Utilizing Smart Speaker Technology to Deliver Parenting Education Support to Parents of Young Children

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Children with externalizing behaviors and self-regulation difficulties as early as preschool are at elevated risk for socioemotional, behavioral, and academic problems throughout childhood, and for later psychosocial problems including substance abuse in adolescence. Behavioral sleep problems play an important role in children’s long-term adjustment as well. The presence of predictable, positive family routines improves children’s long-term trajectory for psychosocial and academic adjustment, especially in at-risk family environments. Evidence-based parenting programs have shown much value in addressing these problems, but the reach of parenting programs is limited by significant challenges in recruiting, engaging, and retaining parents, such that most parents who could benefit from parenting assistance never receive it. By overcoming logistical barriers to attending in-person parenting programs, technology-based parenting interventions offer significant potential for bringing evidence-based parenting supports to a broad range of parents experiencing challenges in raising their children. However, technology-based approaches confront significant engagement challenges as well. In addition, the field lacks programs that can bring evidence-based parenting supports to parents on an in-situ basis, such that parents can receive experiential support on how to foster healthy routines for their children. This proposed Phase I study will harness new innovative smart speaker technology to create a tool for parents, called “Talk Parenting”, that will provide families with engaging, motivating in-situ support on building healthy family routines. Talk Parenting will be an application, or “skill”, for the Amazon “Alexa” Echo smart speaker devices. Phase I will develop and evaluate feasibility of the first module, a guided Bedtime Routine to foster healthy sleep habits and provide experiential practice in self-regulation skills and a framework for positive parent-child interactions. Families will be able to access this in-situ support through hands-free simple voice commands and interactions with the smart speaker device. This project will evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and usability of the prototype Talk Parenting skill, and its initial effects on improving parenting practices, self-efficacy, and stress, children’s behavioral and sleep problems, and the parent-child relationship. A sample of 52 families of 3-5-year old children will be recruited through Head Start and other family support agencies. A within-subjects, pre-post design will be employed to analyze usability, satisfaction, and preliminary effects. A stakeholder Advisory Board will also provide feedback on commercial feasibility. Phase II will complete the full suite of parent-child routines to further build children’s capacities in self-regulation, psychosocial adjustment, and school readiness skills, including routines for the morning rush, cleaning-up, schoolwork, transitions, and “calming-down” when experiencing strong emotions. Establishing feasibility and initial efficacy of the innovative Talk Parenting program will have important implications for harnessing new smart speaker technologies to assist parents in-situ with key parenting challenges.