary practices that are common in many of today's African American communities, and the program provides alternative practices that are designed to instill self-discipline. That program (which is called CICC's Effective Black Parenting Program) also presents its basic parenting skills by using African proverbs so as to ground the skills in the wisdom of the African ancestors.

In the case of the program being described here, it too is a culturally-adapted or transculturated version of the behaviorally-based Confident Parenting Program. Here the teachings of the Confident Parenting were reframed around the unique Latino American value of raising children to be "bien educados" (well-educated in a social sense as well as an academic sense, including knowing one's place in the family and being respectful of adults and elders). New content regarding the meaning of "bien educados" was added to the program, as were new instructional units on traditional family roles and the types of acculturation adjustments that Latino American families make to life in the United States. Additional content that was not part of the original Confident Parenting Program was also added, as was the use of Spanish proverbs (dichos) to help ground the teaching of the program skills in a culturally and linguistically familiar mode.

The culturally-adapted program was called Los Niños Bien Educados and its materials were translated into Spanish. So, in this case, we have both a translated and transculturated program.

CICC developed LNBE during the same time in history that it was developing its Effective Black Parenting Program. But there were many differences in the resources that CICC had available to develop and test both programs. CICC first had a three year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct the research that was needed to identify the cultural themes and values that would be incorporated into the new programs (1979-1981). That grant from the Minority Mental Health Branch of NIMH allowed for the creation and field testing of an initial version of the Effective Black Parenting Program, but not for the creation of what would become LNBE. It did, however, underwrite the research with Latino American parents that served as the basis for focusing on the value of "bien educados" and for including coverage of traditional family roles and acculturation adjustments.

That research included the use of projective, word association measures to study cultural values, as such values are believed to operate below conscious awareness and therefore must be explored through the use of measures that are sensitive to unconscious processes. It also included the use of parental reports about the practices they use in disciplining and guiding their children's development. The research is reviewed in the book, Parent Training Today: A Social Necessity that was written by CICC's executive director, clinical child psychologist, Dr. Kerby T. Alvy. Dr. Alvy was principal investigator of the NIMH research project.

That research project also brought together a distinguished panel of Latino American behavioral and social science researchers, educators and mental health experts. They provided interpretations and expansions on the research findings, as well as recommendations about which aspects of the Confident Parenting Program to emphasize when developing the transculturated version.

The actual development of the transculturated version had to wait for another few years, and it took place under very different conditions than the further development of the Effective Black Parenting Program.

The Effective Black Parenting Program was refined and systematically tested with control and treatment groups, and with multiple outcome measures that focused on protective and risk factors, through a three-year, $850,000 grant to CICC from the Prevention Research Branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (1985-1988). The creation of the LNBE program, however, was done under a small grant to CICC from the Mattel Foundation in the mid-1980's. That modest grant allowed CICC to utilize the research from the earlier NIMH project to reframe the Confident Parenting Program, to create new instructional units and to include the use of "dichos" in teaching parenting skills. An instructor's manual and parent handbooks in English and Spanish were created. But the Mattel grant did not include funding for the type of multiple-measure, controlled study that the NIDA grant allowed with the Effective Black Parenting Program.

A good example of how the research that confirmed the centrality of the value of "bien educados" was utilized in reframing the Confident Parenting Program is as follows. Confident Parenting teaches parents how to pinpoint those troublesome child behaviors they want to see less of and to pinpoint those they want to see more of, and then how to use behavior consequence skills to change the future frequency of these "inappropriate" and "appropriate" child behaviors.

CICC reframed this basic strategy by having the LNBE Program start with asking the parents their definitions of what "bien educados" means (being respectful, etc.); having them turn their general definitions into the specific behaviors they view as reflecting when a child is behaving in a "bien educados" fashion (when he speaks in a polite tone of voice to his parents or elders, etc.), and then orienting the parents that the program will be teaching skills to help them bring out more of the "respectful" behaviors of their children that they define as characteristic of a child who is "bien educados". A similar procedure is used to help the parents define child behaviors that they see as being reflective of a child who is behaving in a "mal educados" fashion, and here they are oriented that the program will teach methods to diminish these "disrespectful" behaviors, etc.

So, in summary, the history of the LNBE Program began with the recognition of the need for a parent training program that resonated with and reflected the values of the many Latino American parents in the United States. New research was conducted to identify core values and issues that could be incorporated into a transculturated version of a behavioral parent training program that had already been shown to be effective in helping parents to enhance protective factors and reduce risk factors for such problems as juvenile delinquency and substance abuse. The new research and the recommendations of Latino American parenting scholars were used in creating the LNBE Program, which is now one of the most widely used and widely accepted parenting programs in Latino American communities nationwide.

Theoretical Assumptions and Outcomes Expected

All theories of problem behavior (whether they are theories about the causes of substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, gang participation, youth violence, and child abuse and child behavior problems) bring attention to the nature of relationship between children and their parents and to the ways that parents raise children. Whether one assumes a theoretical perspective of a Social-Ecological, Developmental or Ecological-Development nature, all perspectives implicate the child-parent relationship and the quality of parenting as being important in whether a child does or does not engage in problem behaviors.

