The objective of this research is to conduct a small randomized pilot study to evaluate the feasibility of Sit Down and Play (SDP), a brief, low-cost program delivered in the primary care setting to enhance parent-child interactions and explore potential impacts on parenting behaviors.
Enriching parenting behaviors in early childhood promotes child development and offers a promising strategy to reduce future educational disparities. However, current interventions are limited by cost and have not been widely disseminated. Recognized as a target for research to improve early childhood development and school readiness among at-risk families, the primary care setting offers an ideal opportunity to reach the millions of children living in poverty.However, what remains unknown is how to more efficiently leverage the primary care setting to deliver a sustainable and effective preventive intervention to promote positive parenting behaviors and encourage early childhood development in low-income families. Therefore, the investigators designed Sit Down and Play (SDP) a brief parent-directed program delivered in the primary care setting. Modeled after the widely disseminated literacy program Reach Out and Read and grounded in social cognitive theory, SDP is intended to take place during each pediatric well-child visit occurring in a child's first two years with the goal of promoting positive parenting behaviors.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
40
Sit Down and Play (SDP) is designed to be a brief, low-cost intervention that incorporates key theoretical constructs to elicit positive parenting behaviors. It is intended to be delivered by existing clinical staff, nonprofessionals, or volunteers during each of the eight well-child visits between 2-24 months of age while a family waits to be seen by their pediatrician in the examination room.
Handouts developed by Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to provide information regarding age-specific early childhood milestones
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Caregiver's participation in cognitively stimulating activities such as reading and playing using self-report measure StimQ
Time frame: 3-4 months post-enrollment
Parental Self-Efficacy as measured by Parenting Sense of Competence Scale
Time frame: 3-4 months post-enrollment
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