How to Get Parents Along to Your Parent Information Events

Many centres and schools hold regular parent information evenings, and there are good reasons for this practice. Parents who’ve had positive face-to-face interactions with their child’s educators feel more comfortable communicating with them, and visa versa when difficult conversations are called for. Giving parents insight into the inner workings of their child’s classroom builds trust and helps them know how best to support learning at home.

Educators often spend a lot of time planning these events, only to find the same few parents turning up time after time. Busy parents aren’t always interested in knowing what happens inside their child’s classroom because their own relationships with their children are more important factors in their family’s well-being on a day-to-day basis than their child’s academic progress. Parents are more interested in learning how to go shopping without the power struggles and the pleading. They want to know how to get their child out the door in the morning without threatening to leave without them, and why their go-to strategies like consequences, count downs or time-outs no longer work as their child gets older. Many parents wonder why the methods their own parents used don’t seem to work on their own children. No matter their cultural background parents all over the world have the same kinds of challenges with their children and the same aspirations. Parents everywhere want their children to grow up to be confident, capable, contributing members of society.

There’s a smorgasbord of parenting programs out there these days, but really there are just two types. First there are those that depend on an external locus of control to manage the child’s behaviour. Punishment and rewards do seem to work temporarily, although the ante has to be upped over time, and their long-term effect is to teach the child how to manipulate others. And then there are those programs that teach an internal locus of control – that is, they teach children to do the right thing when no one is looking.

Positive Discipline is unique among the latter type in showing adults how to gain the cooperation of their child by focusing on the one thing most parents don’t consider when thinking about their child’s misbehaviour – their own modelling! Parents have more power than they often realise to affect their children’s behaviour with their own attitudes and behaviours. For example, by using curiosity questions (such as “How can you and your brother solve this problem?”) instead of commands (like “Stop fighting with your brother now!”) adults are more likely to elicit a thoughtful response instead of a passive aggressive one.

In Positive Discipline courses parents learn dozens of tools like this through role play and Socratic questioning. Unlike pre-recorded webinars, live role play helps parents see the situation from the perspective of their child and feel what it’s like to be in their shoes. All humans, including children, seek connection and meaningful ways to contribute. Yet sometimes children develop mistaken ideas about how to gain belonging and significance from distorted cues in their surroundings. Most parenting programs deal only with the child’s misbehaviour, but behaviour is unlikely to change unless the beliefs that lie behind their misbehaviour are addressed first.

Positive Discipline sees a misbehaving child as a discouraged child and gives parents proven tools to gain the cooperation of their child peacefully by reestablishing a connection before there is any correction. As parents understand the reasons for their child’s misbehaviour better and learn effective techniques to sidestepping unproductive power struggles, they begin to enjoy parenting a whole lot more.

Dr Jane Nelsen’s first book Positive Discipline came out in 1981. Forty years later it has sold over 4 million copies in 17 languages, with courses available in over 80 countries around the world. Her approach has become the gold standard in parenting courses because of the dignity and respect which it affords both children and their parents. and because the experiential way that its tools are taught leads to deep and lasting change in a child’s most important relationships.

Research shows that a child’s relationship with a caring adult (who may or may not be the parent) can have a greater impact on their future well-being and life chances than anything they will learn at school, especially during their early years. Offer parents the keys to a cooperative and connected relationship with their child and you’ll have them lining up at the door!