Positive Discipline
Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP)
Frequently Asked Questions about Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting:
- What is the Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting program?
- What are the basic elements?
- Who is the program for?
- How is PDEP different from other parenting programs?
- What is the theoretical foundation?
- What is the research and evaluation plan for the PDEP program?
Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP) was developed in 2007 by Dr. Joan Durrant,
a Child Psychologist and Professor at the University of Manitoba, in partnership with the
international NGO Save the Children.
PDEP began as a self-study book for parents to help answer their question: “If we don’t hit
children to get them to behave, what can we do instead?” The book was an instant success
and has been translated by local organizations into 16 languages. Soon there was demand
for a training program for family-serving professionals who wanted to help parents learn
this approach.
Today the program includes the original self-study book for parents, an 8-week program for
parents and a 3- to 4-day Program Facilitator training for not-for-profit agencies. Program
development is coordinated by Dr. Durrant and a group of four other Master Trainers in
collaboration with Save the Children.
PDEP is based on two foundational pillars
- the elimination of physical and emotional punishment of children,
- and the promotion of the rights of all children as outlined in the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).
PDEP is based on the most current understanding about healthy child development informed by research in neurobiology, cognitive psychology, and emotional regulation.
Children are most likely to thrive when their parents:
• are knowledgeable about child development;
• recognize how behaviour is related to a child’s developmental stage;
• are able to emotionally self-regulate;
• feel competent in their parenting abilities.
PDEP is a strength-based program that promotes children’s healthy development through
strengthening the parent-child relationship as science has shown that children’s primary relationships (with parents, grandparents and others) are the active ingredient in brain development (AFWI, 2015).
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Who is the program for?
PDEP is a universal program which is intended for typical families, typically developing children and everyday parenting issues. While it is providing necessary information that can help all adults better understand children, it may not be sufficient in and of itself for families with
more serious challenges.
As noted in the parent book:
| Some children have particular challenges that are not typical for their age. These include autism, attention deficit disorder, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), developmental delays and brain damage. If your child’s behaviour is of particular concern, you should seek help and advice as early as possible. While the information in this book can be helpful for any family, parents of children with atypical conditions are advised to seek additional guidance from specially trained professionals, such as family doctors and public health nurses.Source: Durrant, J. (2013) Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting Parent Book, p.5 |
PDEP aligns with many of today’s parenting approaches, but it differs from many as well, particularly those programs that are based on a behaviourist paradigm of shaping children’s behaviour through a system of reward and punishment.
PEDP differs from this paradigm in several ways:
• The theoretical base is developmental, focusing on the importance of trust and attachment, helping parents understand children’s perspectives, and strengthening the parent-child relationship;
• It is a universal, not targeted, program for parents of children from birth to 18 years of age;
• The targeted outcomes are parent-related and focused on decreasing parental punishment, as opposed to enforcing child compliance;
• It teaches the critical life skill of problem solving to parents so they can model and teach it to their children;
• It is a non-prescriptive; rather it provides a framework for parents to use in fostering healthy parent/child relationships and for developing their own age and context-appropriate solutions when inevitable parent-child conflicts arise;
• It is based on universal children’s rights standards and views children as autonomous persons with valid perspectives.
PDEP views child development in its broadest sense to mean not just ‘milestones’ but how children’s capacities develop over time in line with the developing brain.
PDEP’s approach to the parent-child relationship is that children are learners and parents are their first and most important teachers, and that the learning relationship is fostered by a warm, nurturing environment that provides information, guidance and support not punishment.
PDEP is based on years of research on child development and effective parenting. Parenting is extremely complex and thus PDEP draws from a number of areas of evidence to inform the program, such as the fields of attachment, neurobiology, medicine, parental selfefficacy, reflective function, parental mental health, early childhood learning and care, and the impact of physical and emotional punishment on children.
The process of PDEP is education, not treatment. It focuses on the mental (cognitive and affective) antecedents of behaviour in both adults and children. Based on Ajzen’s (2002) Theory of Planned Behaviour, PDEP focuses on reframing parents’ attitudes and beliefs about children, the parent-child relationship and parental self-efficacy as key steps in changing behaviour.
Research has shown that several factors – approval of physical punishment, parental beliefs about the reasons for children’s behaviour, and anger – are key cognitive and affective predictors of physical punishment (Ateah & Durrant, 2007), thus these are key areas of focus in the program. For detailed information, see Durrant et al.’s (2014) article in the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health’s special edition on Understanding and Preventing Child Maltreatment.
The development of PDEP has been iterative, fuelled by increasing interest in the approach and global demand. Funding from Save the Children and a succession of small research grants (SSHRC and Grand Challenges) have supported the development of the program and the training model.
An international research team was developed in 2011 with a range of expertise from evaluation research, child development, child protection, child rights, parenting and public health. The evaluation plan is a 3-pronged strategy consisting of: 1) monitoring, 2) assessing program fidelity, and 3) a formal outcome evaluation.
Work to date has been focused primarily on the first two components of the plan to establish the essential elements needed for a quality evaluation. Primary effort has been directed toward standardizing materials, training and data collection processes; assisting communities to adapt the program to various contexts (e.g., different cultures, one-on-one implementation in homes) and assuring facilitators’ fidelity to the program.
Questionnaires measuring pre and post-intervention ratings of the attitudes, beliefs, and self-efficacy of participants are completed at both the Parent Program and Facilitator Training levels. Results from a sample of 321 Canadian parents from 14 sites across the country were reported in The Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health in September, 2014 (Durrant et al, 2014). These preliminary data show that the program has promise to influence the factors that contribute to physical punishment, and virtually all respondents perceived that PDEP will enhance parent-child relationships.
A systematic, multi-method impact assessment is planned over the next years pending research funding, with methodology appropriate to prevention-focused, community-based programming.
References
Alberta Family Wellness Initiative (2015). Serve and Return in Early Childhood. Norlien Foundation.
Ajzen, I. (2002). Perceived behavioral control, self-efficacy, locus of control, and the theory of planned behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32, 665–683. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2002.tb00236.x
Ateah, C., & Durrant, J. E. (2005). Maternal use of physical punishment in response to child
misbehaviour: Implications for child abuse prevention. Child Abuse & Neglect, 29, 177–193. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2004.10.010
Durrant, J.E., Plateau, D.P., Ateah, C., Stewart-Tufescu, A., Jones, A., Ly, G., Barker, L., Holden, G., Kearley, C., MacAulay, J., DeV. Peters, R., Tapanya, S. (2014). Preventing punitive violence: Preliminary data on the Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP) program. The Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, 33 (2); 109-125.
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2015). Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). United Nations. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx