I became aware of how difficult it is to be a parent, when my husband and I adopted two foster boys who were 7 and 9 at the time, and had been severely abused and neglected. I rapidly ran out of everything that I knew to do. I had to face the fact that I needed to learn much more to be a satisfactory parent.

I started reading how to books for parents, and quickly discovered that even the experts disagree. What was so simple was turning out to not be simple at all. I decided to use parent education as the focus of my doctoral dissertation at UCLA. My purpose was to write a curriculum for parents that would be a psychologically solid and skill based way of raising children according to the best of what we know today.

My doctorate is in Philosophy of Education, and what I philosophized about was psychology. When I graduated from UCLA I began speaking and teaching classes to many different groups of people. I also started writing books for parents. These books eventually became Breakthrough Parenting: Moving Your Family from Struggle to Cooperation.

I believe that when people know better they do better. Parent education is my passion. There is no more important job than that of being a parent. I enjoy counseling, teaching classes, and speaking about how we can improve the way that children are raised by their parents. I frequently consult with parents about discipline situations that have developed in their families and have become knowledgeable about divorce and child custody disputes. I show parents how to improve their strategy on how to handle difficult problems in families.

What I’ve found is that children want to get along with us, and the main reason that we have struggles with children is due to a parent’s lack of skill and knowledge. Parent education is a powerful way to learn optimal parenting skills.

Jayne A. Major, Ph.D.