“I now see my toddler as a helper, not just somebody in need of help”: Raising Helpful Toddlers training

Abstract

Helping other people benefits children and is fundamental to a functioning society. A novel training, Raising Helpful Toddlers (RHT), focuses on beneficial Indigenous heritage parent socialization practices previously described. RHT participants were thirty U.S. toddler parents/caregivers, aged 28–46, 26/4 female/male ratio; 73.3 % White, 13.3 % Asian, 6.7 % African or Black/African American, 3.3 % Asian and White, 3.3 % American Indian and Hispanic, and highly educated on average, with children aged 12 to 48 months. RHT consists of a 2-hour online training, followed up with daily logs and interviews to support the training while collecting qualitative data. Feasibility was indicated by high rates of parent recruitment, satisfaction, and use of RHT strategies. Average parenting self-efficacy increased at post-test, with a moderate to large effect size, according to a repeated-measures t-test, t(28)=3.792, p < .001, d = 0.58. Many parents reported improvements at post-test including less stress when doing chores and changed beliefs, actions, and speech. Results suggest that parenting practices described in Indigenous-heritage families can be beneficial across cultural contexts. Keywords: Indigenous, Parenting, Family, Intervention, Early Care, Early Education, Prosocial Behavior, Moral Development