Let's Connect®: An emotion-focused parenting program

Abstract

For decades, clinical research has focused on developing and refining effective parenting interventions through promoting positive parenting practices. Many of these interventions, grounded in behavioral theories, highlight the importance of helping parents create predictable routines for children, attend to children's positive behavior, support positive parent-child interactions, and use contingency management strategies. Key to the success of any parenting intervention is the ability of parents to regulate their own emotions and incorporate emotion socialization practices such as emotion labeling, support, and coaching. There has been considerable interest in developing parenting interventions with a specific focus on parent emotion regulation and emotion socialization practices. This paper introduces an emotion-focused parenting program called Let's Connect® that translates what we know about emotional development, emotion socialization, and parenting into an innovative approach to working directly with families in ways that build supportive parent-child relationships as well as parent/child SEC, mental/behavioral health, and overall resilience.