What educators can teach young parents about becoming good parents is the topic of a new and revised curriculum from Cornell University.

Teens as Parents of Babies and Toddlers: A Resource Guide for Educators is a 220-page curriculum full of worksheets, diagrams, lists, illustrations, discussion questions, fact sheets and resources for educators to use in developing classes and workshops with teen parents to try to prevent the potential negative effects of adolescent parenthood.

Topics include identifying support networks, dealing with stress and crises, controlling violence, sewing skills, infant and toddler development, making a memory book, feeding, understanding temperaments, play activities, crying, discipline, difficult babies, bedtime problems, language development, separation issues, toilet training, identifying good child care, food activities, recipes, health and safety issues, nutrition, working with doctors, when to call a doctor and much more.

"Increasingly, schools are realizing the need to help teens who are parents finish school while simultaneously learning parenting skills. These steps can go a long way in avoiding the potentially devastating effects of an adolescent pregnancy," said Jennifer Birckmayer, the first author of the publication and a human development specialist in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell.

Birckmayer co-authored the publication with teen parent educator Katherine Mabb of Questar III, the BOCES in Hudson; cooperative extension educator Bonnie-Jo Westendorf of Columbia County; and cooperative extension agent Jerridith Wilson of Onondaga County. The large-format, soft-cover guide revises an earlier 1989 publication.

Teens as Parents of Babies and Toddlers: A Resource Guide for Educators is $25. Price includes shipping and handling. Copies are available from the Cornell University Resource Center, 7BTP, Ithaca, NY 14850, or from Cornell Cooperative Extension offices throughout New York.

(607) 255-9873 or e-mail cjd4@cornell.edu.

EDITORS: A review copy may be obtained by contacting Carol Doolittle, (607) 255-5830, fax