Parenting interventions for empowering emotionally-intelligent parents: a proposed study to parents of preschool children in Selangor

• Main Authors: A. G., Siti Fatimah, Kadir Shahar, Hayati, Awang, Hamidin, Othman, Mohd Sukki, Abdul Rahman, Anita
• Format: Article
• Published: Community Health Society Malaysia 2014
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/34822/; http://publichealthmy.org/ejournal/ojs2/index.php/ijphcs/article/view/82

Background: Parents play a crucial role in establishing later patterns of emotional, cognitive and social functioning in children. Parenting practices affect children in various ways, for instance, children’s behaviour, school achievement and emotional intelligence. One of the best ways to empower parenting practices is through parenting intervention program. In doing so, theories usually are employed as guidance. Examples of the theories used are Behavioural Change Theories and Attachment Theory. Behaviour-based parenting intervention focuses on changing parenting behaviours that lead to a change in children behaviours. Whilst, Attachment-based or emotion-based parenting focuses on changing children behaviour by regulating parents’ and children’s emotion. From Islamic perspective, Muslim believed that Prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wasallam (s.a.w) is the best role model for parenting. Therefore, this paper is aimed to develop an Islamic Parenting Program which holistically covers all domains of well-being, namely physical, emotional, behavioural and spiritual. Materials and Methods: This paper is designed to propose a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) of development, implementation and assessment of a parenting intervention module among parents in empowering their parenting practices. This parenting intervention module, called Prophetic Parenting Program, will be developed based on Quran and Hadith which is components of Behavioural Change and Attachment Theory in parenting issues. All parents (muslims and non-muslims) from selected preschools will be assigned to intervention or control group. Parents from intervention group will receive Prophetic Parenting Program whilst parents from control group will be receive General Parenting Program. Data will be collected from the parents by using questionnaire for three times; pre-intervention (Time1), post-intervention (Time 2) and at follow-up, six months later (Time 3). Data will be analysed by using SPSS to assess the impact of intervention across Time1, Time2 and Time 3 on parent outcome variables. Expected Result: Prophetic Parenting is expected to have better result as compared to other general parenting program in empowering parenting practices. Prophetic parenting is a return to the virtuous and honourable principles of the best way of life. Conclusion: If proven effective, Prophetic Parenting intervention module could be a useful tool to educate parents in future.