Helping Head Start Parents Promote Their Children's Kindergarten Adjustment: The Research-Based Developmentally Informed Parent Program

• Published in: Child development Vol. 86; no. 6; pp. 1877 - 1891
• Main Authors: Bierman, Karen L., Welsh, Janet A., Heinrichs, Brenda S., Nix, Robert L., Mathis, Erin T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.11.2015; Wiley for the Society for Research in Child Development; Wiley-Blackwell
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Academic readiness; Adult; At Risk Students; Child development; Child Development - physiology; Child, Preschool; Children; Classrooms; Cognitive ability; Cognitive Development; Comparative Analysis; Developmental Stages; Disadvantaged Youth; Domiciliary visits; Early Intervention; Early Intervention (Education) - methods; Educational Games; Emotional Development; EMPIRICAL ARTICLES; Evidence based; Female; Games; Head Start project; Home Visits; House Calls; Humans; Imagination; Independent study; Interaction; Interpersonal Competence; Kindergarten; Literacy; Literacy Education; Literacy skills; Male; Mathematics Education; Outcome Assessment (Health Care); Parent Education; Parents; Parents & parenting; Preschool children; Pretend play; Randomized Controlled Trials; Readiness; Selfdirected learning; Social Adjustment; Social Development; Social discrimination learning; Social skills; Story Telling
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12448

Head Start enhances school readiness during preschool, but effects diminish after children transition into kindergarten. Designed to promote sustained gains, the Research-based Developmentally Informed (REDI) Parent program (REDI-P) provided home visits before and after the kindergarten transition, giving parents evidence-based learning games, interactive stories, and guided pretend play to use with their children. To evaluate impact, two hundred 4-year-old children in Head Start REDI classrooms were randomly assigned to REDI-P or a comparison condition (mail-home math games). Beyond the effects of the classroom program, REDI-P promoted significant improvements in child literacy skills, academic performance, self-directed learning, and social competence, demonstrating the utility of the approach in promoting gains in cognitive and social-emotional skills evident after the transition into kindergarten.