Investigation of the effect of "Ready4Routines" intervention program on children's executive functioning skills and mothers' autonomy supportive parenting styles and stress levels

The present study was intended to reveal the impacts of the Ready4Routines intervention program on children's executive functioning skills and mothers' autonomy-supportive parenting and stress levels. In this mixed-design study, while the quantitative side was designated with pre-, post-, and retention tests with a control group (2x3), we held interviews with the participants on the qualitative side. Using the criterion sampling technique, we selected the sample among literate and voluntary mothers living in Altindag, Ankara with 48-60-month-old typically developing children attending independent kindergartens in low socioeconomic neighborhoods. Accordingly, we carried out this study with 36 mothers and their children satisfying the inclusion criteria and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (19 experimental and 17 control). The pre-test data were collected using a demographic information form, the Scale for Evaluation of the Development of Executive Functions in Children - a teacher-report measurement tool developed by Taşkın Gökçe and Kandır (2020) to evaluate children's executive functioning skills -, the Parenting Stress Scale - developed by Aydoğan and Özbay (2017) to examine the parents' stress levels -, and the Autonomy Supportive Parenting Scale. We confirmed the five-factor structure of the last scale in this study and concluded it to be a valid and reliable tool (Cronbach alphas = .67-.85). In qualitative inquiry, we utilized a semi- structured interview form to learn about the participants' family routines, their awareness and their abilities on routines. Prior to the intervention program, we elicited expert opinions and performed a pilot implementation to reveal its suitability for translation, needs analysis, language, and culture. Adapted to the Turkish context, the Ready4Routines intervention program was implemented for the mothers in the experimental group face-to-face in their children's kindergartens through group and individual interviews once a week (half time) for ten weeks. Following the implementation of the program, we collected the post-test data from both groups using the same measurement tools in the pre-test phase and administered a retention test only to the experimental group six weeks after the post-test measurements. Since the quantitative data showed a non-normal distribution, while the independent pair-wise comparisons were performed using a Mann-Whitney U test and we used a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test as a nonparametric test for dependent samples. On the other hand, the qualitative data were subjected to content analysis with themes, codes, and sub- codes. The post-test findings uncovered that the children of the mothers in the experimental group had significantly promoted working memory, self-regulation, and empathy/inhibition - dimensions of executive functioning skills - (p < 0.05). The mothers, on the other hand, had significantly enhanced ability to regulate family routines and reduced parenting stress (p < 0.05). The retention tests also demonstrated that the children maintained enhanced working memory and self-regulation skills (p < 0.05) and that the parents continued to enjoy the promoted regulation of family routines and the children's involvement in family routines. Despite disruptions in family routines due to the earthquake disaster experienced in our country during the retention tests, the established family routines beforehand seem to have emerged as a protective factor for the children and mothers. Besides, the distinct contribution of this study to the literature may be that our findings documented Ready4Routines to be an efficient program with the potential to culturally support children's executive function skills, reduce parents' stress, regulate family routines, and promote children's autonomy thanks to a recognized opportunity to be involved in daily routines, such as mealtime, bedtime, and transitions.