Contemporary Families, Contemporary Challenges: Strategies for Helping Families Thrive 

Contemporary psychology struggles with helping families stay connected in these challenging times. As work, school, and other demands on children and adults have steadily risen, parents struggle to meet these expectations and to foster an environment conducive to healthy growth and development. Unfortunately, for dual earner families this proves to be a particularly challenging task. This course will offer a unique opportunity to examine how these challenges are dealt with in parent-child interaction through video recorded naturalistic daily interaction between parents and children at home. These videos were recorded as part of a research project conducted by the UCLA Center on the Everyday Lives of Families (CELF). Through the video data participants will be exposed to tensions and problems that arise in families during everyday activities and to how these tensions are resolved or escalated as parents and children interact. Through a micro analysis of these interactions, participants will become familiar with patterns of dysfunction in parent and child relationships that contribute to the symptoms commonly seen in children in treatment. Participants who attend this course will expand their knowledge of the typical development of school age children, frequent problems and tensions that arise between parents and their children during daily activities, and tools to help parents best manage problem behaviors while fostering growth in their children.