Before we developed this guide, we questioned the need because we were aware of the massive amount of parenting information available online and assumed that most parents would use the Internet and other options to enhance their parenting skills. But after visiting with some younger parents, we learned that even though they had many information options available, the amount of time they could spend looking for information on how to raise their children was too often time-consuming and confusing. Each expert seemed to have their own unique approach to unlocking parenting strength. Consequently, these young parents rarely took the time to do any searching to learn more about parenting and the need to grow the skills they were using at the present time.

Before we shared our ideas about the guide, we wanted these parents to know about us, so we shared the following:

• We are not parenting experts, but we have experienced the daily challenges of parenting our own children. Many of our children are now adults with children of their own.
• We are teachers and education specialists who have experience working with students at all grade levels. As educators we have worked with many parents and many, many students.
• We have served as members of the Learning Disabilities Association of Iowa (LDA-IA) for many years. This has given us the opportunity to work with parents who have encountered many parenting challenges – both at home and school.

We assured that these parents understood that the information in the guide would not be our personal ideas about parenting, but would come from:

• Parenting information and data based on proven research findings taken from up-to-date articles.
• Parenting best practices selected from credible parenting organizations and other websites that are research-based and have proven to meet the needs of parents to grow their parenting skills from birth into adulthood.
• Videos and other selected articles and materials for parents to use to gain more information if and when needed.
• Skills and videos for all ages that demonstrate best practices.

As we started our research, it was obvious if that we had known what is now available about effective parenting and had implemented this information, that information would have been helpful in resolving many of the parenting situations that we encountered in our own families as well as families that we had assisted. In fact, the more we searched, the more we found ourselves making the statement “I wish I had known this when I was raising our children!”

SUMMARY:
We understand parents are busy and need quick access to essential parenting skills. To save you time, we’ve curated information from key articles, focusing on one or two sources per topic in Part One. For longer articles, we’ve included titles. We recommend supplementing with online videos to gain additional information for each topic. Part Two provides video resources for specific parenting skills from birth to age 18, helping you build your abilities over time.