The Incredible Years

I am currently a parent educator who uses the Incredible Years Curriculum for parents who have children ages 3-6 and 6-12.  The curriculum has been researched and proven to help reduce misbehaviors, increase positive relationships between parents and their children and promote children's social, emotion and academic development.  This curriculum is based on a pyramid whose base consists of parents playing and giving special attention to their children to increase problem solving, self esteem and attachment.  Also using praise and encouragement and rewards to increase social skills, motivation and thinking skills.  Using these strategies liberally will in turn decrease the amount of ignoring, setting limits and using consequences that parents will have to do.   These techniques have been been implemented in other cultures as well as other countries and proven to work across the board.  After going through the program for 15 weeks and utilizing the strategies, parents have come  back and expressed how well the strategies are working for their children and how their lives are so much better because of using the techniques.

We had one set of parents who took the class who had separated because they were having so many issues with their children.  They were not communicating nor were they on the same page with how to handle the misbehaviors their children were exhibiting.  By the end of the class they discussed how they learned to communicate better amongst themselves and better strategies for dealing with their children.  they were working on putting their marriage back together and they expressed their gratitude for the techniques and strategies we gave them in the class! That was such a heart felt moment for me because it was my first time teaching the curriculum! Stories like that keep me motivated for implementing evidence and research based programs and conduct research myself.

My Personal Research Journey

I chose to research how the parenting practices of low income families contribute to the social emotional development of young children.  I wanted to know if their lack of parenting skills hindered their children's social emotional development.  Being a former early childhood educator and now a parent educator, I have been involved with families whose children have been diagnosed with behavioral problems and considered at risk due to poverty.  I have observed how the parents interact with their children and how the children interact in the classroom.  These children have delays in their cognitive, language and their social emotional development and it seemed more that their parents lack of skills and resources contributed to their delays than their being a special need with these children.  I wanted to know how much the parenting styles contributed to this delay.

I am not sure if my research topic is too specific or if I should be more specific because I am having difficulty finding sufficient information to begin my study.  If there is any advice anyone has that can help me make the topic more specific or know of any other resources it would be a big help.