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Background: Parenting strategies such as communicating clear expectations, providing calm directions, and teaching specific skills can strengthen young children's social-emotional development. Parenting programs for children with disruptive behavior often emphasize gaining compliance via effective directives, and less on how to facilitate child skill acquisition or on effective parenting for differing situations and task demands. Objective: We aimed to study how parenting strategies and associated child behavior vary by situational contexts. Specifically, we focused on the differential use of directives and guidance during different tasks. Method: This observation study utilized a microsocial coding system, the Parent-Child Play Task Observation System (PCPTOS), to closely examine parent and child interactions in multiple analogue task situations. The study drew on pre-intervention data for 224 parent-child dyads who participated in a parenting-focused intervention trial for children ages 3-7 who presented elevated levels of disruptive behaviors. Results: Interrater reliabilities were very good to excellent. Parents used directives more frequently during the clean-up task and guidance more frequently during the teaching task compared to the other tasks. Associations of parent use of directives and guidance with child behavior and affect differed by task. Observed parent directives were associated with child disruptive behavior during each task, whereas parent guidance was negatively associated with child disruptive behavior and positively associated with child positive affect during the teaching task. Conclusions: Parenting strategies that are well matched to the situational context and proactively consider task demands are more likely to facilitate children's social-emotional development.

Parent-child relationships influence learning throughout a child's formal schooling and beyond. The quality of parenting children receive has a major influence on their learning and developmental capabilities. Parental influence is important in the early years of life and extends throughout a child's schooling. Parenting has a pervasive influence on children's language and communication, executive functions and self-regulation, social and peer relationships, academic attainment, general behaviour and enjoyment of school. Schools can further enhance educational outcomes for students by developing the resources and expertise needed to engage parents as partners in learning. This can be achieved by delivering and facilitating access to a comprehensive system of high-quality, culturally informed, evidence-based parenting support programs. In this article, recent developments in the Triple P system of parenting support are used to illustrate how schools can develop a low-cost, comprehensive, high-quality parenting support strategy that blends universal components with targeted components for more vulnerable children. We identify potential organisational and logistical barriers to implementing parenting support programs and ways to address these.

: Objectives: Parenting is central to children's optimal development and accounts for a substantial proportion of the variance in child outcomes, including up to 40% of child mental health. Parenting is also one of the most modifiable, proximal, and direct factors for preventing and treating a range of children's problems and enhancing wellbeing. To determine the effectiveness of new approaches to parenting intervention, and to evaluate how to optimise reach and uptake, sufficient funding must be allocated for high quality research. Method: We reviewed funding awarded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC) for parenting intervention research during 2011–2020. Results: Parenting intervention research received 0.25% of the NHMRC and ARC research budgets. Conclusions: There is a substantial mismatch between the funding of parenting intervention research and the impact of improved parenting on short‐ and long‐term child outcomes. To rectify this, it is critical that Australian Government funding schemes include parenting interventions as priority areas for funding. Implications for public health: Changes in allocation of funding to parenting research will support the establishment of evidence for the effective development, implementation and dissemination of parenting interventions to maximise health outcomes for children and their families., Parenting interventions play a central role in promoting and protecting the health, wellbeing and educational outcomes of children, adolescents and families, as well as preventing and treating difficulties when they [...]

The achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demands an increased focus on investing in young children as a pivotal solution. Many of the SDGs' targeted solutions directly or indirectly address facets of children's living conditions, aiming to foster their social and emotional well‐being. However, the current approach, while successful in delivering some impacts, are often disjointed. In this article, we contend that nurturing socially and emotionally healthy citizens of the future requires a comprehensive, systems‐contextual approach, moving beyond one‐sided focused solutions. A multiple and cross‐sectional approach to the SDGs, targeting potentially modifiable determinants of human capability through families, schools, and communities will enable a nurturing and stable system to be developed and ensure the next generation of children is better prepared to lead lives that are safe, healthy, and responsible. We examine the theoretical and empirical basis for a direct focus on children and young people and explore the criteria that need to be met for such an approach to work. Barriers and enablers for change on a global scale and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed methods study describes attributions for improvement following reductions in victimization for children who were bullied at school. It also tests hypotheses from attribution theory about attributions associated with improvements. The sample was a subset of families who participated in an RCT of a family cognitive-behavioral program to reduce victimization; to be included, both the parent and child needed to report reductions in child victimization at 9 months. Attributions were compared across conditions, respondents (parents versus children) and time. Both parents and children attributed improvements most often to actions by the target child. Intervention families were more likely than control families to attribute changes to their own efforts than to external factors. The relevance of internal attributions for the success of interventions is discussed.

Objective: The development of a brief online program to improve prosocial parent behavior at children's sporting events is described. We provide an overview of the collaborative research and development process, the theoretical basis for program content, design features, and evaluation approach used to establish the feasibility of Play Well Triple P in Junior Rugby League. Background: Parents influence children's experience of sports, impacting their enjoyment and participation, motivation to play, behavior, and performance during sporting events. Parental expectations and behaviors can place pressure on children, decreasing their enjoyment and contributing to their desistance from playing sport. As sport is important for maintaining children's social and psychological well‐being, research is needed to investigate strategies for supporting children to retain positive involvement in sports throughout childhood and adolescence. Method: Codesign principles were applied across four phases of program development—surveying parents of junior players (Phase 1), which informed the development of program content and design (Phase 2), refining the program based on feedback from parents and sports officials (Phase 3), and concluding with a feasibility evaluation of the final program (Phase 4). Results: Parents who participated in Play Well Triple P reported improvements in positive sport parenting behavior, decreases in negative sport parenting behavior, and a high level of satisfaction with the program. Conclusions and implications: The codesign framework for the development of a parent program for rugby league produced a promising and well‐accepted sports parenting program that warrants further trialing, and application to other junior sporting contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]