This is part 15 of a series by the Local News Network at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Melat Wondimagegen was not the parent she is today when she first stepped off a plane in February 2019 to start a new life in the United States. As an Ethiopian immigrant and mother of an 11-year-old and a 2-year-old, she grappled with how to raise her children in an unfamiliar American culture — and how to understand their emotions in ways she hadn’t been taught back home.
One seemingly ordinary newsletter from her children’s school changed everything for her. After reading it, Wondimagegen decided to enroll in the Parent Encouragement Program in Kensington, Maryland.
Through PEP, she said, she learned new ways to connect with her children, improve their relationship, and to be more understanding and less authoritarian in her parenting.
“It helps me be more conscious of how I talk and how I raise them,” she said.
PEP’s goal is to teach parents how to communicate with their children in an encouraging and respectful way. Wondimagegen said the program does just that.
“It’s a box of tools,” Wondimagegen said. “If one is not gonna work, I’m gonna do this [instead].”
She added, “But the consistency, [my daughter] knows that, ‘Oh, mommy is trying to do something. Mommy is trying.’ So, they like it. It really works.”
A nationwide effort
PEP isn’t unique. Hands-on parenting programs are offered nationwide, aiming to equip parents with the knowledge and skills necessary to foster healthy relationships with their children.
Such programs aim, in part, to prevent mental health problems among young people — a goal Maryland state officials acknowledged when they gave PEP $1.6 million in grants in the first round of funding under the state’s new youth mental health effort. Those grants support PEP programs in Montgomery, Frederick, Howard and Dorchester counties.
Even so, PEP Executive Director Kathy Hedge said many people don’t recognize how important healthy parenting is in producing mentally healthy children.
“All of us at PEP think this is so obvious, but it’s always astounding to me how many people don’t think it’s obvious,” Hedge said. “To me, it’s just not a leap at all to see how you go from the state of the home environment and the relationship with the parent and child to then the child’s mental health.”
Empowering children
PEP encourages parents to see themselves less as managers of their children and more as coaches who see things from their children’s perspective. The process involves teaching parents how to empower their children by identifying what causes conflicts in the home and helping parents take a step back by giving their children a voice.
“What you find that happens when you start behaving in this different way with your children is that you actually build their confidence,” Hedge said. “They feel more respected. They feel more empowered. They understand their role in the family. They have a role in the family now that they can see is important and contributes to the functioning of the family. When these things start to happen, your kids will become more emotionally and mentally comfortable in your family.”
Programs like PEP emphasize a concept called reflective listening, according to Gyniquea Davis, who used to take classes with PEP but now works there as a program manager.
“The power of reflective listening is that a parent doesn’t just hear what a child says and comes up with their own interpretation of what that means,” Davis said. “You listen to your child, but then you ask clarifying questions to make sure you understand what they’re trying to say.”
As an example, Davis cited what should happen if a child returns home with a poor test score.
“Let’s say [as a child], I failed my test,” Davis said. “If I have a parent who is using reflective listening, I’m connected with them and we have special time on a regular basis, I’m going to be more likely to come and say, ‘Yeah. Mom. I failed my test. I’m really stressed about it and I don’t know what to do.’ Because I know I may have a parent who instead of going right to judgement and punishment, is going to maybe ask me questions.”
An approach that works
Parents get more comfortable, too, when they use what PEP teaches them.
Research on PEP from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that after seven weeks of classes, parents reported a jump in satisfaction with their relationship with their children, from an average of 1.67 to 2.58 on a four-point scale.
When asked to rate the quality of their communications with their children, parents rated it at an average of 1.88 on that four-point scale before they took PEP classes. The average ranking jumped to 2.60 after parents took those classes.
Hedge said there’s a reason parents feel better about parenting once they listen more to their children.
“When you really start to see the world through your child’s eyes, it changes your behavior as a parent,” Hedge said. “It’s made me more patient, more calm, a better communicator. All the things that [parents] will tell us, because fundamentally, they can see the world through their kids’ eyes now and they understand their perspective.”
There’s also evidence that programs like PEP can boost the mental health of children. A 2013 study from Procedia, which studies social and behavioral sciences, examined how parental education programs affect depression in children. The study involved 250 children and their mothers from an elementary school in Tehran, Iran. Before the study, mothers took a test to measure their stress while children took one to test for depression.
Mothers then took part in an eight-week parental training course. Afterward, the same tests were administered to both the mothers and their children — and results found both parental stress levels and depression symptoms in children significantly decreased.
Conversely, research has shown disciplining children harshly can harm their mental health. A 2020 study published by the National Library of Medicine found coercive and harsh parenting in societies that place higher value on children’s academic achievement interfered with their children’s ability to develop autonomy and independence. Harsh parenting also resulted in higher rates of depression, low-self esteem and low self-confidence.
Negative childhood experiences with parental discipline can be a potential hazard that leads to bigger problems down the road, said Loise Taliaferro, who supervises the 11-week Strengthening Families Program at the Anne Arundel County Department of Health. Taliaferro cited a screening process called Adverse Childhood Experiences that suggests physical punishment can cause negative effects on brain development in children.
“There’s a set of 10 questions that [children] respond to and the higher the score, the higher you say yes to the questions — the higher the chances that you may have mental health issues or even a substance abuse disorder,” Taliaferro said. “One of them is in relation to punishment: Did your parents slap you or do some kind of physical punishment?”
An imperfect program
Programs like PEP work to help parents address these issues and reduce pressure in the home that may typically escalate to physical punishment — but such parental education programs aren’t perfect.
Most parenting programs are operated on a case-by-case basis and are almost entirely dependent on how willing a parent is to continue with the program, according to Taliaferro. She said this makes stubborn parents with ingrained values tough or almost impossible to crack.
The time commitment is another issue. According to Hedge, PEP runs for six to eight weeks and requires parents to dedicate around two hours per week to physically come into the classroom.
Getting fathers in the classroom can be another problem. Women who participate in the program significantly outnumber men, but according to Davis, participation from fathers is growing.
“This winter, and maybe in fall, too, we had a dad’s group,” Davis said. “Men who are facilitators were meeting with dads to talk about what that looks like, you know, as a father.”
The key to success for parents in these programs is a willingness to listen and understand. If parents aren’t willing to shoulder some responsibility, nothing will change, according to Hedge. She said for parents willing to do so, the immediate benefits can be profound.
“When you as a parent start really listening to your children, stop the yelling, share some of that power and let your kids have a voice, some of those changes can be pretty immediate,” Hedge said. “As parents and as humans, it can be hard to change. We fall back into our bad habits, so we have to keep working on our own selves — to keep changing.”
Hedge learned all of that firsthand.
“I remember the first time I went and sat in a role play, I could see two people doing the mother and son role play and that parent was me,” Hedge said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’ But then I could watch and say, ‘And that’s my son.’ In this particular role play, the parent was yelling at the son, and I just started crying because it was so emotionally moving for me to see what it must be like to be my son in an interaction with me. You can’t unwatch that.”