Tuning in to Kids Together: Piloting an Emotion-Focused Coparenting Program

Abstract

Group parenting programs, including emotion-focused programs, are effective at improving children's emotional and behavioral adjustment; however, the impact of these programs may be limited due to parents, typically mothers, attending sessions alone. It is expected that actively involving both caregivers in parenting programs will lead to superior outcomes given family systems are interconnected and when parents feel more supported by one another, they are more likely to have greater emotional availability for their children. Tuning in to Kids Together (TIK-Together) was developed to involve both caregivers and address the coparenting relationship. The current study examined the feasibility and pilot testing of TIK-Together when delivered in a real-world context, specifically assessing program adherence, reliability of measures, and program outcomes. TIK-Together was delivered to 57 participants (27 mother–father dyads, 1 triad) by community services in Australia in an intervention-only design. Facilitators completed attendance sheets and fidelity checklists after each session, and parents completed online questionnaires at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 6-month follow-up. Adherence across services varied; however, parent attendance and the proportion of content delivered was high. The measures used to assess coparent outcomes demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency in the current sample. After attending the program, parents reported increased supportive/cooperative coparenting of children's emotions, greater dyadic coping, improved emotion coaching beliefs and practices, reduced undermining coparenting of children's emotions, lower emotion dismissing beliefs and practices, and less parent emotion dysregulation. Mothers and fathers reported improved child emotion regulation and decreased behavioral difficulties. The findings are consistent with prior TIK research and pave the way for future research exploring the benefits of integrating coparenting content into this parenting intervention.