Parents Education in special circumstances and situations

1. Group Education for
Parents in Special
Situations
Presented by:
Shamli Rana
(2015HS12M)

2. Introduction...
• Parenting in atypical families offers the joys and
satisfaction experienced in typical families. It also
includes the typical responsibilities and stresses. In
addition, parenting in atypical families brings unique
challenges because of the special circumstances of
these relationships and often because of prior family
conditions. Therefore, the guidance and
support of parent education programs, prepared
especially for the different kinds of atypical families, is
vitally important.

3. • Raising children in challenging with normal children, but for parents of
“special” children, the parenting process can be additionally problematic.
A handicapped child can put a great deal of stress on a family. Parental
expectations may be unrealistic and parent may have many feelings about
their responsibility for the child’s conditions that can affect the parent
child relationship.
• Parents of exceptional children may also be in need of information and
sometimes may not even know how to ask the relevant questions. Parents
of learning disordered or brain-damaged children may also need
developmental information and an understanding of their child’s unusual
learning pattern. Parent education programs with the greater attention to
preschool development.

4. Groups for Expectant Parents

5. Groups for Expectant Parents
•There is much pregnant women and their husbands need
and want to know about the pregnancy itself, the
accompanying bodily changes, and the physical processes
by which the baby grows and is born. In some
communities this subject is now being given open
sanction in the announcements of expectant parent group
programs, which state that the groups will discuss matters
pertaining to pregnancy, labor and delivery, the care of the
new baby, and family planning.

6. • Nurse needs a rid background for this kind of work. They
familiarize themselves with the current obstetrical practices
which the patients of their groups will encounter in their
communities. They also find they need to be alert to the newer
concepts of infant and child care, since expectant mothers
often raise questions about the “training” of their babies as
they grow, such as “how to discipline them” and how not to
“spoil” them.
• Other resources must be made available to help these
prospective parents as they need it: mental health nursing
consultants, mental health clinics, psychiatrists, social workers,
and the rest of the battery of treatment services, either within
the agency or in other places to which they can be referred.

7. Groups for Unmarried Mothers

8. Groups for Unmarried Mothers
• The large number of unmarried mothers giving birth each year
throughout the country includes a high percentage of teen agers. This
serious social problem is approached by variety of programs. What is
relevant, however, is the role of group education in helping unmarried
mothers go through pregnancy and child birth as well as possible for
themselves.
• The fact that mother is having her baby out of wedlock is a special
circumstance that makes her pregnancy different, because it is out of
step with the accepted social
pattern of our society.

9. •In such educational groups unwed mothers can meet many
of their immediate questions and concerns. It can and
should provide, first of all, the opportunity for them to
learn about physical aspects of pregnancy, labor and
delivery.
•Besides reading direct information on matters such as
these, they also need to unburden themselves about some of
their feelings, and this they often do. Unwed mothers can
also be helped to understand what they will be facing not
only in labor and delivery but later in providing for the
baby. They can be helped to see something of the way in
which their special situation may increase or distort these
feelings.

10. Groups for Parents of Special Children

11. Programs for parents of special children are:
•Home based programs
•School and centre based programs
Parent group education is particularly suited to the needs of parents
of special children or who suffer from chronic illnesses. These
programs are particularly relevant in helping the parents gain
factual knowledge and self awareness and at the same time
providing emotional support, which these parents desperately need.
They want factual knowledge about the disability and its effect on
the child as he grows, they want help in understanding their own
problems in caring for their kids under these conditions, and they
want emotional sympathy and support to carry on their demanding
responsibilities.

12. Programs for handicapped children can not be considered
complete unless parents are actively involved in the education
of their children.
Parents have a right to expect professionals to provide them
with training and information that will enable them to
determine the handicapped child’s stage of development. It is
only then that parents can become active participants in
developing, implementing, and assessing an individualized
educational program for their child.
To work successfully with such parents, teachers must
develop skills not normally emphasized in their pre service
training and in-service training to improve skills preferably by
parent educators.

13. Groups for Parents of Children with
Emotional Problems

14. Group programs have been offered in different settings for
parents of children with emotional problems, but they have not
been uniformly reported, nor have their goals always been
well clarified. Today there is a wider understanding of the
many factors, both constitutional and environmental that may
cause emotional disturbances in children. The burden of
meeting the constant demands of the children of this kind
together with feelings of guilt because they feel that they may
have been responsible for the child’s condition may well
contribute to emotional difficulties in parents.

15. The educational purpose of program were clearly stated and the parents
seemed to make definite progress toward the group’s goals. They have
able to get a better perspective of their children’s behavior against the
behavior of other children of same age. They were also able to gain
some general principles of child growth and development and
guidance for themselves which applied not only to the children who
were identified as having problems but to other members of the family
as well.
In this program, then, the educational experience is seen as an additional
tool, one of a spectrum of services which can be used selectively for
parents of children with emotional disturbances, according to their
own needs.

16. Groups for Adoptive Parents

17. Groups for Adoptive Parents
• The goals and procedures of parent group education are also
applicable to work with adoptive parents. The groups may
serve the adoptive parents more effectively if they are
conducted for a limited number of sessions to explore the
important issues of the adoption experience and their emotional
overtones both for the parents and for the children. After
thinking the implications of their special situations, these
parents often turn to regular parent groups for help with the
general concerns of parenthood.

18. •Adoptive parents may need skills in relating to the needs
of the older adopted child. The older child who is adopted
has often lined in bad backgrounds and must have
developed some emotional problems, or mental, physical
or emotional handicaps for which the parent will need
special parenting skills.
•The adoptive parent will need skills for creating a family
identity for the child. This means skill not only the child
adopt to and feel a part of the adoptive family, but also in
helping the child to understand and relate to his or her
biological family.

19. Groups for Foster Parents

20. •Many child welfare agencies have set up group programs
for foster parents, these programs are largely experimental
and are varied in their goals and scope, some seem to
concentrate on concepts of child development and the
problems the foster parents are opt to meet in the
children’s health care and educational needs.
•Still others, stimulated by increasing awareness of the
hazards to children of repeated changes of foster home
placement, are eager to help the foster parents achieve a
most stable functioning.

21. • It would seem that much more could be done for foster parents
along the lines of group education. Such group would focus of
immediate reality of their jobs as faster parents and the
problems they are having in living with the children in their
care on a day-by-day, around the-clock basis. In discussing
these situations, the groups would inevitably expose and
explore the children’s needs at different stages and how best to
deal with them. Such discussion would also challenge the foster
parents to examine their own reactions to the children and their
own feelings and behavior- as substitute parents at least
temporary caretakers-rather than as parents.

22. Groups for Single Parents

23. • A single parent may need skills in dealing with separation trauma and
grief, both that of his or her own self-process and that of children. The
single parent is faced with tremendous responsibility of childrearing
without the support system that was built into the more traditional
family norms.
• Single parents need skills gain access to a network of community
resources such as school or mental health connectors or community
recreation programs. In addition to other concerns, the single parent
needs skills for helping the child cope with attitudes of friends,
relatives and community. And a number of skill-oriented educational
programs either separate or with normal parent are organized.