Building children’s resilience

Background: Parenting has a profound impact on children’s well-being. Positive parent-child relationships can promote children’s brain development, academic functioning, social competence, mental health and self-esteem. Responsive caregiving also buffers children from the negative impacts of adversity and stress. Given this, we set out to identify interventions that can promote positive parenting. Methods: We used systematic review methods to identify randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluations of parenting interventions for high-risk families. Applying our inclusion criteria, we accepted four RCTs.Results: All four programs produced some beneficial outcomes. Familias Unidas reduced child behaviour problems and increased parent involvement. Family Check-Up similarly increased maternal involvement. Nurse Home Visitation improved children’s language development and executive functioning among particularly high-risk families. SAFEChildren improved parental involvement in children’s education as well as children’s reading skills. Conclusions: Programs that encourage warm and consistent parenting can improve the lives of children and families, especially among those facing significant adversities.