Effects of child development training program on family problem solving and children’s behavioral problems

Family is a crucial context for a child's healthy development. Parents awareness of parenting style, can lead to a reduction in children's behavioral problems, flourishing their talents, and a decrease in conflict in family relationships.

For this purpose, the educational intervention in the form of a workshop on child development was considered for parents to examine its effectiveness in solving family problems and behavioral problems of children.

The present study is a quasi-experimental in which the pre-test post-test design is used. In this study, parents of children 7 to 12 years old announced their readiness to participate in the child development workshop. All 32 working parents were evaluated using the Eyeberg Child Inventory and Family Problem Solving scale. The parents of the intervention group participated in five sessions of the Child Development Training Program., In order to examine the significance of the difference between pre-test and post-test scores, paired sample t-test was used.

The findings of this study indicated that the average score of family problem solving in pre-test and post-test shows an increase of 11 points in post-test. The value of t obtained is 2.56, which is significant at the level of P=0.05. Also, the mean scores for behavioral problems in pre-test and post-test shows a decrease of 3 points in post-test. The value of t is equal to 2.42, which is significant at the level of P=0.05. This change was statistically significant in both scales.

Child Development Training Program has caused a decrease in behavioral problems and an increase in family problem-solving. According to these results, it can be concluded that designing and planning in order to provide training interventions, especially teaching parenting styles and parents' awareness of physical, emotional, affective and cognitive features of children can be an effective step in strengthening parents in the real confrontation with children's behavioral problems and also managing them and solving their family problems.