Extension adopts Active Parenting curriculum for family and consumer sciences agents
By Rebekah Hall
U of A System Division of Agriculture
Oct. 7, 2024
Fast Facts:
- Model encourages “freedom within limits” for children, mutual respect
- Curriculum first developed in late 1990s
- Training offers practical guidance
(1,197 words)
(Newsrooms: With graphic)
LITTLE ROCK — The Cooperative Extension Service has recently adopted the Active Parenting curriculum as a resource for family and consumer sciences agents. The model focuses on mutual respect between parents and children and includes a component designed for the unique needs of blended families.
The curriculum was first developed in the late 1990s by a former family and child therapist and has been used for decades, with regular updates to the material. It includes components focusing on each phase of a child’s development: birth to five years old, five years old through early teens and adolescence.
Brittney Schrick, extension associate professor and family life specialist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said one of the main tenets of the Active Parenting model is mutual respect.
“The parents expect respect from the children, but the parents will also show respect to their children,” Schrick said. “I think that piece is often missing from ideas of parenting — that it’s a two-way street.”
“We’re not looking for punitive parenting, but we’re also not trying to train parents to be doormats,” she said. “The goal is to teach parents to have rules and consequences that make sense, that aren’t just arbitrary. One of their principal sayings is ‘freedom within limits.’”
Schrick said she adopted the curriculum as a tool for extension family and consumer sciences agents, who can then teach the curriculum to parents in their counties.
“We had some grassroots-level interest from agents in a thorough, comprehensive parenting curriculum, and I chose Active Parenting after looking at all the variations of it,” Schrick said. “It fits into our ethos of research-based, evidence-based material, but it’s also in a deliverable format for agents.”
The curriculum includes video components, which illustrate how different types of families — such as those with single parents, or those with grandparents living in the home — can take the lessons and apply them.
“It offers a lot of guidance that is usable in the real world,” Schrick said. “It doesn’t say, ‘For the next 10 years, do this thing and hope it works.’ Instead, it says, ‘Go home and try this today.’ They’re doable tasks, and it’s not a complete overhaul of your parenting style.”
Raising independent, capable adults
The Active Parenting curriculum uses an authoritative approach to parenting, as opposed to autocratic or permissive parenting.
“Autocratic parenting is ‘my way or the highway, do what I said because I said it,’” Schrick explained. “Permissive parenting tends to be a lot more negotiating, like, ‘If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine.’ Authoritative style is a lot more about balancing the two.”
Authoritative parenting focuses on establishing “freedom within limits,” where parents are encouraged to not punish or restrict their children arbitrarily and to let their children experience the natural consequences of their choices.
“Parents are supposed to be guardrails,” Schrick said. “You’re raising adults, ultimately, so you’ve got to train your kids to be able to do things and take care of themselves.”
Schrick said that often, permissive parents tend to not do enough of this training, resulting in young adults who lack guidance on how to make their own choices. And though autocratic parenting may take the opposite approach by enforcing too many rules, Schrick said it can also result in grown children who haven’t “learned how to do things in their own way.”
“They don’t learn to creatively problem solve anything, they don’t learn how to do anything on their own,” Schrick said. “So, when they become adults, sometimes they’re lost. They’re so used to having people tell them what to do all the time that they don’t necessarily understand what true consequences are.”
Enforcing natural consequences for children is central to the Active Parenting curriculum. “This style attempts to let kids experience consequences that make sense, within reason and when those consequences are not going to cause grievous harm,” Schrick said.
For example, if a child climbs up on the roof, that’s an appropriate time for a parent to take firm, demanding action for their safety. But if a toddler repeatedly climbs on a piece of furniture after being told not to, the natural consequence is that they’re going to fall off.
“They’re going to learn more effectively to not do that if they experience the natural consequence of their action, rather than if their parent keeps coming over and picking them up and taking them away from it,” Schrick said.
For tweens and teens, this might mean teaching them that neglecting their schoolwork results in poor grades.
“They didn’t do their homework? They get an F, and an additional consequence to that might be that they don’t have their phone until the end of the grading period,” Schrick said. “Even with that additional consequence, the true, natural consequence of not completing your work isn’t that you’re worried that you’re going to make your parents mad. It’s that you don’t want to get an F.”
Guidance for blended families
The Active Parenting curriculum also includes a component designed specifically for blended families, or stepfamilies.
“The biggest unique need for blended families is that you’re going to have more adults involved, who often have diverse parenting styles,” Schrick said. “You may be dealing with the loss of your nuclear family, so there might be some grieving involved. Parents may also be dealing with differing expectations about what co-parenting is going to look like.”
The curriculum acknowledges that no matter what the custody situation looks like, or what the dynamic is between parents, the entire family is experiencing a significant change.
“It’s about trying to figure out how to set aside any sort of negativity, animosity or hurt feelings that might exist and focus on raising kids in a cohesive way,” Schrick said. “It’s going to be different from how it was before, and this curriculum tries to build realistic, manageable expectations for what that parenting can look like.”
Every family is different
Schrick said parents who receive the Active Parenting training may be surprised to learn that “they’re probably doing more right than wrong.”
“It’s not a lost cause,” Schrick said. “I think this curriculum is really empowering in that way. It can pull from things that you’re already doing, and maybe just tweak them a little bit, as opposed to saying that everything you’ve ever learned about parenting is wrong.”
Schrick encouraged parents to approach the resource with curiosity, rather than a defensive attitude.
“I think the tendency for some parents might be to think, ‘I can just figure it out,’ or ‘I’ve been doing okay so far, why would I need this?’” she said. “The odds are good that you probably are doing just fine, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn something new and helpful.”
The curriculum acknowledges and explores the fact that all families do not look the same or function the same, and it celebrates these differences, Schrick said.
“Active Parenting doesn’t try to have a cookie-cutter approach to what families look like,” she said.
For anyone interested in learning more about the Active Parenting curriculum, or to coordinate a training for a group of parents, contact your county family and consumer sciences agent by visiting uaex.uada.edu/counties/.
To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
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Media Contact:
Rebekah Hall
rkhall@uada.edu
@RKHall_
501-671-2061