Practical Parent Education Newsletter

A parent's ability to affect a student's graduation destiny is more powerful and starts much earlier than we previously thought.   While educators have typically identified the beginning of the dropout process as kindergarten, we now have evidence that the process of disengagement from learning activities and processes is actually underway long before that time marker. This news is coming from educational researchers as well as from the mouths of dropouts themselves. As the nation responds to President Obama's initiative to find a way to keep the 7,000 students who drop out each school day in the classroom doing their work, it makes good sense to start at the beginning of the process - early parenting practices.

Studies reported in the Dropout Risk Factors and Exemplary Programs: A Technical Report done by National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University and Communities In Schools, Inc. show significant links between the quality of early caregiving and the mother-child relationships to future dropout (Jimmerson et al.,2000). Jimmerson's study followed an at-risk sample of youth from birth to age 19 to assess the impact of the early home environment on school dropout. Their conclusion was that those psychosocial factors early in development in the family were "powerful predictors of high school status at the age of 19."

Infants are born with their own genetically hard wired brains, but the development of their brains after birth is heavily dependent on their experiences and activities - the electrical activities in the sensory, emotional, motor and cognitive circuits. Circuits that are used a lot will become stronger and those that are not used will go away. We also know now that some parts of a child's brain will fail to activate without certain kinds of bonding and attachment.

The bonding and attachment that occur during the first months of a child's life are the main keys to that child's healthy emotional development. "Bonding" is the intense feeling that develops between parents and their baby that makes them attentive to the baby's needs. "Attachment" is the security that results in babies when parents respond to their needs. Without that secure attachment in place, babies will not be able to regulate their emotions or develop and maintain healthy relationships in later life. The security of knowing that their needs will be met helps them become resilient and cope with stress. They feel that they are valued and that sense of self-worth promotes their success in school.

As children move into the toddler stage, parents and children begin working out the parenting patterns that they will likely follow throughout the academic years unless some event or intervention initiates a change. Most parents parent in one of two ways: (1) They do what their parents did which may or may not have worked well with them and may or may not work well with a child with a different temperament. (2) They take just the opposite approach with the same potential results.

The Pew Charities Trust Report declares that parenting practices are leading predictors of social ills such as "child abuse, neglect, delinquency, substance abuse, violence, poor academic achievement and teen pregnancy"- many of the same warning signs of undesirable academic destinies.

It is not surprising that the parenting style that dropouts most frequently report as the one in which they were raised is permissive; that is the same parenting style reported most frequently by prison inmates. The permissive family atmosphere where parents set few guidelines and consequences and have few expectations is likely to result in the same behaviors that were evident in students before they dropped out of school: difficulty following rules of society, poor family communication, lack of effort, poor self concept, lack of responsibility, early aggression, little self control, high risk social behaviors (drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy, delinquency, gang activities). Parents who practice the permissive parenting style either by choice or because they do not know another way, put their children at risk for dropping out of school before graduation and all of the difficulties that accompany life without a high school diploma.

In a report done for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts students who had left high school without a diploma candidly shared their thoughts about the factors that contributed to their early departure from classes. Thirty eight percent said that they had too much freedom and not enough rules. There was not enough supervision at school and at home. When they were asked to name things that would have improved their chances of staying in school, seventy-one percent said parents who made sure that they went to school every day.

Unfortunately, when we talk to parents of middle school or high school students who are already demonstrating at-risk behaviors, the parents say things like, "He is fifteen years old. He won't listen to me. I can't make him do anything." Or they say, "He is seventeen years old. He has his own car. He has a job. He is making his own mistakes."

But the pattern for this unfortunate outcome was started before the child started to school and many first grade teachers report seeing the disengagement signs as early as first grade. Jimerson's research identified certain behaviors as significant markers for academic risk in third grade. Failing grades or discipline problems in elementary or middle school are considered "midcourse markers," and truancy and/or failing grades in high school are viewed as "advanced markers."

Sadly, dropouts universally told the researchers that they regretted having left high school and that they were not thinking about their future when they dropped out. More and more brain research confirms that young folks have great difficulty making long range plans with delayed gratification until they are in their early twenties, yet many parents abandon their role as intentional parents before that time. The good news is that parents can learn more effective ways to raise their children and the earlier that they start using authoritative measures within the family, the easier it will be to maintain their role of authority as the children reach middle school and high school. Parents can learn and implement new skills and parenting practices at any age.

One grandmother who attended a PPE parenting class "How to Avoid Power Struggles" wrote on her evaluation sheet, "I wish I had had this class forty years ago. Then I would not be raising my sixteen year old granddaughter today." What she was learning in the class was how to set firm, well-defined guidelines within flexible boundaries. She was learning a new level of communication that reflected respect for ideas, feelings and emotions. Because of her new skills in authoritative parenting, her granddaughter had a better chance of becoming a secure, responsible decision maker with less risk of anti-social behaviors.

Other parents who attend parenting classes reflect the same relief at having new knowledge and confidence to create a family environment that will promote emotionally healthy, academically successful children. After at least four classes taught by Practical Parent Education facilitators, 57% of the parents reported that they had gained significantly more confidence in using appropriate strategies with their children and 73% said that they planned to use two or more new strategies. So, instead of saying, "I don't know what to do," parents were saying, "I know what to do and I think I can do it."

Now that dropout has been identified as a national epidemic, schools everywhere will be looking for a "cure" and there will be many intervention choices available. A successful intervention of any kind has to address all of the root causes of the problem and parenting practices are at the core of our dropout epidemic. Short term goals mean intervention at middle school and high school levels, but long term prevention will require starting parent education in early childhood. Parents have the power. We need to help them learn and use the skills.

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