Peer-reviewed article

A Pilot Study of the Tuning in to Kids Parenting Program in Iran for Reducing Preschool Children’s Anxiety

Forough Edrissi, Sophie Seychelle Havighurst, Asma Aghebati, Mojtaba Habibi, Abbas Masjedi Arani · 15 Apr 2019

Abstract

Tuning in to Kids (TIK) is a group parenting program that targets parent emotion socialization (emotional awareness and regulation, meta-emotion and emotion coaching skills) to improve children’s functioning. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the effectiveness of this program when used with parents of anxious preschool children. The study used a randomized controlled design. Fifty-six mothers of children who scored one standard deviation above the mean on the parent report of the Preschool Anxiety Scale (PAS) were selected from 358 families who expressed interest in participating in a parenting program. Selected participants were randomly assigned to intervention ( n = 30) or control ( n = 26) conditions. Participants in the intervention condition attended the 6 session TIK program followed by two booster sessions at monthly intervals thereafter. Post-intervention and 6- months later the PAS was re-administered to participants in both conditions. Mixed Repeated Measure ANOVA analysis showed a significant difference between participants in the two conditions on parent-reported anxiety at post-test and 6-month follow-up. Clinical significance analyses showed 69% of the intervention group in comparison to 18% of the control group had parent-reported change into the normal range for anxiety scores. These changes remained stable at 6-month follow-up (60% compared to 23%). The study suggests that the TIK program shows preliminary effectiveness when used in Iran with preschool children with anxiety.