The PPE curriculum is founded on the principles of family systems, life span development and creating long term change. Its flexibility allows it to be easily tailored to all stages of parenting for diverse populations and varied settings. Parenting skills cannot be developed or significantly changed through exposure to a single parenting series but rather through continued involvement in classes in a supportive environment throughout the child rearing years.

The core curriculum prepares parent educators to work with families throughout their parenting experience. Supplemental curricula address more complex and challenging areas of need.

Core Curriculum Table of Contents

Section 1. Understanding Your Role as a Parent

Understanding the family system as a whole

Recognizing traits in a healthy family

Identifying your role as the primary model for your child

 

Section 2. Developing Trust within the Family

Developing and maintaining trusting relationships within the family

Understanding attachment and bonding between parent and child

Rebuilding trust that has been broken

Parenting from a distance

 

Section 3. Communicating within the Family

Communicating effectively with children at all stages

Expressing and communicating feelings and emotions

Identifying family communication patterns

Communicating with children about sexuality

Dealing with anger in the family

Helping children learn to manage and resolve conflict peacefully

Defusing family disagreements

 

Section 4. Building Self-Esteem within the Family

Building and nurturing self-esteem in children

Knowing and valuing the child as an individual

Building and nurturing self-esteem in parents

Encouraging children’s growth in social skills

Helping children learn to make healthy choices

Teaching children kindness and respect for other children

Helping children learn to handle competition

Understanding the powerful influences of gangs on children

Understanding the complexities of bullying and social cruelty in children

 

Section 5. Understanding Parenting and Power

Establishing authority as a parent

Choosing effective discipline techniques

Giving children responsibility for themselves

Dealing with sibling rivalry

Encouraging motivation in children

Developing teamwork in a child’s educational experience

Resolving homework issues

Understanding how parenting patterns in the early years set a course for the future

Building a powerful parenting role to prevent youth substance abuse

Recognizing and responding to child behaviors outside the norm

Raising children of character

Creating family memories: Traditions, rituals and routines

 

Section 6. Accepting and Growing through Natural Transitions in the Life Cycle

Understanding developmental stages in children

Moving through the stages of parenting

Dealing with stress in the family

Helping children handle peer pressure

Easing transitions into adolescence

Strengthening the father/child relationship

Parenting the second time: Grandparents rearing grandchildren

 

Section 7. Accepting and Growing through Unexpected Transitions in the Life Cycle

Coping with mobility and relocation

Helping children cope with change and loss

Growing through single parenting

Growing through step-parenting

Understanding the complexities of teenage parents

Balancing parenting and a career

Meeting needs in the family with a special child

Building resiliency in children

Creating cultural harmony in the family: balancing the challenges of bi-cultural parenting

Parenting to counterbalance outside influences: When pop culture collides with family values

Are our children growing up too fast?

 

Section 8. Parent Educator Facilitation Information

 

Section 9. Program Implementation Information

 

Section 10. Evaluations and Reporting Forms (English and Spanish)

 

Parenting Quick Tips

In today’s climate of sound bites and instant messaging, information must be available in a variety of user-friendly forms. Recognizing that parents can benefit from concise reminders of parental behaviors that work, many of our curricula modules have one or more accompanying Quick Tips, bulleted and brief, appropriate for the bathroom mirror or refrigerator. PPE publishes 12 new Quick Tips every year, each dealing with a particular circumstance or age-defined behavior. PPE subscribers have the exclusive right to reproduce Quick Tips for distribution to parents. For a list of Quick Tips, click here (.pdf).

Turning Points

A Curriculum for Incarcerated Parents and Parents Transitioning Back into Society and their Families

 Turning Points is a parenting curriculum designed to address the unique issues facing families in which a parent is incarcerated.  Its targeted audience is parents serving sentences generally for lesser degree offenses, those who will be released in a matter of months or a few years and who will thus be resuming their parenting roles.  This curriculum includes 15 lessons and is available in English and Spanish. 

Session Titles:

 ·    Understanding Your Parenting Style

·    Dealing with Complex Emotions in Children

·    How to Communicate from a Distance with Children and Their Caregivers

·    Rebuilding Trust that Has Been Broken

·    Dealing with Children’s Anger

·    Learning Positive Discipline Techniques

·    Self-Esteem in Children and Their Parents

·    Keeping Children Safe from Harm:  Preventing Child Abuse and Accidents

·    Setting Developmentally Appropriate Expectations for Children

·    Understanding Temperaments within the Family

·    A Chance for New Beginnings

·    Reuniting a Family:  Transitioning Back into Family Life

·    Encouraging Children’s Success in School

·    Becoming a Positive Role Model for Children

·    Rearing Children of Strong Moral Character

 Turning Points Order Form