Parent-Child Interaction: A Prototype for Parent Education Marilyn Coleman, Lawrence H. Ganong Parent education in the 1980’s must address such issues as the prosumer movement, cost efficiency, prevention rather than remediation, program availability, and evaluation. Parent-Child Interactions, a model designed to instruct parents to teach their preschool children basic cognitive and perceptual skills, is responsive to these current issues and concerns. The model is explained and studies testing it are reported. Authors’ Addresses: M. Coleman, Department of Child and Family Development, College of Home Economics, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211; L. H. Ganong, School of Nursing, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. Funded in part by University of Missouri Extension Division and Extension Service. The authors wish to thank Greg Brown and Jane Henry for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. For at least three decades, parent education has been criticized as a relatively ineffective effort to teach mothers from middle-class in- tact marriages how to raise &dquo;good children&dquo; (Stendler, 1950; Vincent, 1951; McCandless, 1968). In a more recent review of parent edu- cation, it was concluded that limited evalua- tion has made effectiveness &dquo;difficult to dis- cern&dquo; (Croake and Glover, 1977). It seems that parent educators generally have not developed programming that addresses these criticisms. To mitigate criticism, parent education in the 1980’s must strive for relevance, focusing on the following issues and concerns: movement from consumer to prosumer, cost efficient production and delivery of programs, preven- tive rather than remedial focus, widespread availability of programs, and evaluation that measures behavioral as well as attitudinal change. Consumer to Prosumer It has been asserted that much of what pass- es as knowledge in parent education is actu- ally only opinion (McCandless, 1968), and there seem to be almost as many opinions as there are parent educators. Parents seeking childrearing advice from three different &dquo;ex- perts&dquo; could easily find three different and conflicting points of view. Consequently, par- ents are becoming less willing to accept &dquo;ex- pert&dquo; advice passively. Instead, they choose to participate actively in their own learning, as evidenced by the rapid growth of such self- help groups as Parents Without Partners, Toughlove, LeLeche League, Lamaze, and the Stepfamily Association. The current popular- ity of &dquo;birthing&dquo; rooms as an alternative to physician control of the birth process is one example which certainly sets the stage for in- creased participation of parents in the child’s total development. Toffler (1980) suggests that such programs may represent a societal change in emphasis from consumer to what he calls prosumer. Many parent education pro- grams still rely, however, on formats that as- sume parents want to be passive consumers of information. One area of parent education has attempted to involve parents as prosumers. In a review of