About the program

A universal parenting program for parents of children aged 3 to 10 years old. It aims to promote the development of emotional competence and prevent behaviour problems in young children by improving parents’ own emotional competence and teaching them emotion coaching skills. 

Program structure

Tuning in to Kids is delivered in 6 x 2-hour weekly sessions by facilitators following a structured manual. The manual includes a range of resources, including handouts for parents and video material to assist with program delivery. All program resources are made available to trained facilitators online via access to the facilitator portal.

Program delivery can be adapted.

Evaluation and effectiveness

Tuning in to kids has undergone several studies and evaluations for various intervention groups. This includes a randomised control trial undertaken by Havighurst and colleagues (2013) with parents of children aged between 4 and 5 years old. There were 31 participants in the intervention group and 23 participants in a treatment as usual comparison group.  

The results indicated that parents in the program had greater empathy and better emotion discourse with their children compared to those in the comparison group. Children of parents in the program also showed a greater knowledge of emotions compared to those in the comparison group. Participants in both groups had improved emotion regulation, reduced emotional dismissiveness and child behaviour problems at 3 and 9 months after baseline.  

A full list and summary of the research is available on the Tuning in to Kids website.

Reference

Havighurst, S.S., Wilson, K.R., Harley, A.E., Kehoe, C., Efron, D., & Prior, M.R., (2013) "Tuning into Kids": reducing young children's behaviour problems using an emotion coaching parenting program. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. 44(2):247-64.