Parents and Children’s Coping: Building Resilience and Wellbeing in the Early Years

This paper reports on an innovative Early Years Productive Parenting Program, which is heavily drawn on the coping literature and incorporated learnings on proactive and productive coping for families with young children. The program focused on the delivery of a flexible parenting program offered to a group of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) parents attending a playgroup in an inner urban early childhood setting in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Participants included parents from Sudan, Somalia, Vietnam, New-Zealand and Australia. The research adopted a mixed methods approach with findings indicating that CALD parents benefit from being introduced to universally accepted parenting skills that are sensitive to a range of cultural settings. The study uncovered the efficacy of practical resources, such as Early Years Coping Cards and Parenting Tip Sheets, to support communication between parents and children especially in relation to the establishment of a shared language of coping.