Purposeful Parenting: Enhanced Anticipatory Guidance for the First Year of Life

Pediatricians' provision of parenting-focused anticipatory guidance often does not meet parents' needs; the few studies that have investigated primary-care based strategies to promote positive parenting rely on time-intensive, high-cost interventions, thereby limiting their generalizability. Therefore, the Purposeful Parenting was developed as a universal program of enhanced anticipatory guidance. At each well-child visit in the first year of a child's life, Purposeful Parenting provides parents with: 1) scripted anticipatory guidance and handouts focused on the child's emerging social-emotional and linguistic (SEL) skills, brain development and the importance of responsive parenting; and 2) a "reminder" item (e.g., a "Smile at Me" onesie) that allows for in-office role modeling and promotes practicing of an age-specific, nurturing parent-child interaction. If an in-office intervention is missed (e.g. parent cancels visit, interventionist out sick) the intervention will be delivered by telephone if possible by the site-based clinical interventionists and the "reminder" items will be mailed.