The importance of educating parents to be as effective as possible in raising children has been recognized in the United States since at least 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 skills and strategies that can be used immediately to address a variety of child-rearing challenges and problems. These programs are usually taught as parenting classes that meet once a week for several weeks. Briefer versions are also taught in the form of one-day seminars or training events.

These parenting classes and seminars are taught by instructors who follow a manual on how to teach the programs. Parents receive handbooks to help them learn and apply the program's parenting skills and strategies.

There now exists a wide range of such programs. Some of these modern programs have been created for parents of all backgrounds whose children are of different ages. Other programs are for parents from specific cultural and religious backgrounds, or for parents of infants, toddlers and preschoolers, or for parents of school-age children, or for parents of teenagers. See Parent Training Today: A Social Necessity and the CICC Parent Training and Family Life Catalog.

Below you will find brief descriptions of CICC's trio of parenting skill-building programs and other modern programs that CICC is using in its current parenting projects. You will be able to link to other sections of this website to learn more about these programs and how to bring them to your community.

Parents often feel controlled by their children's misbehaviors because they do not know how to set limits effectively. They may pay so much attention when their children mess up that they forget to notice the cooperative and peaceful times.

CICC's Confident Parenting Program teaches parents how to pay attention to and how to increase the times when their children's behavior is good. It also teaches effective limit-setting skills so that parents will not feel victimized by their children.

Parents learn the skills of effective praising, effective ignoring, mild social disapproval, "time-out" procedures for misbehavior, and how to set up special incentive systems for motivating cooperative behavior.

Raising children in modern American society is a challenging task. This is especially true for parents of African-American children. These parents face special problems that arise from our country's history of racism and discrimination, and which make it more difficult for them to raise children who are successful and achieving adults.

CICC's Effective Black Parenting Program teaches several parenting strategies that are unique to parents of African-American children, such as the Pyramid of Success for Black Children, Pride in Blackness, and Traditional Black Discipline vs. Modern Black Self-Discipline. It also teaches all of the parenting skills from the Confident Parenting Program but from within an African-American frame of reference and with the use of African proverbs.

Latino parents, especially those who primarily speak Spanish, face unique challenges in raising children in the United States. CICC's Los Niños Bien Educados Program is respectful of the traditions and customs of Latino families and is sensitive to the variety of adjustments that are made as they acculturate to life in the multi-cultural society of the United States.

Los Niños Bien Educados teaches parenting skills from within a Latino cultural frame of reference and with the use of Latino proverbs or dichos. Parents learn effective skills and strategies for promoting and maintaining those child behaviors that they define as reflective of a child who is "bien educados," i.e., a child who is well-educated in both a social and academic sense. The program can be taught in Spanish or English.

For any of these three CICC parenting programs, you can

• Obtain the Instructor Kits and Parent Handbooks.
• Enroll in Workshops to become a Certified Parenting Instructor.
• Contract with CICC to have a Class or Seminar taught in your community.
• Attend free classes and seminars if you are the parent of a young child (birth through five) and if you live in a community in Los Angeles County.
• Obtain professionally-oriented descriptions of the programs. These extensive descriptions cover the history, content and evaluation of the programs. They have been used by many professionals and community organizations as the basis for writing grant proposals for funding to bring the programs to their communities, school districts or agencies.

This program is designed expressly for parents with children under six years of age. It provides practical information and training about:

• Understanding young children
  
• Understanding young children's behavior
• Building self-esteem in the early years
• Listening and talking to young children
• Helping young children learn to cooperate
• Discipline for young children
• Young children's emotional and social development

This program, which is only taught as a full day seminar, provides parents of preschool children with an overview of what is important for young children to be able to do before they begin kindergarten. Then, it teaches parents very specific games and activities they can use at home to help their children develop the skills and attitudes that are needed to be successful in kindergarten - and throughout all of their formal education!

The goals of this program and its one-day seminar are to help parents prepare their pre-kindergarten children to:

1. Be academically ready,
2. Have good attitudes toward learning and towards school, and
3. Have good personal and social traits.

About 10 to 15 percent of young children have some type of disability or special needs that make their and their parents' lives particularly challenging. Children with disabilities or special needs include those with:

Developmental Delays – Children that are far behind their age mates in walking, talking or learning, etc.

Attention Problems – Children who just can't attend to anything for any length of time.

Hyperactivity Problems – Children that just can't sit still, some of whom also have attention problems.

Severe Tantrums – More frequent and more intense tantrums than most young children.

Aggression Problems – Children who are angry and fighting a great deal of the time.

Speech Impairments – Children whose speech is very hard to understand.

Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviors – Children who continuously repeat certain behaviors and have a hard time stopping.

Self-Destructive Behaviors – Head banging, biting self, pinching self continuously.

Self-Stimulation Behaviors – Hand flapping in front of face, arm waving.

Socially Withdrawn Behaviors – Keep to themselves, do not talk to other people, etc.

The Steps to Independence Program is designed for parents of children with these types of special needs or problematic behaviors. The program helps parents to understand these children better and it provides them with practical skills and strategies for effectively managing these behaviors and bringing some peace and harmony to the home.

Parents in this program receive and learn from a book with the same name of the program that was written by Dr. Bruce L. Baker of UCLA and his professional colleagues.

For the Steps to Independence Program, you can:

• Obtain the Steps to Independence Program,
• Enroll in an upcoming free class in this program if you live in Los Angeles County
• Inquire about bringing this program to your community by emailing Dr. Alvy or by calling CICC's toll free number: (800) 325-2422.

It is possible to bring any of the above parenting programs to your community so that you and your fellow parents can receive the excellent training and education these classes provide right in your own neighborhood.

If you would like to help bring one or more of the CICC Trio of Programs (Confident Parenting, Effective Black Parenting, or Los Niños Bien Educados Programs) to your area, this can be accomplished by either:

1. Having a professional, like an educator, social worker, counselor or psychologist, learn to be an instructor in a particular program. This can be accomplished by having that person attend an Instructor Training Workshop, where he or she will learn the program and how to conduct it. That instructor can then hold classes and seminars in your community. Click here to learn about Parenting Instructor Training Workshops.
2. Having a parent educator from your community, who is already trained and qualified, obtain the complete Instructor's Kit for the program and teach it to themselves. Then, using the manual and other teaching materials from the Kit, that person could run classes and seminars in your community. Click here to obtain the Instructor Kits for these programs.
3. Having your school, church, agency or community group contract with CICC to send an instructor to your community who will conduct a one-day seminar in the program for anywhere from 25 to 250 people. This option requires that you have a local group that wants to work with you and CICC in conducting such a seminar in your community. Click here to learn how to Contract with CICC to bring a One-Day Parenting Seminar to your area.

Also call Dr. Alvy to explore bringing the Steps to Independence Program to your community.