Parenting Matters Foundation

Programs: First teacher and parenting matters publications- the goal of parenting matters foundation is to help parents become excellent parents. Our future relies on raising healthy children we believe that most parents want to do a good job of raising children, but parents benefit even more when they learn of research that points to ways to help children succeed in school and in life through our monthly publications, first teacher (birth- pre-kindergarten), kindergarden parenting matters, and parenting matters (grades 1-2-3),we communicate with parents about research-based parenting issues in order to increase parents' knowledge about child development, improve parenting skills, increase parents' knowledge of health, safety, and nutritional issues, and help parents do an excellent job as their child's first teacher we emphasize the importance of parents being involved in their child's schooling, understanding age appropriate expectations, and knowing about local community resources and services available helping parents understand the importance other involvement with their child's school or any agencies they use is one of our goals we need parents to understand the importance of brain research in the early years, the major impact they have throughout the child's growing years, appropriate discipline based on the age of the child, information on health, nutrition, and life style, the importance of early bonding, ways to keep children of all ages safe, the importance of reading with their child, the impact of smoking, drugs and alcohol on our youth, ways parents can help children succeed in school, the importance of praise, and the availability of services and help for families in our community parents in this difficult time need this information more than ever based on the positive response from parents who receive our parenting educational material, we believe we are succeeding parenting matters foundation publishes and mails monthly parenting newsletters and provides developmental cards to school districts and parents in clallam, king, kitsap and thurston counties in addition, parenting classes are administrated by parenting matters, primarily in clallam county.

first teacher drop-in and parenting classes - we also provide parenting classes for parents from birth through high school in english and in spanish throughout clallam county these classes are termed best practice classes which are classes that have been shown to make effective change in how parents raise their children we piloted a "ready for kindergarden" program that has demonstrated ways to help parents understand how important they are in preparing their child for school.

distribution of children's books- at every event or community fair, we give away a free book to each child. This helps a child to build his or her "library" we are strongly committed to emphasizing the importance of reading with children in all of our education materials and events.