Parenting: Whose to say you're doing it right?

The Government wants 12,000 parents to have completed an ‘Incredible Years’ parenting course by 2014.

The number of parenting courses available in New Zealand is spiralling. There are a lot of agencies running a variety of programmes out there. It seems that the ‘middle class’ parents of New Zealand are hogging the funding and those that really need it are not being reached.

Even the article from the NZHerald focusedon Nikki Bodde and her husband Andre, who share a real estate business. 

Now we have a new programme coming in; to be delivered by doctors and nurses. I’m am unclear as to how this is going to reach parents better than the myriad of other provisions. Whose job is it to tell parents they need to go on a course? How do we get that message to those that really need to? And how is ‘society’ supposed to impose some extrinsic motivation for attendance where intrinsic motivation is what is really needed.

The literature available for parents is massive. But are these meeting the right people? The most in need demographic?  I fear that oral traditions in these communities are breaking down and there is nothing to fill the void.

Is the answer another multi-million dollar ‘scary-ad’ campaign... Is this the only thing that gets though?

I liked Parents Inc / Toyota ads, getting a positive message into homes, but then I can;t even find a clip of one of these ads anywhere on the next...

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