How to Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen so Kids Will Talk: A Randomized Controlled Trial Assessing the Impact of the French Workshop Format in the General Population

Raising children is a fundamental yet challenging task. While parents are highly invested in their children's development, they also have a vast influence on it. Indeed, among environmental factors, the most widely accepted predictor of children mental health is parenting quality. Research has shown that optimal parenting is composed of three key dimensions: structure, autonomy support, and affiliation (vs. permissiveness, psychological control, rejection). For parents, providing all three key "nutriments" is not necessarily natural or easy. Indeed, it can be challenging to (1) require children to adopt socially desirable behaviors (2) without thwarting their need for self-determination, (3) while preserving a positive parent-child relationship. In addition, available parenting resources (e.g., diverse parenting books) are sometimes contradictory, abstract, and rarely tap all three important parenting dimensions. Providing the general population with concrete and complete parenting education is essential in helping parents with their important yet challenging role.

The goal of the proposed research is to evaluate a parenting program (i.e., How-to program) that addresses all three key dimensions of optimal parenting. This program is congruent with basic developmental research and with knowledge from decades of motivation research devoted to autonomy support and self-determination theory. The objectives of the How-to parenting program are 1) to improve optimal parenting style, and 2) to foster children mental health (i.e. decrease child' internal and external problems, and increase child' well-being). The investigators expect that parents assigned to experimental groups will show improvements in parenting over time, whereas parents in control groups will not show such improvements (i.e., stable or declining parenting quality). The investigators also expect children of parents in experimental groups to experience improvements in mental health, whereas children whose parents are on the wait list will not show improvements over time (i.e., stable or deteriorating mental health and well-being).

The research team will recruit participants and conduct the study in four schools per year, during four years. The How-to parenting program will be offered to parents of grade school children (5 to 12 years old). Grade schools will be recruited through Montreal school boards. Only one parent per family may participate in the study. If parents have more than one child in grade school, they will be asked to identify the one who is closest to 9 years of age and then answer questionnaires about this "targeted" child. The seven-week parenting program will be offered to the experimental groups (one per school) each spring (Years 1 to 4). Each of these 4 experimental groups will be paired with a wait list control group from the same school. Parents from these control groups will be offered the program the following year (Years 2 to 5). In total, 256 parents from different families (mothers or fathers) will be recruited in participating schools (16 parents [8 in experimental group + 8 in control group] in each of 4 schools, for 4 years). This sample size was chosen to achieve adequate power, while keeping the study feasible given participation rate.

The How-to program highlights the importance of structure and teaches parents how to provide it. Parents learn how to communicate expectations, give feedback, follow through with logical consequences and use problem solving for recurrent problems. In addition, the program perfectly captures what it means to be autonomy-supportive. Moreover, this style helps children feel better about the rules and about themselves. These new skills empower parents to exert their authority with confidence and, importantly, without guilt. Parents are then more apt at providing structure effectively and consistently. With the How-to Parenting program, parents learn how to listen and respond to their children in a way that helps children feel loved and accepted for who they are.

The How-to parenting program consists of seven 2 ½-hour weekly sessions. It is a manual-based program in which participants have their own exercise booklet containing parenting skills and exercises. Groups are led by 2 group leaders and formed of 6 to 10 parents. The format of this program optimizes learning by (1) linking group content with parents' needs, (2) facilitating awareness with perspective taking activities, (3) offering concrete parenting skills, (4) modeling the skills and providing practice in a predictable and non-judgmental environment, (5) emphasizing the importance of implementing these skills at home for long term behavioral change, and (6) offering tools (i.e., exercise booklet, skill summary) that facilitate information retention.