Including Parents in the Human Development Equation
Think of human development as a balanced equation involving the child’s capacity to learn, the adult model and the environment. A change in one factor demands a balancing change or growth in the other.

Whole, balanced child development therefore demands that adults continue to grow and develop in ways that parallel the growth and education of young children. This reciprocal dynamic was broken after World War II with the collapse of the extended family. Parents were marginalized out of the equation. They lost direct and regular contact with trusted mentors. We created a national system where children developed, more or less, and adults did not, which continues today.

The Challenge
There is no shortage of wisdom or information. Basketball players, dancers, chefs, artists, even doctors and lawyers practice. For every skill there is a safe place to explore and develop that capacity - except for parents.

Yes parent involvement is mandatory in most programs. What’s missing is not a class or standardized curriculum, but rather regular, practical, mentored practice and experience for today’s parents. The truth is providers and educators haven’t been trained nor do they have inspired up-to-date resources or the support to mentor parents.

Our system provides the training, staff development, community support and expanding library of inspired resources to allow existing programs to succeed at parent development as skillfully as they now meet the needs of children. And we do this at no cost to parents, providers, the government or ongoing support from foundations.

Parent-Child Development Centers (PCDC)
The PCDC model, training and resources build upon and expand the existing national network of early childhood care and educational centers. Rather than early childhood education we will have Parent-Child Development Centers where parents and the people who care for children explore and practice the art of mentoring the next critical generation.

• PCDCs are neighborhood based, convenient, trusted and safe.
• PCDCs offer a balance of theory and practice.
• Knowledge and mentored experiences are inspired, up-to-date, tested and relevant.
• Flexible and community led – each PCDC adapts its time and resources to meet the real life challenges of local parents and providers and does so on a regular basis.
• The capacities developed in PCDCs go beyond traditional child development, ages and stages, and include stress management, nonviolent communication and group process that develop social-emotional intelligence and communication skills of parents and providers.
• Delivered every six weeks, eight times per year, the first set of resources, Nurturing Basics features Joseph Chilton Pearce, Bev Bos, Marshall Rosenberg and other national leaders in the field.
• Affordable - the cost of creating, staffing, training and regular delivery of up-to-date resources is $2,100 per center per year.
• PCDCs are organized regionally and administered by local nonprofit hub organizations, YMCA or United Way for example.
• Community supported – local businesses and civic groups, Rotary, banks, local companies adopt PCDCs similar to community sponsorship of athletic teams.
• Program coordinators from each PCDC participate in regular staff development meetings where new concepts and best practices are modeled and explored.
• Coordinators apply this experience to smaller gatherings of parents at their neighborhood center.
• A bi-lingual, English and Spanish, magazine is planned that would summarize issues and key concepts associated with the PCDC network. This will be delivered to participating parents’ and providers’ homes at no charge.
• The entire PCDC Network requires no government funding, no additional taxes, no large bureaucracies, is locally funded and administered. The network is designed to expand throughout the United States and internationally without ongoing funding from foundations.

We are organizing several year long, regional pilot programs, ten to twenty PCDCs in each region. We have interest in Los Angeles, Malibu, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Salt Lake City, Austin, Sun Valley, New Orleans, Hawaii and other locations. We will develop these regional pilots in collaboration with one or more universities who will help organize, monitor and evaluate each pilot.

Summary
Continuing adult development is the key not only to healthy children but to education, safe neighborhoods, gang activity, the foster care system, childhood obesity, drug abuse, the list goes on and on. The time has come to balance the equation. Child development is dependent on adult development and that takes practice, just like riding a bike.