A tool to identify mothers at high risk for nonoptimal parenting:

The Parenting Responsibility and Emotional Preparedness (PREP) Screening Tool.  A 3-Item Screen That Identifies Teen Mothers at High Risk for Nonoptimal Parenting. Robin Gaines Lanzi, Sharon Landesman Ramey; Shannon Carothers Bert

Conclusions: PREP is a low-cost, easily administered,nonstigmatizing screening tool that identifies adolescent mothers who self-recognize that they need help to meet their infants’ social, emotional, and cognitive needs.

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2012;166(8):749-755

Dear Beatrice,

I am pleased to see a relevant comment, more so, it shows the necessity for screening.

The sad part? I posted this "question" almost 2 years ago and after 524 views, NOBODY, up to this point, considered as being an important issue.

Parenting? It's easy to have children but the responsibility to bring them up, to build the "infrastructure" off all we have and do on Earth, to "construct" the only mean of added value to our Life, the difference between developing ourselves as species as opposed to destroying humanity along with all the rest of Life on Earth, it is huge and perhaps the most important task.

The downing of the MH17 in Ukraine and the ongoing conflicts in Gaza, the never-ending shootings in USA University and school campuses, the acts of terrorism, the self-terror conducting the increasing obesity, missuses of technology and "UNsocial networks", just to mention a few and recent events and behavior, do all of these have anything to do with parenting or ....it is just an asteroid issue hitting our planet, an event beyond our control?

In what direction and at what speed does humanity is going to? Is anything that we need to do now? and how?

Education & Economics in the globalization process do go hand in hand and starts with parenting.

My regards to RG members, my consideration to parents and the future of humanity,

Dr. Adrian Toader-Williams

Bioeconomist

Dear Adrian,

The motherhood is the most demanding I have ever tried, perhaps also the most rewarding. I came to terms with the idea that we lack control and do not have answers to the most difficult and anxiety-laden questions in life.  We who believe are not so upset by this fact.  However, you  made me  laugh when you wrote that this question is 2 years old. Like a child it has been waiting to be cared for:)   

Dear Beatrice,

Some reject the responsibility or simply hear nothing, need nothing, know it all or wait to be cared for not 2 but 20, 40, 60 years instead of offering care.

Yes, parenthood, in general, it is a rewarding task, mission, responsibility, why not gift and often we learning the how-to on the go, often making many mistakes. I can tell you from the perspective of a single parent since she was 2 yo. (now a grownup lady, responsible and lovely). From my mistakes I learned that I was not prepared to be a parent, so ... aware of it I started to observe others. It is a generalized problem. Only few of us (parents) are planning to embark on a such responsibility. Most often you wake up as ...."soon a parent to be" . So what you do? prepare a room for the little one? Hmmm ! If that would be enough, would be easy.

As I said before, the only added value source it's nothing else but  a human. A parent and furthermore "parenting is the adding value process-activity of the only adding value entity". What am I saying here?

My dear friends, it's time for many of was to wake up from the comfort zone! The "added value" activity can actually be the adding value to destructive means. Are the man made ecological disasters or, to go further, the very intentional armed conflicts conducted by machines? or by humans with certain values. Here we are arriving at mercenary duties: get payed to kill ! - so much about personal values, often obtained in tandem with going to church (learning to love in the name of God).

From home (from our parents) we learn first what to accept to learn from others later on in society, schools, news, books, net, blogs or call to defend" your country and financial interests. Am I going away form the main subject? Not at all, I am right in the middle of it. The cause of all causes is the very beginning; and that is not the "origins of Life" nor some meteorite bringing "Life" on Earth. It is the origins of our emotions, needs, wants, desires, passion and patience, hunger or anger, fulfillment, filling or overfilling, value or price, love, respect or total blindness.

Scientific research it is suppose to serve humanity. We build on one direction by some means, even looking for our origins and to prolong our life while in the same time we create means of mass destruction. Do we, as species, have a problem understanding real values or not?

Do all of the above have anything to do we parenting ? It is not my intention to offend anyone, I just want to bring to RG table a dialog as an opportunity not only too look at ourselves as humans but perhaps we can find solutions.

Dr. Adrian Toader-Williams

Bioeconomist

Dear Adrian,

These are the old known factors of today's state of affairs: wrath, avarice, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. These factors can be counterbalanced by chastity, temperance, charity,  diligence, patience,  kindness and  humility. However, if you are a perfect example of the latter factors your child may be more inclined to copy your behavior. Helas, no parent is perfect and parents also engage in frequent struggles in front of the child. However, also a child is no absolute angel, he is not free from conflicts between destructive and construtive behaviors. The child is an autonomous human being with choices -  although immature - of his own. He can later on choose to become what he had experienced or he can rebel. After he went through his own trials and errors and did his own mistakes he may eventually end up with the insight that the parents were not always wrong. Parenting matters.

Best regards

Béatrice