Parenting December 

One day when my daughter was about six years old, I happened to meet a woman in the street who had been in my ante-natal classes when we were both pregnant for the first time. By this stage she had four children quietly surrounding her.  As we chatted, I noticed her children stood quietly and calmly, (or sat quietly in the pram as the case may be) whilst I had to keep ‘reigning’ my daughter in constantly. Occasionally she would speak a few words to one of her children but mainly they were behaving like little ‘angels’. We chatted for a while, and then said our ‘goodbyes’.

For many years, I would think about this encounter and wonder why she had had such a quiet, peaceful management of her children. As a Registered Nurse I knew each of us is born with a particular temperament – some babies are just much less “fussy” than others, or put another way, some babies are more difficult to manage than others. So, I thought all of her children may have had a calm, peaceful temperament – what luck! But then, she had a calm, peaceful temperament too.

It wasn’t until I trained as a Triple P Provider many years later that I came to believe several factors were probably involved in her fortunate parenting experience….Yes, temperament, and probably the health of the children and parents, as well as the environment both within and outside the family, were factors. But I am very, very suspicious that she was using many of the Triple P strategies with her parenting, either because she had done the course, or just because her parents used them or she had somehow stumbled upon them.

You see, Triple P was designed after observing many, many parents interacting with their children. It was noted what parental behaviours had a “good” effect on their children’s behaviour, and which one’s had a “bad” effect on the children’s behaviour. The strategies that worked well, were put together to form the Triple P Program.