The parenthood test
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- May
- 18
I hurried home from work yesterday for a date with a 20-page questionnaire at my sons’ school. The quiz was put together by the New York University Child Study Center and was one of a series of surveys for parents who participated in a program called Thriving Teens.
I volunteered for the program five or six years ago. At the time we were facing behavior problems with both sons – something I attributed to my eldest’s frustration with dyslexia, some parental inconsistency in enforcing consequences, and my youngest son aping his big brother’s behavior.
At weekly sessions over a couple of months, we talked about communicating clearly with our children and doing it without dragging in our own fatigue and frustration. We critiqued film clips of bad parenting performances – some of which seemed uncomfortably familiar – and viewed clips of more constructive methods.
Also interesting were sessions to help kids cope with peer pressure to smoke, drink, and do drugs. It’s certainly not foolproof, but it seems to me that a kid who has a ready and convincing response is better prepared to deal with these unwanted invitations. It was a good, diverse group of parents and soon we were sharing eye-rolling misadventures of our children.
The periodic surveys are designed to learn whether the program actually works: whether it has any affect on parents’ and children’s behavior; and if it results in less cigarette, alcohol and drug use.
To keep parents honest on the multiple-choice questionnaire, one child from each family gets fill out the quiz, too. Now that’s one test booklet I would have loved to swipe.
This entry was posted
on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 11:20 am by Len Maniace.
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