Tuning in to Kids® for Parents of Preschool-aged Children in Portugal

Early parent-child interactions, namely how parents respond to their children's emotions (i.e., emotion socialization parenting practices \[ESPP\]), may play a critical role in how children develop emotion regulation abilities. When parents rely on unsupportive ESPP, this can result in regulatory problems, which are a transdiagnostic symptom of MH problems, being a major cause of its etiology. Emotion-focused parenting programs, such as Tuning in to Kids® (TIK), promote parents' emotion coaching skills, enabling children to understand and regulate their emotions in more effective ways, while also supporting parents in managing their own emotions.

This study aims to examine the feasibility, acceptability, implementation fidelity and efficacy of the TIK program among parents of preschool-aged children in Portugal. TIK is a 6-week group, face-to-face program grounded in the principles of emotion coaching, among other theoretical backgrounds such as Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation Theories.

This trial is a parallel two-arm randomized clinical trial. Participants will be parents/legal guardians (\> 18 years old) with at least one child between 3 and 6 years old and with proficiency in portuguese. At least 152 parents/legal guardians will be recruited with the support of several community partners. Interested parents will be contacted by telephone to confirm their eligibility. Participants will be informed about their eligibility during the intake interview, followed by a full explanation of the clinical trial procedures. Eligible participants will be randomly assigned to either the intervention group (TIK) or a waitlist control group, with the latter receiving the intervention after the follow-up assessment. The intervention consists of six weekly in-person group sessions plus one follow-up session, each lasting approximately 2 hours. Participants in both groups will complete questionnaires at three time points - baseline, post-intervention, and 2-month follow-up - covering different dimensions of children (e.g., children's emotional and developmental difficulties) and parental (e.g., parenting stress) psychological functioning, and parenting (e.g., ESPP).