Triple P (parenting program)

Triple P is a parenting intervention with the main goal of increasing the knowledge, skills, and confidence of parents to reduce the prevalence of mental health, emotional, and behavioral problems in children and adolescents. The program is specifically tailored for at risk children and parents.^[1] This program is based on principles of community psychology.

History

Triple P, or the "Positive Parenting Program", was created by Matthew R. Sanders and colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia and evolved from a small “home-based, individually administered training program for parents of disruptive preschool children” into a comprehensive preventive intervention program (p. 506).^[1] This program was inspired by health promotion programs aimed at impacting people at the population level. The overall goal of the program is to enhance the knowledge, skills, and confidence of parents in order to prevent behavioral, emotional, and developmental problems in children and adolescents.^[1]

Program elements

Overview

There are five developmental periods that are targeted from infancy to adolescence. At each developmental period, the range of the program can be either broad and target the entire population or it can be specific and target only at-risk children. The program addresses social contexts that influence parents’ daily life: mass media, primary health care services, child care and school systems, work sites, religious organizations, and the broader political system (p. 507).^[1] The multilevel nature of the program is designed to increase efficiency, minimize costs, and ensure dissemination. The design also maximizes usage of existing community resources.^[1]

Specific goals

• Promoting self-sufficiency of parents so that they may feel confident in their abilities to parent with minimal or no additional support.
• Increase parental self-efficacy so that the parent believes he or she can overcome a problem in parenting when it arises.
• Use self-management tools so that parents may change parenting practices for the better. This involves self-assessment of performance, setting goals, and choosing child management techniques.
• Promoting personal agency meaning that parents must learn to “own” the improvements in their family situation.
• Promoting problem solving so that parents can learn how to “define problems, formulate opinions, develop a parenting plan, execute the plan, evaluate the outcome, and revise the plan as required” (p. 507).^[1]

Principles of positive parenting

1. Safe and Engaging Environment

   A protective environment that is safe, supervised, and provides opportunities to explore, play, and learn promotes healthy child development at all ages.^[1]

2. Positive Learning Environment

   This principle involves teaching parents to be their children’s first teacher. This means that parents must learn to respond to their children’s requests in a positive and constructive manner while also helping them learn to solve problems on their own.^[1]

3. Assertive Discipline

   The program teaches parents how to change from using ineffective and coercive discipline such as physical punishment, shouting, and threatening to using effective strategies in specific situations. Effective strategies include selecting ground rules for specific situations, discussing rules with children, giving clear, calm, and age-appropriate directions and requests, presenting logical consequences, using quiet time and time out, and using planned ignoring (p. 509).^[1]

4. Realistic Expectations

   This helps parents change expectations and goals for child behavior to be developmentally appropriate for the child and realistic for the parent. Parents who have more realistic expectations of this child’s capabilities are less likely to engage in child abuse or child neglect.^[1]

5. Parental Self-Care

   This principle aims at teaching parents practical skills so that they may view parenting as part of a larger context related to self-care, resourcefulness, and well-being and maintain a sense of self-esteem.^[1]

Research

Nowak and Heinrichs (2008) conducted a meta-analysis that analyzed findings of 55 research studies on the Positive Parenting Program and found reliable positive effects of the program across all settings (initial levels of problems and countries) for child behavior problems, parenting behavior, and parental well-being.^[2] Parents’ relationship quality also significantly improved as a result of the program. The findings were unable to establish whether positive child effects were due to an increase in positive behavior or a decrease in problematic behavior.^[2] According to the authors, the results of the meta-analysis indicated the program’s “ability to effect meaningful improvements in parents and children” (p. 114).^[2]

See also

References