Have you sought 'professional' help with parenting?

[Just Me]

This is actually kind of embarrassing to admit but ...

when I was teaching, I was a behaviour management specialist and I was a liaison teacher at a special school for kids with severe behavioural difficulties and part of my role was to teach parenting. It's embarrassing because now I know how clueless I was and I cringe at some of the stuff I used to teach.

I mainly taught MYCP (Management of Young Children Program (MYCP)), though we did run through some of teh PPP stuff with parents as well as Glasser's reality therapy where it was relevant.

Most of the parents were struggling though and I was mostly focusing on things like teaching them how to give instructions to their kids and make sure they followed through with ensuring the child followed the instructions. I did some skilling for specific situations (PPP stuff).

I think the hardest thing about what I was teaching parents to do is that I don't really think that way about being a parent now that I am a parent myself.

So that is my embarrassing story ...

I guess the whole point of my story though is to say that not all parent 'experts' are actually experts at all. And from doing lots of reading, most of the theorists have just gotten ideas about parenting because they did something with their own kids and it worked.

I have read PET, like Tanstar mentioned above and I found it a really useful and practical resource. I find it easier to read though but I think if there was any kind of option for a parenting program like that in my area, I would probably go for it. Most of what is on offer here locally is "Growing Kids God's Way" (otherwise known as Childwise). There aren't a lot of options here unless they are done over the web but I think I would rather read a book in that case.