A Pilot Study to Examine the Effects of an Emotion Coaching Parenting Program for Chinese Parents of Preschoolers

Parental emotion socialization is crucial to children’s development, yet emotion-focused parenting programs are scarce in non-Western contexts. In this study, we developed a four-week emotion-focused parenting program based on the principles of emotion coaching for Chinese families with preschool-aged children. This program integrated parent group sessions with home-based parent–child shared reading. A total of 73 parents of preschoolers were recruited and randomly assigned to experimental and waitlist control groups. Three waves of data on parents’ emotion-related parenting beliefs and practices and parenting stress were collected at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and three-month follow-up. Significant reductions in parents’ punitive reactions, minimization reactions, and parent–child dysfunctional interactions were found in both the experimental and the waitlist control groups immediately after completion of the program. When combining data from both groups, a significant improvement in parents’ expressive encouragement was observed at post-intervention and follow-up. Additionally, delayed effects of the program were found on parents’ emotion-dismissing beliefs, problem-focused reactions, and overall parenting stress. This study was one of the first in China to develop an emotion-focused parenting program and rigorously examine its feasibility and effects, offering insights into the development of similar parenting programs in China.