Promoting Children's Mental Health: The Effects of a Parenting Program

The How-to Parenting Program addresses all three key dimensions of optimal parenting; autonomy support, affiliation and structure. With weekly workshops, the How-to-Parenting Program optimizes learning by (1) linking group content with parents' needs, (2) facilitating awareness with perspective taking activities, (3) offering concrete parenting skills, (4) modeling the skills and providing practice in a predictable and non-judgmental environment, (5) emphasizing the importance of implementing these skills at home for long term behavioral change, and (6) offering tools (i.e., exercise booklet, skill summary) that facilitate information retention.