ZOPP

“Improving parent instinct”

ZONE OF PROXIMAL PARENTING

ZOPP stands for the “Zone of Proximal Parenting” and is a play on eminent psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s term the “Zone of Proximal Development”, also known as the gap between what a child can do independently and what he or she can achieve with guided support. ZOPP is our term for the gap between what a parent is able to achieve without help and his or her potential with the right support. It is also our solution to the lack of individualized educational and mental/behavioral health support available to parents. ZOPP is parent psychology — it is the nexus of parenting philosophy, personal parent support, and parent developmental research.

Parents are primed for progress

When given the opportunity, parents can improve their thinking and behavior, and the right kind of education and support at the right time can ensure optimal early life development for their little ones with long-term positive impact well into adulthood. When the right parent support is made widely available, we may even begin to see a societal shift toward more human connectedness, cooperation, and collaboration. Investing in parents can change the world; it is akin to feeding two birds with one palm — improving parents by default improves their children, like a rising tide lifts all boats in its wake. Parents, like their newborns, simply need the right enrichment and guidance from skilled others at the right time, ideally as soon as they discover they will be parents, as this is when their own bodies and brains become primed for adaptive reorganization.

Aside from the obvious physical changes the pregnant mother experiences, all soon-to-be parents (men and women) undergo physiological changes that prepare them for the caretaking role. It is not a far leap to assume the thinking and behavioral capacities of parents are also primed for reorganization, and thus, improvement. But society has failed to support widespread and systematic parent education, which not only leaves many parents in the dark about the very things they should do to give their children the best opportunities for learning, but also prevents meaningful discoveries about the applicability and impact of research findings in the real world of parenthood at a time when parents are primed for cognitive and behavioral evolution. Despite progress in our search for basic truths about infant, child, and adolescent development, the venue in which application of these truths would be most beneficial (i.e. the real world of parenting) has become increasingly left behind and a potential gold mine of information regarding parent psychology left untapped.

Parents vary remarkably in what they know about human development and experience differing levels of social support. This is unfortunate because all parents and children, and ultimately society at large, would benefit from an informed and supported parent demographic. Yet, there is no baseline expectation of education for parents, no standard parental archetype to strive for, because we (society) seem to perceive parenting as a natural unfolding, as if one will just know what to do or will figure it out. It is truly unfortunate that parents are so ever-present as to be rendered virtually unseen; parenting is truly an “invisible ubiquitous”. It is time for society to accept that parents are the glue needed to fix the frayed fabric of society — and the effectiveness of this frontline depends on our ability to motivate parents to be better through individualized care that incorporates relationship, education, and psychological support.

Parent mental health must be on par with medical health

Prenatal medical care is now ubiquitous; about 90 to 95 percent of pregnant women receive this care. Despite the interactive impact of medical and mental health treatment on patient outcomes, only the former is deemed a valuable investment by society. But without its psychological counterpart, prenatal medical care, which mainly consists of regular monitoring of the physical health of the mother and developing fetus, exists within its own echo chamber. What good is advice from the ob-gyn if a woman does not have the psychological coping strategies to make positive behavioral change? What good is it when a father is excluded? What good is medical advice when a parent still has no idea how important the quality of the parent-child relationship is to the socio-emotional development and learning capacities of a child? While medical doctors know the physiology that puts a woman at high risk for miscarriage, premature delivery, birth defect, and low birth weight babies, they are not experts in the complementary, yet missing, piece of psychological support that gets parents on the road to better thinking and behaving so as to minimize physiological risks to themselves and their babies. The parity that should exist across the medical and mental health fields, particularly during this sensitive period of parenthood, is merely philosophical, stunting the development of individuals, families, and ultimately, society. Our brains and bodies are only as healthy as the minds that infuse them — without ubiquitous cognitive and behavioral health support, parenting is akin to not knowing you are pregnant until you go into labor; only it isn’t as rare of an occurrence.

The progress of society depends on its support of parents

In today’s social world, never-before-encountered challenges loom (e.g. climate change, potential economic collapse, and terrorism) and the future of society depends on the ability of the next generation to come together cooperatively to collaborate on identifying adaptive solutions. To help our children live successfully in the world we will be leaving them, we must give them the best fighting chance. This is only possible when parents are given the best fighting chance to optimize the learning capacities of their children. We must encourage all parents to strive for more than just the survival of their offspring and support them in attaining a higher baseline of parenting that extends beyond personal safety, shelter, and nourishment to one that includes optimal enrichment, positive relationship, reasonable limits, interest in school, and meaningful action to benefit the greatest good. Otherwise, all of our efforts for social progress are amputated by the fact that we have failed to educate and support those perfectly positioned to best prepare children for a lifetime of learning: their parents. If we want society to be more thoughtful, more kind, and more capable of addressing big challenges, then we have to help the parents, for gradual improvement in their daily function has an exponential impact: for every set of eyes upon a parent changed is one more raised consciousness in the fight for a more connected, compassionate, and capable society.