CICC's LNBE Program draws on all of the perspectives in its emphasis on providing parents with training to (1) help them enhance the quality of their relationships with their children, and to (2) employ parenting strategies and skills that research has shown to be most helpful in raising pro-social, competent and healthy children. For example, the LNBE Program teaches parents skills like Effective Praise to help them become more warm and accepting of their children's characteristics and abilities, and it teaches non-violent disciplinary skills like Mild Social Disapproval and Time Out to help them to be firm and fair in how they guide and supervise their children's development. High parental warmth and acceptance mixed with firm and fair discipline has been shown to be the most effective parenting pattern (the authoritative parenting pattern) for helping children to become successful and healthy adults.

CICC's LNBE Program also draws on the idea that parenting programs that respect and honor one's culture are not only maximally effective in getting parents to use the skills that they teach. These programs also lead to a sense of group ownership and are seen as vehicles for advancing the group as a whole, goals and outcomes that are unlikely with non-culturally specific interventions.

• Before she was a very disobedient child and I used to punish her but now if she doesn't obey me I tell her that I don't like that. So I give her more attention and I say to her that I like when she helps me. I explain to her that I can send her to her room, so everytime something happens I say to her that I'm going to send you to her room. She answer, "Yes, I'll be quiet." I learned a lot in class. I think what my kids want is more attention.

• When he was mad he used to hit his head and kick the floor, but not anymore. He stopped because I used a sheet of paper that the teacher gave me to count how many times he was doing that so when he noticed I was doing that he stopped. It got better because I let him know that I like other things he does, I let him know all the time. Do this without punishing or screaming or spanking.

• Because she is the only girl. We always play and she helps me a lot. She defends me from her brother. Now that I took the class I know how to talk to them and how to understand them. I learned the different methods of how kids can obey me more.

• Before I never used to look at his papers from school, but now I have more time to do so. Because now I always tell him that he is doing a good job, and that he can do better. I learned how to explain that he can do a better job and to have better communication with him. He used to be very disobedient.

• Because we learned how to give more attention and what to do when he does something good or bad. Because he likes to be rewarded. I learned a lot, especially how to praise the kids.

• Because before she used to be very disobedient but after I took the class I learned how to give her more attention. I think I got better because of the attention I give her.

• I don't get as mad as I used to. He is behaving much better. I learned how to talk to the kids without getting mad.

• Now she obeys me more, because of what the teacher teaches us. I also learned how to help my child with his homework.

• He obeys me more and is doing much better in school. I used the techniques that I learned and I got good results. I also learned how not to get excited.

• I learned how to educate my kid without spanking her.

CICC's Board decided to expand nationwide by offering parenting instructor training workshops in different cities, including workshops in the Confident Parenting, Effective Black Parenting and the LNBE program. One of the main reasons for this planned expansion is that CICC had been asked by the new federal agency that was responsible for mounting the "war on drugs" (the Office for Substance Abuse Prevention which eventually became the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention) to play a pivotal role in their effort to promote parent training as a major strategy to reduce youth substance abuse.

The OSAP project was called "Parent Training Is Prevention" and it included professional conferences in different regions of the country to engage state and local drug abuse agencies in utilizing parent training programs. CICC's founder and Executive Director, Dr. Alvy, was asked to write a paper that provided a scientific justification for using parent training as a strategy to help prevent drug abuse, and a paper where he distilled from the research and clinical literature the various roles that parents can play in preventing and treating drug abuse. He was also asked to help in selecting the best available programs for national replication and he recommended several programs including LNBE. (Dr. Alvy's writings and the descriptions of the 23 selected programs including LNBE appeared in a 1991 OSAP monograph entitled, sure enough, Parent Training Is Prevention). Dr. Alvy was also asked to keynote the regional conferences, which were designed to introduce the model programs to state and county agencies nationwide.

CICC agonized over whether to include the LNBE Program in its national expansion, since it had not been as thoroughly evaluated as either Confident Parenting or Effective Black Parenting. It decided to include LNBE because:

1. It is a behavioral parent training program, and these types of programs were continuing to receive the most extensive empirical support in studies all over the United States, and particularly studies that targeted high risk families.
2. LNBE contains and teaches the behavioral child management skills from the Confident Parenting Program, and that program had been carefully researched and shown to be quite effective.
3. CICC's other transculturated program, Effective Black Parenting, which also teaches the Confident Parenting child management skills, had been carefully researched in a well-financed prevention research study and had been shown to both enhance a variety of family and child protective factors and to reduce a variety of family and child risk factors.
4. Programs that address and are sensitive to the cultural values and traditions of the growing Latino American populations were extremely scarce, and there was no other transculturated behavioral parent training program on the horizon. In short, there was a great need for LNBE.

