Improving Preschoolers' Mental Health: A RCT Assessing Two Parenting Programs
Improving Vulnerable Preschoolers' Mental Health: A Superiority Trial Assessing the How-to Parenting Program
Mireille Joussemet
320 participants
Apr 1, 2023
INTERVENTIONAL
Conditions
Summary
The goal of this randomized control trial (RCT) is to assess the superiority of the How-to Parenting Program in improving autonomy support and preschoolers' mental health (i.e., decreases externalizing problems) among vulnerable families. The main question it aims to answer is: Can teaching concrete parenting skills that target empirically-based parenting dimensions (via the How-to Parenting Program) have an added value for improving parental autonomy support and child mental health, compared to a parenting program that does not focus on teaching parenting skills (Nobody's Perfect program \[NP\])? Early childhood centers providing services to parents of 3-4 years olds will be randomly assigned to one of two 6-week programs. Parents will fill out questionnaires before (T1) and after (T2) programs delivery as well as at 6-month (T3) and 1-year follow-ups (T4). They and their child will also engage in filmed parent-child interactions at T1 and T3 during predetermined activities, to obtain observational measures of parenting and child socioemotional competences. Researchers will compare the How-to and NP conditions to see if there was an accentuated increase in parental autonomy support and child mental health in the How-to condition. As secondary analyses, researchers will compare the How-to and NP conditions on parenting quality, child socioemotional competences, and parental cognitions as well as explore the conditions in which NP could be equal (or superior) to the How-to Parenting Program.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria1
- \- Parents need to have at least one child aged between between 36 and 59 months at pre-intervention.
Exclusion Criteria4
- Parents will be excluded if they have previously attended a How-to Parenting Program
- Parents who are unable to communicate in French will be excluded.
- Recruitment procedure:
- \- To target more more vulnerable families, parents will primarily be recruited in ECCs located in low- or middle-income neighbourhoods of the greater Montreal (Canada) according to the Montreal's 2018 Poverty Map of Families with Children.
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Interventions
The How-to Parenting Program focuses on how expectations, rules, and values are better communicated (vs. what rules ought to be). It includes skills related to the three components of authoritative parenting, namely affiliation, structure, and autonomy support. 1) Affiliation: Parents learn how to listen and respond to their children in a way that helps them feel accepted unconditionally. 2) Structure: Parents learn how to communicate expectations, give feedback, follow through, and use joint problem-solving in a factual, non-judgmental way. 3) Autonomy support: Parents learn how to validate emotions, encourage initiatives, and free children from roles. Finally, the How-to program can be endorsed by parents of various cultural backgrounds, as suggested by the large number (\> 30) of languages in which the material is translated. This advantage is crucial in ethnically diverse regions such as Canada.
Nobody's Perfect is delivered in family resource centers across Canada to support parents of infants and preschoolers. Its focus is on developing parents' capacity to problem solve, providing child development information, and helping parents recognize their strengths and find their own positive ways to interact with their children. It thus does not teach specific parenting skills and does not suggest specific rules to put into practice in the home-environment.
Locations(1)
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NCT05796466