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A Parenting Intervention to Improve Positive Life Skills in Teen :

February 12, 2019

We are familiar with the risk factors that can put the infant of a teenage mother at risk, including adverse social determinants of health or simply lacking parenting skills.

We are familiar with the risk factors that can put the infant of a teenage mother at risk, including adverse social determinants of health or simply lacking parenting skills. Finding a way to teach teen mothers how to be better parents and at the same time feel better about themselves is easier said than done—but fortunately Cox et al. (10.1542/peds.2018-2303) took on that challenge in a new study being released this month.  The authors randomized teen mothers in a teen-tot clinic to receive routine care or be enrolled in 5 interactive parenting and life skill modules offered by a nurse or social worker in the first 15 months of an infant’s life.  The adolescent mothers were then surveyed on their self-esteem, parenting attitudes, signs of depression, life skills and whether they had a repeat pregnancy at 12, 24, and 36 months after enrollment.  The results are quite promising in that mothers in the intervention group demonstrated significantly higher self-esteem, a better relationship with their baby, and were less likely to have a repeat pregnancy than the control population.  Not every outcome measure showed an improvement, but there was enough positive change to warrant reading this study and considering whether this is a program that you might want to implement in your practice.  It is not often that such a brief office-based intervention makes such meaningful improvements in mother and child outcomes.  Check it out and learn more.

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