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Mellow Parenting is an intensive programme that is delivered over one day a week for fourteen weeks. The recruitment process is crucial and it is here that we begin to nurture families, building up their self esteem by focusing on their strengths.
Parents attend one full day each week, with their children being cared for in a children’s group/creche. In the morning session parents participate in a group which provides a forum for discussing the links between their own experiences in childhood and their current parenting experiences. Lunch is prepared and eaten together (parents, children and group facilitators) which is followed by an age related activity in which parents are encouraged to play with their child. In the afternoon the parents look at videos of the interactions between parents and their children and draw out positive parenting. “Have a Go!” tasks are discussed and parents are encouraged to try our new solutions and discuss their successes.
The programme uses video feedback from footage of the families themselves to enable us to do this in a much more direct and powerful way. Practitioners are trained to observe parent child interactions and to feed back even the embryonic skills observed and to explain to parents why they are important. Our parent child interaction coding system, which has been developed over 15 years of research and practice, allows practitioners to objectively observe, record and feedback to other professionals, clients and the courts what they have observed. Video feedback helps parents build on their existing skills with real evidence from their interactions with their child. It is one of the key components identified in the Bakermans-Kraneneberg meta analysis of effective programmes to improve parental sensitivity and parent-child attachment (Bakermans-Kranenberg et al, 2003).
Other parts of the programme concentrate on helping parents to reflect on their own lives and relationships and to practice both in the sessions and in “homework[Have a Go!]” new ways to relate the their children. .We know that teaching parents to use behavioural management strategies is valuable but it is not enough in itself to change the relationships parents have with their children if the parents have no “internal model” of good parenting to draw on from their own childhoods and are unable to understand their feelings and behaviour, and are burdened by their own issues.
Mellow Parenting currently has extremely positive data from one large-scale comparison study, which includes data from a six month follow up, which continued to show results were sustained over time, and a later dissertation based on an eight year follow up (Kearney, 2007). This original programme was subjected to a case-controlled cohort study, funded by the Department of Health. Neighbouring family centres offering their own parenting interventions were used as a contrast for families using families centres where Mellow Parenting was offered.
We also have numerous replication studies including some which have been able to use control groups (Renaud, 1998), Changes are regularly demonstrated by practitioners, not only in the UK but internationally, across a number of measures including; maternal depression, self-esteem, children’s behaviour, parent-child interactions and changes in the child’s cognitive functioning. In addition the programme has demonstrated itself to be extremely effective in engaging and sustaining the engagement of hard to reach families with high levels of retention in the group and completion of the sessions.
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What people say
"Mellow Parenting has provided me with a great insight into ways in which parents can manage their child’s behaviour. There are approaches we have discussed which I have never thought of before"
