Positive interventions have been shown to boost well-being in parents, adults, and children (e.g., Burkhart et al., 2015; Nelson, Layous, Cole, & Lyubomirsky, 2016). Similarly, journaling about events in one’s life... [ view full abstract ]
Positive interventions have been shown to boost well-being in parents, adults, and children (e.g., Burkhart et al., 2015; Nelson, Layous, Cole, & Lyubomirsky, 2016). Similarly, journaling about events in one’s life has also been shown to boost well-being (King, 2001) and is often used as a positive intervention control (Layous, Nelson, & Lyubomirsky, 2013; Nelson et al., 2016). Notably, however, few of these studies focus on the parent-child relationship, and they primarily target a single activity. Therefore, we designed the current study to target parents’ well-being with multiple strategies that will ideally build on each other throughout the course of the study. This study investigates the effects of a 6 week positive intervention in which parents are directed to savor their time with their children, to create positive experiences with their children, and to engage in prosocial acts with their children on psychological and emotional well-being, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and parent-reported child behavior. Parents with children between the ages of 5 and 10 are involved in the study. Each week, the participants completed measures of emotions, well-being, and received intervention instructions via Qualtrics. We expect to see bigger increases in overall well-being for the intervention group when compared to a comparison group because these interventions will direct parents to be mindful of their relationship with their child, create positive experiences and emotions that are shared between parent and child, which should help reduce parental stress and strengthen the parent-child relationship. Preliminary analyses revealed that parents in the intervention condition reported greater increases in positive emotions after the first two weeks of the study. These findings suggest that parents may be able to improve their happiness with simple self-directed activities.
