CICC's Los Ninos Bien Educados Parenting Program:

Diversity within Cultural Diversity: Special Challenges, Special Opportunities

The Los Ninos Bien Educados Program is built around the value of raising children to be "bien educados," i.e., well-behaved in a social and personal sense, as well as educated in an academic sense. It explores parental definitions of what constitutes "bien educados" and looks at how these definitions get expressed in traditional family, gender role and age expectations of children. From this cultural framework, it teaches parents a wide variety of strategies and skills for promoting and maintaining those child behaviors that they define as constituting "bien educados" and for reducing those that they see as reflecting "mal educados."

Developed especially for Spanish-speaking and Latino- origin parents, this parenting skill building program is respectful of the unique traditions and customs of Latino families and is sensitive to the variety of adjustments that are made as Latino families acculturate to life in the United States.

Los Ninos Bien Educados is based on child rearing research with Latino families, the recommendations of Latino educators and mental health authorities, and adaptations of parenting skills that have been found to be helpful for parents of all ethnic and social class backgrounds.

Parents are oriented to consider the potential causes of "mal educados." This includes teaching basic child development information to assist parents in arriving at age-appropriate expectations. Information about child abuse and child abuse laws helps broaden understandings of what is considered proper and improper parental behavior in the United States.

All skills are taught with an awareness of the potential cultural conflicts that might emerge from their use and with sensitivity to the life circumstances of low income Latino families. They are taught with the use of "dichos," or Spanish sayings, to help nest them in a culturally and linguistically familiar context. Amusing drawings of family life also enliven the teaching of skills and concepts, and all sessions end with a "platica" where parents take leadership roles in solving common problems.

The program is designed to be taught in Spanish or English and consists of 12 three-hour training sessions. Its initial field testing in the 1980's was with newly immigrated Latino families and it was highly successful.

More recent studies continue to confirm its effectiveness. Los Ninos Bien Educados is now being used nationwide with a variety of Latino- Americans. It has become the centerpiece of parent involvement programs in numerous school districts, as well as serving as part of drop-out prevention projects. It is also being used by a variety of social service agencies for family preservation and unification purposes, and by hospitals, churches and mental health clinics.

See Initial Program Evaluations

See Recent Evaluation Studies

The following is a listing of the full content of the Los Ninos Bien Educados Program, which is customarily taught in 12 three-hour training classes.

1. Culturally-Specific Parenting Strategies
   • Defining Bien and Mal Educados
   • Traditional Family and Gender Roles
   • Adjusting and Acculturating to the U.S.A.

2. General Parenting Strategies
   • Social Learning Ideas and Pinpointing and Counting Behavior
   • Parental Functions and Responsibilities
   • Family Rules Are Like A Coin, and Family Rule Guidelines
   • The Causes of Child Behavior and Considering the Causes Before and After You Act

3. Basic Parenting Skills Taught in a Culturally-Sensitive Manner, Using Latino-American Language Expressions and Dichos
   • Effective Praise
   • Mild Social Disapproval
   • Ignoring
   • Time Out
   • The Point System
   • First/Then
   • Show and Tell
   • Family Chat or Platica

4. Special Program Topics
   • Child Abuse Laws and Proper Parenting

    

This five day intensive workshop will be lead by CICC's Senior National Trainer-of-Instructors, Dr. Martha L. Lopez. Dr. Lopez received her doctorate in Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco and Masters degree from California State University at Fresno. She has been on the staff of the University of California Cooperative Extension for over 30 years. She is widely recognized for her expertise in parenting skills for Hispanics, as her status with CICC reflects. Throughout her career she has led numerous instructor training workshops in CICC's Los Ninos Bien Educados program, as well as running many classes for parents. Dr. Lopez brings a unique perspective to her work with families at risk since she herself was raised in a migrant farmworker family.

Workshop Enrollees receive the entire Instructor Kit of training materials (instructor manual, instructional transparencies, parent handbook, CD on generating and maintaining classes, etc.) which itself is valued at $415

The workshop enrollment fee is $925, which includes the Kit and certification to conduct the program in your community, agency or school.

This workshop will take place at:

El Centro De Amistad
566 South Brand Boulevard
San Fernando, CA. 91340

All education, health, mental health, and social service paraprofessionals and professionals are welcome to enroll. Psychologists can receive 35 hours of continuing education credits, as CICC is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credits. CICC maintains responsibility for the program.

CICC is also an approved continuing education provider by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences and the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider #14028.

The entire Instructor Kit can be purchased separately from the workshop, as can its individual components, such as the Parent Handbooks.

Click here to obtain the Kit or its components.

CICC also makes available a wide range of books and videos on Latino American parenting and family life, which can also be directly obtained.

Click here for these additional materials.

Over 2,500 agencies, departments, schools, hospitals and religious institutions have sent their staffs to be trained in a CICC instructor workshop.

Click here for a State-by-State listing of institutions whose staff members have already been trained through these workshops.

CICC can bring a Los Ninos Bien Educados instructor training workshop to any community that would like to offer the program through its school district, social services or health departments, or through any combination of local institutions.

If a community or agency has at least 15 instructors that it would want trained from one or more of its institutions, CICC can arrange to have a national trainer travel to that community to conduct a workshop when and where they would like it to be conducted.

CICC can also arrange to have instructor training workshops in its Effective Black Parenting or Confident Parenting programs brought to your community.

The Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) was founded in 1974 by Dr. Kerby T. Alvy and has grown to be one of the nation's largest and most productive nonprofit parenting and parenting education organizations. For more infomration about CICC's many programs, activities, products and services, go to www.ciccparenting.org, or call toll-free (800) 325-2422.

To sign up to receive CICC's free Effective Parenting Newsletter, click here.