Promoting School Readiness Skills Through a Reflective Parenting Program

描述（由申请人提供）：通过早期儿童教育（ECE）项目，努力解决低收入儿童和富裕儿童在入学准备和学业成就方面的差距，结果喜忧参半。这些发现促使人们更广泛地考虑，在支持儿童向正规学校过渡和取得长期学业成功的过程中，哪些能力是必不可少的。越来越多的人认识到入学准备是多维的，不仅包括学前技能，还包括行为、情感和社会能力。这一观点还强调，儿童植根于与父母、老师和同龄人的关系网络中，旨在提高学校成绩的干预措施必须寻求改善这些关系的质量。因此，人们对旨在促进更协调的亲子关系的干预措施越来越感兴趣，在这种关系中，父母学会更多地考虑孩子的内在经历，对这些经历做出更少的反射性反应，而更多的是“反射性”反应。这种干预措施对于面临众多逆境的脆弱家庭可能特别有价值，这些逆境可能会损害护理工作。本研究旨在对社区机构中接受ECE服务的家庭实施和评估反思育儿计划（RPP）。RPP是一种以中心为基础，有时间限制的干预，旨在提高父母更好地理解和回应孩子情感体验的能力，为增强孩子的行为和情绪调节奠定基础。该项目需要对240名英语和西班牙语家长进行RPP随机对照试验，这些家长的孩子在儿童研究所公司（CII）的ECE服务中注册。父母将被随机分配到英语（n=60）或西班牙语RPP干预组（n=60）或英语（n=60）或西班牙语（n=60）对照组。被分配到对照组的父母和他们的孩子在参与研究期间将继续参加他们通过CII接受的任何其他服务（即标准护理）。所有家庭将在干预前（T1）、干预后（T2）和9个月随访（T3）时进行评估。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Efforts to address the disparities between low-income and more affluent children in school readiness and academic achievement through early childhood education (ECE) programs have yielded mixed results. Such findings have led to a broader consideration of what competencies are essential in supporting children's transition to formal schooling and their long-term academic success. There has been a growing recognition of school readiness as multidimensional, encompassing not just pre-academic skills, but behavioral, emotional, and social competencies as well. This perspective also emphasizes that children are embedded in a network of relationships with their parents, teachers, and peers, and that interventions aimed at enhancing school outcomes must seek to improve the quality of those relationships. Thus, there has been a growing interest in interventions that aim to promote a more attuned parent-child relationship, wherein parents learn to give greater consideration to their child's internal experiences, to respond less reflexively and more "reflectively" to these experiences. Such interventions may be especially valuable for vulnerable families facing a multitude of adversities that may compromise caregiving. This study aims to implement and evaluate the Reflective Parenting Program (RPP) with families receiving ECE services in a community agency. RPP is a center-based, time-limited intervention designed to enhance parents' capacity to better understand and respond to their child's affective experiences, setting the stage enhanced behavioral and emotional regulation in the child. This project entails a randomized control trial of RPP with 240 English and Spanish-speaking parents of children enrolled in ECE services at Children's Institute Incorporated (CII). Parents will be randomized to either an English-language (n=60) or Spanish-language RPP intervention group (n=60) or an English-language (n=60) or Spanish-language (n=60) Control Group. Parents assigned to the Control Group and their children will continue to participate in any other services they are receiving through CII (i.e., standard of care) during their participation in the study. All familie will be assessed at pre-intervention (T1), post-intervention (T2), and at a 9 month follow-up (T3). In comparison to the Control Group, we hypothesize that: 1) children of parents participating in RPP will show significantly greater improvements in emotional and behavioral regulation in comparison to children of parents in the Control Group; 2) parents participating in RPP will report significantly greater improvements in parental reflective functioning, and decreases in parenting stress than parents in the Control Group; 3) parents participating in RPP will demonstrate significantly greater improvements in behavioral and emotional responsiveness and parental communication during parent-child interactions; 4) improvements in child, parent, and parent-child outcomes will be maintained over the 9 month follow-up period; 5) parents participating in RPP and therapists trained in RPP will report high levels of satisfaction.