This fall’s run of the popular parent ed series is starting on the first of December 2021, and running for 12 Wednesdays (with a few holiday breaks) through to the end of February 2022.
We’ve been offering the Triple P: Positive Parenting Program annually for more than a half a dozen years, and over that time scores of OFC parents have found it to make a huge difference in their parenting. Some 162, to be exact.
The Triple P – Positive Parenting Program began over 20 years ago at the University of Queensland, in Australia, by early childhood psychology specialists. Each year it is refined and improved based on results of meticulous research –provided by the parents and caregivers using it worldwide. Thus it is extensively evidence-based and parent-tested.
Triple P takes a pro-active, rather than a punitive approach, educating parents and caregivers about key milestones in children’s social and emotional development. Armed with these insights, we can begin to understand why our child is or isn’t doing what we’re asking them to.
Oftentimes they want to get ready to go when we ask them to, but their little digits can’t work well enough to button those buttons, or zip those zippers! Other times, it can well be that they are hearing something different than we think we’re saying. Or that they honestly did forget. They may be trying to convey something to us, but their control over their tongue hasn’t caught up with the emergence of thoughts and feelings, and the only way they can express the frustration that emerges is to cry our act out.
Throughout the series, we’re reminded that children are not pint-sized adults, and we need to take the time to genuinely comprehend all the many ways this plays out in our everyday lives with them.
The twelve-week length of the series is also key–it takes that long for us effect behavioral change in ourselves, building up practice in providing appropriate, structured, consistent, effective responses to our children’s behavioral challenges.
Anyone who’s done dog training will recognize the pattern here: the training is for the human companion, far more than for the dog. Likewise with kids: your own consistency–and your knowing what they can and can’t do at a given age–helps enormously.
With Triple P, the specific behavioral goals you work toward are up to you. Most find that the biggest change–other than a reduction in parenting stress (!!)–is an increase in the time and energy you have for the joyful activities that deepen your bond with your child.
Want yet more info? Here’s what a local parent had to say about the impact of the class on her parenting.
