Public/Private Schools

• Is your community concerned with school safety?

• Are you stumped by parents’ questions concerning high risk adolescent behavior?

• Would it help if parents were more involved in the problem solving process?

• Is student attendance and performance an issue in your district?

• Do your parents need concrete tools and emotional support to deal more effectively with the negative choices their children are making?

• Are you looking for cost effective methods to prevent and intervene in high risk student behavior?

The Parent Project® is a parenting skills program designed specifically for parents with strong-willed or out-of-control children. Because of its success in preventing, identifying and intervening in the most destructive of adolescent behaviors, the Parent Project® has won three state awards in California and has been successfully adopted for use by hundreds of schools and community based organizations throughout the nation. Parent Project® classes are generally presented as a community service by school districts, law enforcement agencies, churches, mental health or other concerned community organizations.

The Parent Project® is a comprehensive, award winning model for school based programs serving high risk families. At the heart of the Parent Project® is a parent training program designed specifically for parents with difficult or out-of-control adolescent children. "Changing Destructive Adolescent Behavior", is the only parenting skills program of its kind in the United States in that it focuses on the most destructive of adolescent behaviors.

Nobody questions that parents should be the primary agent of guidance and influence in a child’s life. Generally, they have the love, the desire and the access it takes to make a difference. Juvenile courts recognized the central role of parents long ago and started mandating parenting programs. Still, many moms and dads have watched helplessly as their children sank deeper and deeper into trouble.

As you have worked with such parents, you may have found yourself thinking, "Why don’t these parents do something?"

The overwhelming majority of parents deeply love and care about their children and truly want them to be successful. Unfortunately, for many high risk families, repeated frustrations and failures combined with the daily stresses of life often lead to feelings of helplessness. Many have simply given up what they consider to be a losing battle.

The Parent Project® is an entirely new parent training model. It not only delivers new skills and insights, it rekindles hope. Parents have the opportunity to experience success at home within the first week.

The program was developed over a ten year period while working with thousands of high-risk families. It is designed to give parents the hope, the skills and the practical and emotional support they need to change destructive adolescent behavior. It directly addresses some of the most serious questions educators are asked again and again:

• "Homework? What homework?"

• My eleven year old is smoking; what do I do?

• My child refuses to go to school. How should I respond?

• What can I do when my child beats me up?

• How can I stop my son’s gang involvement?

• My fourteen-year-old is addicted to crack and prostituting to support her habit. How can I get her back?

The Parent Project® offers concrete, no-nonsense solutions. The straightforward, step- by-step action plans presented in the curriculum allow parents to take immediate steps toward intervention.

Our answer: give parents the specific tools, knowledge and support they need to successfully prevent and/or intervene in the most destructive of adolescent behaviors. Strengthened with knowledge and workable strategies, parents can resume their rightful role and support positive change.

Many school districts provide referrals to parenting classes, only to hear they delivered no real help to parents of out-of-control adolescents.

Why? Most parenting programs stress communication. They assume that if parents make their desires clearly known in an appropriate way, children will respond positively.

The truth is, even when parents communicate skillfully and kids know exactly what parents want, many strong-willed children refuse to change their behavior. Parents are ignored, ridiculed, threatened, even hit. Communication certainly isn’t bad, it just isn’t enough. It takes more than talk to motivate kids to change. Motivating and influencing our children’s positive change is what the Parent Project® is all about.

The Parent Project® gives parents more than communication skills. It teaches proven strategies which powerfully influence children to change even the most destructive behaviors, including alcohol and drug use, gang affiliation, truancy, family conflict, violence and running away. To date, more than 80,000 parents in thirty states have completed our award-winning program.

The Parent Project® has been adopted for use by state departments of education, school districts, courts, local law enforcement agencies, probation departments, mental health care professionals, the United States military and communities in 30 states. It is currently the largest court mandated or juvenile diversion program in many areas, including the Parent Project's® home region of Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties and the entire state of Idaho. (County probation departments in Idaho report a one-third drop in juvenile crime and one year recidivism rates as low as 4% after mandating Parent Project® classes.)

Empower your students at school by helping parents improve the environment at home.