Research documents a significant change in children's behavior in the last the ten years. Many young people today lack a sense of identity, purpose, self-respect, and responsibility for their own actions. With sociological and technological changes, there are fewer natural occasions for children to learn the basic prerequisites of caring, sharing, deciding, acting and following through. Parents today often have little opportunity or training in how to teach these social skills. While it is valuable to train educators to provide these abilities, the parent is the child's primary teacher and should be the focus of training.
Parents hold the key to building social values.
Today's society requires effective parents to be consciously competent, as they parent on less than two hours a day. Preventive parent education is more effective and less expensive than intervention, e.g. drug rehabilitation, juvenile probation, prison. Parent education should be provided as early in the child's life as possible. Family Leadership Parent Education teaches parents the skills necessary to build high self-esteem. Empowered parents focus on what they can do rather than who is to blame or why by viewing family problems as learning opportunities rather than as individuals being problems.