P ARENl · lIME: PSYCHOEDUCAllONAL GROUPS FOR PARENTS OF ADOLESCENTS

Many parents find their children's entry into adolescence a particularly stressful time. This artic/e reports on a series of groups providing support, information, and help in problem solving that was devised for parents who are troubled by the changes taking pIace in their children but who are not necessarily in need of psychiatric intervention. TraditionalIy, many parents have turned to their family physician or pediatrician or to staff at Iocal health care faciIities for advice in managing developmental issues that arise during child rearing, and health care providers have commonIy offered anti-cipatory guidance to the parents of toddlers and preschooI children with whom they have had contact. Over the past few years, however, health professionals have become increasingIy aware of adoIescence as a sep-arate developmental stage and of parental desires for information and guidance con-cerning teenagers as well as preschooIers. AdoIescent development is a compIex pro-cess invoIving the interaction and synthe-sis of many factors, including those of a physical, psychoIogical, social, and familial nature; effective advice about this develop-mental stage is therefore based on knowI-edge derived from many discipIines. For this reason, anticipatory guidance for the parents of adoIescents calIs for the devel-opment of interdiscipIinary collaboration in preventive health care facilities and for the development of new techniques and approaches. In an effort to address this issue con-structively, the authors deveIoped Parent-Time, the program of parent education described in this article. Parent-Time grew out of a perceived clinical need to respond to parental distress concerning issues related to ear1y adoIescent development. The specific form of the response was dic-tated by the authors ' desire to share their knowIedge and expertise in order to in-crease the self-confidence and abiIity of parents to manage their chiIdren's transi-tion from chiIdhood to adoIescence