Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine Conscious Discipline’s (CD) Parenting Education Curriculum (CD PEC), the parenting component of CD’s research-based social and emotional learning program. CD aims to change child behavior by changing how adults understand and manage their own behaviors and emotions. Researchers explored CD PEC’s association with improved parenting skills, parent–child relationships and child behavior and emotion management.
Design/methodology/approach
During pre- and post-site visits, parents in four Head Start programs completed the Attentive Parenting Survey (n=25) and interviews (n=19); and 20 staff were also interviewed.
Findings
Parents reported that CD PEC shifted their perspectives and practices for managing children’s challenging behaviors, improved parent–child relationships and resulted in decreased child behavior problems.
Research limitations/implications
The study was correlational, based on self-report, and had a small sample with no comparison group.
Practical implications
This study supports CD PEC as a means of shifting parenting practices, relationships and child behavior by focusing on adult social-emotional skills and self-regulation.
Social implications
This study provides preliminary evidence that addressing the social-emotional needs of adults is a viable step to helping children improve their social skills, emotion regulation and general behavior, which have all been linked to later academic and life success.
Originality/value
The paper studies improvements in parents’ emotion recognition and self-regulation before disciplining their children.
ith large numbers of young children in nonparental care, policymakers and researchers share a strong interest in understanding and enhancing components of quality in child care and early education settings that support children's development and ensure their school readiness. Children's health and safety in child care is an important component and an essential basis of quality, since physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development are inextricably linked and related to children's readiness for school. 1 Children's health, however, is an undermeasured aspect of school readiness. 2 A major goal of the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program, which provided child care subsidies to a monthly average of nearly 1.7 million low-income children in Fiscal Year 2010 3 through a block grant administered by the Federal Office of Child Care, is to provide access to high-quality care-built on a foundation that assures their health and safety. The statute for the CCDF block grant program requires lead agencies in the states and territories to certify that state or local laws are in place that protect the health and safety of children in subsidized care in three broad areas: prevention and control of infectious diseases (including age-appropriate immunizations), building and physical premises safety, and minimum health and safety training appropriate to the provider settings. Additional statutory requirements support this overarching goal:
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