What is ZOPP?

ZOPP is an ever-evolving and scalable parent-support project designed to help parents master the process of being better. The “perfect” parent does not exist; but we can all always be better.

ZOPP hosts a variety of parent support endeavors (such as parent developmental research, parent pedagogy, and parent advocacy) to help parents master the process of being better while also providing opportunities for data collection and analysis to better understand the thinking and behavioral changes that occur during parenthood. Ultimately, ZOPP will serve as the two-way bridge between interdisciplinary scientific research and the real world of parenting. The big idea is that by implementing parent support at the individual level, we not only help parents help themselves and their children, but also create opportunities to study the effects of ZOPP at the group level, which will progressively shape ZOPP programming. ZOPP objectives are as follows:

(1) to standardize parent training ZOPP presents a new “parent archetype” or model of the ideal parent. This ideal is not a static one; rather, its essence is one of proximal progress. In other words, the “ideal” parent is one who never stops trying to be better because there is always room for improvement and always more to learn. Over time, ZOPP will influence the development of parents and parents will influence the development of ZOPP, forming a bridge between the worlds of research and real life.

(2) to meet parents where they are ZOPP aims to reach all parents and is designed to meet them where they already are for maximum effectiveness. ZOPP must be as personal and ubiquitous as medical health care, so will begin through partnership with medical healthcare providers, such as ob-gyns and pediatricians. This makes ZOPP support personal, convenient, and timely, and thereby, more effective. Parents must be met as early as possible to ensure they are afforded the time to make habit important behavioral skills needed for optimizing child development, which is why a huge component of our program is geared toward the prenatal period. The benefits of early ZOPP support are numerous, including improved parent mental and behavioral health, which we believe will manifest in a reduction of complications with pregnancy, delivery, and rates of post-partum depression; improved family relations and reduction in domestic violence and child abuse; and improved outcomes in child development, including self regulation and executive function, which benefit learning and academic success.

(3) to improve parents The ZOPP curriculum emphasizes positive relationship and physical experience over instruction. While there certainly is an educational component, it is presented primarily within the context of a personal relationship between the parent (or parent dyad) and a certified ZOPP advocate, who presents optimally stressful (or just out of reach) active challenges to exercise each parents’ cognitive and behavioral skills. Ultimately, we are not concerned with the ultimate success of our parents; rather, we prefer to focus on their ongoing efforts, their proximal processes, and growth over time. We know parents will only be better when they experience being better, which means they must first make the choice to try. ZOPP provides the information and relationship to stimulate that motivation within parents.

(4) to create job opportunity ZOPP also gives individuals an opportunity to serve as ZOPP advocates by hosting a certification program (an academic “boot camp”) covering topics such as infant and child development, school psychology, and evaluation strategies. Upon successful completion of the program, newly certified ZOPP advocates may be placed in employment with a medical healthcare provider in partnership with ZOPP. Given the anticipated positive and preventative impact of ZOPP, it is not a stretch to anticipate that investment in such a parent-support program is likely to reduce costs for insurance agencies and local governments due to improved mental and behavioral health outcomes. ZOPP is an opportunity for those in positions of economic power to invest meaningfully to benefit the greater good.

(6) to spearhead the development of a collaborative professional organization. ZOPP is parent psychology with a “permaculture” perspective, meaning the design of the curriculum is based on the idea that individual and whole-group development are intertwined, making parent progress an affordance to societal progress. This view ultimately makes parent support an issue of social responsibility; it is up to individuals to work together to ensure parents are given the knowledge and support needed to benefit their children and families, which will ultimately benefit the whole of society. To this end, we hope that the ZOPP philosophy and curriculum are adopted by licensed developmental psychologists in communities throughout the world.

In his book, Team Human, Douglas Rushkoff said “find the others” in a call for greater human connection and progress; we qualify that call by asking society to help ZOPP “go to the parents”. Will you support Team ZOPP?

We are currently working on obtaining funding for a prenatal pilot study to be implemented in the greater New Orleans area. If you are interested and in the position to assist with this endeavor, please email Sarah Fontenelle at sarah@fontenellepsychology.com.

For more information about ZOPP, the ZOPP curriculum, and the philosophies that inspired it, please check out our new book, “Team ZOPP”, to be released FALL 2019!