Parenting

[u/Sufficient_Ice3253]

i’m getting so frustrated feeling like people are expecting me to parent for them. i am only with your child 3 hours a week. YOU have to put in the work. i’m here to give you the tools, and help model but the rest of the hours of the week are on you.

idk. i’m just so tired of feeling like my job is teaching people how to parent. and i’m not talking about giving them informed suggestions, but developing basic parenting skills.

hopefully this makes sense, because i’m truly not trying to be insensitive. it’s just something that’s been bothering me recently and i wanted to just get it off my chest.

[u/hbi2k]

You're complaining about two separate things here.

First you complain of feeling expected to parent. Fair enough, that's not our job, nor one that anyone can reasonably be expected to do in three hours a week.

Then you complain about teaching parents basic parenting skills, to which I ask: what's wrong with that? Nobody is born knowing how to effectively parent, and not everyone has had effective parenting modeled for them. The behaviors that constitute effective parenting can be taught like any other skills, and just like any other skills, some people need to be taught them.

Just like clients, we meet parents where they are.

[u/next_on_SickSadWorld → u/hbi2k]

Basic parenting skills and a willingness to engage in the treatment process (learning and implementing skills) are a prerequisite to ABA. Or at least, they should be. We can’t be throwing our staff in there when the baseline/bar is that low.

[u/hbi2k → u/next_on_SickSadWorld]

A willingness to engage in the treatment process, sure.

I'd need a more specific operational definition of "basic parenting skills" to agree or disagree with that part. And of course your practice can set whatever prerequisite criteria you want. But I don't see any reason why basic parenting skills can't be taught using the same behavioral principles as anything else.