Child Discipline and African American Parents with Adolescent Children: A Psychoeducational Approach to Clinical Mental Health Counseling Available to Purchase

Parents from all backgrounds often grapple with child-rearing issues when their children reach adolescent age. For African American families, the task of addressing problematic adolescent behaviors is complicated by their interaction with external systems (e.g., agencies, schools, legal systems) whose workers often struggle to meet the mental health and social service needs of an increasingly diverse society. Clinical mental health counselors are ethically bound to be knowledgeable about the cultural diversity of individuals and families and about changes in cultural expectations and values. The primary focus of this article is to lay the foundation for a psychoeducational approach to addressing child discipline with African American parents who have adolescent children living at home. A five-week psychoeducational model is presented to inform African American parents of current research and discussions on African American child disciplinary methods.