Objectives 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. Methods 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. Results 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%). ConclusionThe study suggests that the TIK program shows preliminary effectiveness when used in Iran with preschool children with anxiety.

Background: Parenting interventions based on emotion socialization (ES) theory offer an important theoretically driven approach to improve children’s emotional competence and behavioral functioning. Whether such approaches are effective in different cultural contexts, and whether the methods of delivery used are appropriate and acceptable, is an important empirical question. This paper reports on the preliminary evaluation of an ES parenting intervention, Tuning in to Kids (TIK), in Germany, Turkey, Iran, and China. Pilot studies of TIK have been conducted in each country with mothers of 4–6-year-old children. Method: The current study used qualitative methods with thematic analysis to explore the cultural appropriateness of the program in each site. Results: Culture-specific challenges were found across all sites in changing parents’ beliefs about the value of encouraging children’s emotional expression and supportive emotion discussions. Emotion literacy of parents depended on their access to emotion terms in their language, but also to parents’ experiences with emotions in their family of origin and culture-related beliefs about emotions. Adaptations were required to slow the speed of delivery, to address issues of trust with parents in seeking help, and to provide more opportunities to practice the skills and integrate different beliefs about parenting. Conclusion: While this ES parenting intervention has been developed in a Western cultural context, slight adaptations to the delivery methods (rather than change to the content) appeared to contribute to cultural appropriateness. The next step will be to quantitatively evaluate these adaptations of TIK in the different countries using randomized controlled studies.

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