Happy parenting – prevention is better than cure

Many parenting interventions emphasise skills training after problems develop, as opposed to establishing a strong parentchild relationship from early on. For young children, growing up with a good relationship with their parents may help prevent longterm health issues.

An important part of healthy child development is learning how to cope with mild stressful events, which trigger physiological effects. When young children experience stress in the context of supportive relationships with their parents, these effects are cushioned and return to normal levels relatively quickly. The result is the development of healthy stress response systems.

However, if a young child is living in a chronically high stress environment without a safe and dependable relationship with their caregiver, the result can be very different. Healthy development can be affected, resulting in detrimental influences on learning, behaviour and well-being.

Stressed new parents

The first year of a child’s life can be particularly stressful for new parents. It’s a time of many challenges: sleeping, teething, starting solid foods, rapid development and more. Supporting families early in their parenting journey can help parents develop a dependable relationship with their children and help the family navigate stressful periods.

This is particularly important for children from economically disadvantaged households, where stress levels of both parents and children are persistently higher.

Our current research is investigating a distinctive style of early parenting known as the Respectful Approach. Originally designed for institutional care in Eastern Europe and introduced to the US by world-renowned child specialist, and leader in the field of early childhood education, Magda Gerber.

The approach focuses on developing a dependable and cooperative relationship with the child from infancy. Caregivers are guided to treat their infants as capable and independent, with emphasis on sensitive observation and attention to cues.

This approach aims to empower parents with a new mindset and strategies to develop a respectful and collaborative relationship with their children. Workshops include infants as well as parents, so parents can see the approach modelled and practise it directly with their children.

Our workshops focus on six key principles for parents to incorporate while caring for their infants. These are trust, respect, sensitive observation, intentional quality caregiving, safe uninterrupted play and consistency.

As an example, quality caregiving is a technique that engages the infant in basic daily tasks by speaking to them and explaining actions, while also allowing for active participation, such as saying: ‘it’s time to put a bib on for lunch’, and then letting them point to which bib they would like to wear. Feeding infants on the parent’s lap rather than in a highchair helps parents better tune into cues and gives infants the opportunity to have their parent’s full attention.

As another example, safe uninterrupted play involves childled play, allowing children the freedom to explore at their own pace within a safe area without disturbance from older siblings or pets, or direction from parents. Parents often like to jump in and show infants the ‘right’ way to play with a toy (“push this button and then that happens, look how I do it!”) but infants are likely to stay more engaged when they discover things for themselves.

Play with everyday household objects is encouraged (like small bowls, boxes, spoons, small cotton napkins) – these items are openended and infants love interacting with them. Gerber is attributed to the saying that passive toys create active children, while active toys create passive children.

Our preliminary work has indicated that our Respectful Approach parent-child education significantly lowers parents stress levels, with parents reporting they felt calmer and better understood their children which resulted in increased confidence in their own parenting. For our new project, the Happy Parenting Program, we want to discover whether the intervention can also improve children’s health – particularly their stress levels, behaviour and development. Further, we aim to determine whether children from disadvantaged families benefit more from the intervention than children from advantaged families. For this program, we are currently recruiting families with babies up to six months of age to take part in weekly parenting workshops, for two sets of eight-week blocks. The workshops are free and held in locations both north and south of Perth. Parents who are interested in taking part with their babies can find more information at the Happy Parenting Program homepage.

This project is sponsored by Channel 7 Telethon Trust and the Royal Perth Hospital Research Foundation.

ED: A/Prof Therese O’Sullivan is Discipline Lead, Nutrition & Dietetics at Edith Cowan University.