Training Parents to Support Toddlers’ Early Helping: Lessons Learned from Indigenous-heritage Families

• In Event:  Collaboration, Togetherness, and Mutuality; Strengths of Learning among Indigenous Children and Families of the Americas

Abstract

A novel parenting training, Raising Helpful Toddlers (RHT), was designed to increase parent/caregiver support of toddler (age 12-48 months) helping behaviors. RHT builds upon work by Rogoff and colleagues that suggests that many Indigenous-heritage families use practices that promote a collaborative orientation in the family and inspire children to help from their own initiative in complex ways. Two mixed-methods studies, one using pre-post RHT assessment and another ongoing randomized controlled trial, assess whether and how parents accommodate toddler’s interest in household work differently, whether parents change related beliefs, and whether parents increase Parenting Self-efficacy (PSE) after RHT.

Methods. RHT is delivered via live video conferencing and teaches caregivers that: a) toddlers like to help; b) toddlers are capable of helping; and c) parents collaborating with toddlers toward family goals constitutes high-quality time together. Parents view videos of parent-toddler interaction, reflect on their beliefs and practices, and map out desired changes to enact. Parents completed quantitative and qualitative assessments pre-, 1-week-, and 2-weeks-post-RHT (Study 1: n=30; Study 2: target n=60; n=14 accrued to-date). Study 1 participants were highly educated, identified their race/ethnicity in proportions similar to U.S. demographics, and 26.7% were foreign-born.

Study 1 Results. Post-training, all parents reported increased efforts to accommodate their toddlers’ bids to help. Qualitative data suggested that parents improved conceptions regarding their toddlers’ helping motivations and abilities. A repeated measures ANOVA indicated that average PSE increased 2 weeks after training (F(1,29)=15.542, p<.001, p2=.35). Themes from qualitative interviews included parents post-RHT: allowing greater child autonomy; talking differently about chores; increasing positive attributions of their child; and experiencing reduced stress while doing chores. Four first- or second-generation immigrant mothers reported newfound confidence in maintaining/revisiting RHT practices common in their birth cultures.
Study 2 Preliminary Results. Early implementation data suggests parents are benefiting more from RHT, and in similar ways to Study 1, compared to parents attending a time and attention-matched control training. Hypothesized outcomes will be analyzed by qualitative analysis of parent reports and regression analyses using measures of depression, parenting stress, and PSE as dependent variables, upon completion of study accrual.

Conclusion. Results of these studies suggest RHT is feasible and shows promise in improving parent functioning related to toddler helping. RHT encourages parents to regard household work as an opportunity for toddlers to think about others, and to experience being a participating member of the family. Next steps will be to directly test child helping after RHT with observational methods, and explore further concurrent and longitudinal effects for child and family well-being. Important aspects of what makes people thrive were found to be prioritized by many Indigenous-heritage families in previous research – i.e., feeling connected to the group and other people, through acting synchronously and for the benefit of the group. The current set of studies provides further evidence for how those strengths may develop early in life and that they are strengths for learning and living not just within an Indigenous-heritage family context.

Authors

• Luc Fairchild, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Larissa G. Duncan, University of Wisconsin - Madison