Universally, children need access to consistent and predictable environmental features in order to develop and sustain positive cognitive, linguistic, and behavioral development. In the absence of education or exposure to information related to child development, parents can miss numerous opportunities to enhance and positively guide their child's developmental course.

The goal of the current dissertation project was to investigate the feasibility, implementation, and potential effects of a parent training program. The purpose was threefold: first, to investigate the feasibility of designing a Protective Factors parent training program that included language facilitation, behavior management, and family stress regulation; second, to evaluate whether the new parent training program could be successfully implemented with economically disadvantaged families with typically developing children; and third, to explore possible achievement gains or positive changes demonstrated by the participating parents and children. The Success in Parenting curriculum (Fisher et al., 1997) was modified for families with typically developing preschool children and included treatment design features to address the specific needs of economically disadvantaged families. The resulting version of Success in Parenting was named Success in Parenting Preschoolers (SIP₂) and was administered to parents with children enrolled in Head Start (ages 3- to 5-years).

The study used a pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment to an immediate treatment (experimental) group or a delayed treatment (control) group condition. Parents were randomly assigned to either treatment (N=14) or control (N=14) conditions. Treatment group parents participated in the Success in Parenting Preschoolers (SIP₂) training program by attending weekly 2-hour classes for eight weeks. The SIP₂ curriculum highlighted naturalistic, social interactive, parent implemented strategies to enhance language development, facilitate pro-social behavior conduct, and regulate family stress in a protective factors context of home predictability.

Treatment group parent participants reported significant changes in perceived stress, ability, and confidence. Parents demonstrated increased use of positive interaction and language facilitation techniques with their child. Treatment group child participants demonstrated improvements in receptive language, daily behavior conduct, nonverbal intelligence, and memory that were significantly different from control group. Future directions include longitudinal, replication, and expansion studies. Implications were discussed regarding early intervention and educational policy.