Triple P Helps Tighten
Kershaw County Family Bond
(Elgin) - When she was four-years-old, Cassandra Hoover would hit her mother in the throat when she got angry.
"It hurt," said her mother, Roxanne, "and I didn't know how to make her stop."
That was before Roxanne, a resident of Elgin in Kershaw County, went to a Triple P - Positive Parenting Program seminar at Doby's Mill Elementary school.
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Roxanne Hoover says Triple
P has helped her develop a closer bond with her 7-year-old daughter
Cassandra. |
She asked the seminar presenter what to do. She was advised to use a Triple P strategy called "planned ignoring."
"That's a strategy where the parent deliberately ignores minor behavior problems that are intended to get attention," said Terri Williams, Triple P Training Coordinator for Kershaw County. "Parents who use this strategy should deliberately not pay any attention to their child until the misbehavior stops. Then they should praise their child as soon as they begin to behave appropriately."
Hoover put the advice into practice the next time Cassandra hit her – at Wal-Mart, during a shopping trip.
"I put her down and left her sitting in the aisle," Hoover said. "I walked up the aisle, took a breath and didn't look at her. She started throwing a tantrum and I told her, 'I'm not going to put up with it, Cassandra,' and walked further away but not out of her sight. She got up. She thought I was going to leave her. She stopped hitting me after the second time I did this."
Hoover got that advice nearly four years ago. Cassandra is almost 8-years-old now and Hoover continues to use Triple P strategies that she reads about in Triple P newsletters sent home from school as well as tips provided on the Triple P Web site.
"I was having a hard time getting her to go to bed before using Triple P," Hoover said. "Now she'll turn off the TV around 9 and go to bed. She doesn't fight me. Even with her homework, it's getting easier."
Hoover says she's grateful that Triple P came to her through Doby's Mill.
"We're doing more as a family and we're bonding a lot more."
The Triple P - Positive Parenting Program helps build positive behaviors in children, confidence in parents' abilities, and community support for raising children.
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