Positive Indian Parenting (PIP) is a program for Native American parents and Non-Native American parents raising Native American children in a birth, foster, or adoptive family. PIP connectes traditional Indian values to parenting in an eight week class designed to provide a brief, practical, culturally specific training program for Native American parents (as well as non-Native American foster parents of Native American children) that explores the values and attitudes expressed in traditional Native American child-treating practices and then to apply those values to modern skills in parenting. For hundreds of years Native American parents were guided by traditions that never left parenting to chance. These traditions were passed from one generation to the next, but they all had the same purpose: to ensure the tribe's future through its children. While we cannot go back to the world as it once was, we can still find great values in our child-rearing experience.
Positive Indian Parenting was developed by the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) and is recognized by the Oregon Department of Human Services for foster parent certification training requirements. Positive Indian Parenting class topics include:
- Session 1: Welcome and Orientation/Traditional Parenting
- Session 2: Lessons of the Storyteller
- Session 3: Lessons of the Cradleboard
- Session 4: Harmony in Child Rearing
- Session 5: Traditional Behavior Management
- Session 6: Lessons of Mother Nature
- Session 7: Praise in Traditional Parenting
- Session 8: Choices in Parenting/Graduation
