CDC Develops Parenting Materials Based on Edited Book by Silver School Professors Vincent Guilamo-Ramos-Ramos and James Jaccard

The Center for Disease Controls and Prevention has developed and posted a fact sheet on its website to help parents more effectively monitor and supervise their teenager's activities. Research has documented the important role of parental monitoring in reducing youth involvement in problem behavior. However, limited empirically driven guidance is available to parents on effective strategies for monitoring their teen children. The fact sheet is designed to begin to address this gap and is part of a larger CDC initiative, the Parenting Synthesis Project, a collaborative effort led by the CDC to develop empirically based parenting materials for widespread dissemination.

The recommendations highlighted in the fact sheet are based on key findings from the 2010 book, Parental Monitoring of Adolescents: Current Perspectives for Researchers and Practitioners, edited by Professor Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, Visiting Professor James Jaccard, and Patricia Dittus of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health. Guilamo-Ramos is a core member of the Parenting Synthesis Project.

Parental Monitoring of Adolescents argues that close parental supervision of adolescents dramatically reduces the incidence of drug and alcohol use, risky sexual behavior, and other activities that could negatively affect one's health and well-being. The team of interdisciplinary authors, including social workers, psychologists, and health scientists from the CDC, identify the conditions that best facilitate parental knowledge, ideal interventions for high-risk youth, and the factors that either help or hinder the monitoring of adolescents. The edited volume is non-traditional in format as it contains independent contributions from each of the members of the CDC panel. Additionally, the second half of the book summarizes responses from a set of key monitoring questions posed to all of the authors.

To view the fact sheet, Monitoring Your Teens Activities: What Parents
and Families Should Know, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/AdolescentHealth/index.htm