The program was presented at the regional conferences that were sponsored by the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention. Several states became very interested and contracted with CICC to conduct instructor training workshops. The first State was Illinois and its substance abuse prevention division had CICC mount an initial workshop in 1989 in Chicago. They systematically recruited five Mexican American, five Puerto Rican and five Cuban professionals from local agencies to take the training workshop, as they wanted to know if the program would be appropriate for these different Latino American groups. The participants agreed that the program was a good fit, as its teachings had general appeal to all of the Latino American groups. These instructors ran the program in their agencies and let the prevention division know that the results with parents were highly satisfactory. The prevention division contracted with CICC to run additional instructor workshop in different parts of Illinois.

The State of Kansas, which was experiencing an influx of Latino Americans, was also very interested. Through its statewide drug abuse prevention effort (which was initially called the Kansas Family Initiative) , it too contracted with CICC to conduct LNBE workshops and it too was pleased with the results. It was so impressed by both the acceptance of the program by leaders in Latino American communities and by parents who enrolled in LNBE classes that the state has made LNBE a centerpiece of its drug prevention efforts and continues to this day to have CICC run instructor training workshops on a yearly basis.

The Drug and Alcohol Department in California also learned about LNBE at the regional conferences. Because of the Department's proximity to Los Angeles, it sent several prevention division staffers to observe a LNBE program being run at a Los Angeles school. With this hands-on experience to supplement the reports from the Mattel evaluation, they decided to underwrite statewide trainings to prepare drug abuse, mental health and social service personnel to deliver the program.

Some of the individuals who were trained through this statewide effort were from the country's largest public child welfare agency, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. They saw LNBE as being so relevant to their mission with Latino abusive families that they incorporated the program into their new Latino Family Preservation Project, where it not only won appreciation from the hundreds of Latino families who had a chance to take it but it also won the department a national award for delivering culturally-relevant family preservation services.

Another result of the California Statewide Training was that another country agency that had staff members trained, the Santa Clara County Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Programs in Northern California, conducted its own evaluation of LNBE. Their evaluation was accomplished by researchers from Stanford University. Their 1991 study included the use of additional instructional materials on substance abuse as part of the teaching of the LNBE Program. The study used a pre-post test design and found out that parents who completed the majority of the training sessions showed significant gains in knowledge of child development and parenting skills, as well as significant gains in drug awareness knowledge.

Other organizations that have had their staffs trained to deliver LNBE, including almost all of the Head Start agencies in Los Angeles County, also report that the program produces a wide range of positive results and they continue to have more staff trained to deliver it each year. In addition, other organizations that have incorporated LNBE into their everyday services continue to earn awards for using the program, such as the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic in the State of Washington. They won a 1998 award from the National Latino Children's Institute where LNBE was described as "one of the nation's most innovative and outstanding programs for Latino children and their parents."

Recent Studies

As part of its current Effective Parenting Campaign and Child Care System and Parenting Education Projects in Los Angeles, CICC is conducting and evaluating a series of parenting classes and one-day seminars in several parenting programs, including classes and seminars in the Los Niños Bien Educados Program.

Each class and seminar is evaluated by having the parents complete Parent Effectiveness Questionnaires before they start the class or seminar, and at the end of the class or seminar. These rated Questionnaires test the parents on the effective parenting concepts, skills and strategies that are taught in a particular program (pre-post test design). This method allows for determining whether the parents make significant gains from the beginning to the end of the classes and seminars.

At the end of each class and seminar, the parents also indicate if they have been changed in any ways as a result of their participation and whether they have observed or expect changes in how their children behave. Here they are given the opportunity to describe these changes in their own words.

Finally, a third method for evaluating the classes and seminars is a series of rated questions about the seminar or class and the instructor and about what they have learned.

Research Reports on these classes and seminars are becoming available on a regular basis. Below you will find summaries of those research reports for classes and/or seminars in the Los Niños Bien Educados Program.

Research Report 1 - Los Niños Bien Educados class, September 20, 2000 to December 16, 2000, at Los Angeles Mission College, Sylmar, California, Magdalena Malagon, LCSW, Instructor.

This class was taught in Spanish. A total of 27 parents attended, and 17 were available for both the pre and post testing. Only 11 percent of the parents were born in the United States: 74 percent were born in Mexico, 11 percent in El Salvador and 4 percent in Guatemala. The vast majority had only a high school or less formal education. Each parent or family averaged 2.74 children, with at least one child in the age range of birth through five years.

Results of the Parent Effectiveness Questionnaire showed a statistically significant improvement from pre to post testing, t(16) = 5.19, p < .001. A close examination of these results revealed that there was significant progress on the parents' part in terms of expanding their knowledge about the cultural contributors to effective parenting and significant progress in using those program skills which are taught as alternatives to spanking and other forms of corporal punishment.

The vast majority of parents (90 to 95 percent) also indicated that as a result of the class they felt differently and more positively about being a parent and about their children. In addition, all parents reported that they had seen their children behave better because of their using the ideas and skills taught in the class. Typical descriptions of changes in child functioning included statements like, "They do their chores without me having to remind them and they are better behaved" and "They now perceive that they are important to me. Their self-esteem has improved."