“There’s Not One Way to Do It:”: Latina Mothers’ Discipline Techniques

Discipline is one of the most challenging tasks for parents of young children. Parental choices of discipline can vary greatly by race and ethnicity (Coley et al., 2014). Research on Latino families’ choices of discipline has been inconsistent and from a deficit lens (Rodriguez, 2008). The current qualitative study uses a Funds of Knowledge framework to understand how Latina mothers from the Western United States with young children make decisions about disciplining their children. A thematic analysis of 42 interviews revealed that discipline choices were grounded in the mothers’ upbringing, education, and work history. The results of this study can inform parent educators, family therapists, and pediatricians to recognize that Latina mothers are not a homogeneous group and understand the underlying factors that determine their disciplinary strategies to better support their effort to discipline their children.

Internet Use in Home-Education

Home educated students are Australia's fastest growing educational demographic. This growth may be due to the ubiquitous availability of resources made possible by the internet. This chapter considers several enablers and barriers to internet use in home education, using search engines as a case study. Search engine use is associated with several benefits and is the most prolific online activity conducted in home education. The chapter reports on a study into whether or not the search engine use of home educated students' (so-called digital natives) is stronger than that of their parent-educators (so-called digital immigrants). The study involved a survey of 60 parent-educators and observations, tests and interviews with five families. Irrespective of age, all searchers were found to use search engines in superficial ways. Findings can assist the growing number of Australians educating at home to maximise enablers while minimising any barriers to effective search engine use. Future research directions and the practicalities of existing literature for home-educators and students are also discussed.

The Fight Within: Parent-Educators Advocating for their Children with Autism Inside their Own School Districts

Parents have advocated for the educational rights of their children with disabilities for decades, and more so since the reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Advocating for one’s child while working as an employee in the same school district where your child receives special education services comes with unforeseen complexities. Using a heuristic case study approach, this inquiry intended to discern the experiences, barriers, and perceptions of job security of two parent-educators with children with autism. Findings suggest unanticipated experiences and challenges within their dual, parent-educator role as indicated by the theory of responsible advocacy. Perceived employment consequences related to advocating from within the school system are also discussed along with implications for such parent-educators and their role in improving parent–school partnerships in special education.

Incorporating Bereaved Parents as Faculty Facilitators and Educators in Teaching Principles of Palliative and End-of-Life Care

Background: Education and training for interdisciplinary pediatric providers requires training in principles of palliative and end-of-life (EOL) care. The experiences of bereaved parents can inform and enhance palliative care educational curricula in uniquely powerful and valuable ways. The objective of this study is to present an innovative palliative care educational program facilitated by trained bereaved parents who serve as volunteer educators in local and national palliative care educational forums and to describe how incorporation of bereaved parents in these educational forums affects participant comfort with communication and management of children at the EOL. Methods: Parent educators underwent both general and session-specific training and participated in debriefings following each session. Survey tools were developed or adapted to determine how bereaved parent educators affected participant experiences in 3 different educational forums. Pre- and postsession surveys with incorporation of retrospective preprogram assessment items to control for response shift were used in the evaluation of institutional seminars on pediatric palliative and EOL care and role-play-based communication training sessions. Results from feedback surveys sent to attendees were used to appraise the participants’ experience at the international oncology symposium. Results: Involvement of trained parent educators across diverse, interdisciplinary educational forums improved attendee comfort in communicating with, and caring for, patients and families with serious illness. Importantly, parent educators also derive benefit from involvement in educational sessions with interdisciplinary clinicians. Conclusions: Integration of bereaved parents into palliative and EOL care education is an innovative and effective model that benefits both interdisciplinary clinicians and bereaved parents.

Parent educators for teenage smoking behavior

Background Several studies have shown that there is a significant relationship between teenagers and parental smoking behavior. This study was to empower parent (smokers and non-smokers) to raise parents’ concern, to describe teenagers’ knowledge about smoking and its dangers, to reduce the status of teenage smoking behavior, and to decrease the number of cigarettes smoked/day. Methods This was a quasi-experimental study, with a pretest-posttest group design. The respondents were 649 students from the 8th grade in junior high schools from three provinces in Indonesia divided into two intervention groups and one control group. The dependent variable was the implementation of parent educators (smokers and non-smokers) who were trained about smoking and its dangers. Data were analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Kruskal-Wallis test, with a significant level of 0.05. Results The results showed that the smoking parent educator model increased the frequency of parent concern significantly and improved knowledge about the dangers of smoking insignificantly; whereas the non-smoker parent educator model decreased the number of respondents’ frequent smoking status insignificantly and reduced the number of cigarettes smoked /day by the frequent smoker respondents significantly. Conclusion The parent educator model can be used for preventing teenage smoking behavior.