Parents can play a strong role in helping their children overcome anxiety disorders given the right tools. This approach aims to teach parents/carers cognitive behavioural therapy strategies to empower and increase confidence to use with their child to help overcome difficulties with anxiety.Session-by-session guidelines are provided for giving parents the skills to promote children’s flexible thinking and independent problem solving, helping them face specific fears and tackle accompanying difficulties, such as sleep problems and school refusal. Implementing this approach has been helpful at reducing child anxiety (Thirlwall et al., 2013)​

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The Mellow Parenting programme is designed to promote sensitive parenting, aimingto improve attachment and address parental mental health as well as developingbetter parent-child relationships.It is a group-based approach designed to support families who have additional health and social care needs who are experiencing relationship challenges with their young children.The programme has shown a positive effect on parental mental health and a positiveeffect on child behaviour (MacBeth et al., 2015).

This programme focuses on strengthening parent competencies and fostering parentinvolvement in children’s school experiences to promote children’s academic, social,and emotional skills and reduce conduct problems.The parent intervention programs are delivered to groups of parents / caregivers according to child’s age group: babies (0-12 months), toddlers (1-3 years), preschoolers (3-6), and school age (6-12 years). Outcome studies suggest this approach improves social skills (Scott et al., 2009), reduces behaviour problems (Posthumus et al., 2012) and has positive impacts on parenting (McGilloway et al., 2012).

Triple P is a parenting programme providing a toolbox of ideas, allowing parents tochoose strategies as needed. The three Ps in ‘Triple P’ stand for ‘Positive ParentingProgram’ which aims to make family life more enjoyable by including 5 differentlevels of intervention (from very low intensity to high intensity).Triple P helps parents manage misbehaviour, encourage positive behaviours, raisechildren’s confidence and increase confidence in parents that they are doing the rightthing.Studies have shown it resulting in lower levels of child behavioural problems, higherparental competence and lower dysfunctional parenting styles (Leung et al., 2004).

This programme is designed to help young children build stronger social, emotional, and problem‑solving skills through play‑based learning. It uses stories, puppets, games, and group activities to teach children how to manage feelings, make friends, and handle everyday challenges in a positive, structured way. It also helps children practise cooperation, turn‑taking, and problem‑solving through fun, structured routines that feel more like play than lessons. It’s especially effective because it gives kids a safe space to rehearse real‑life social situations, building confidence and emotional regulation in a way that sticks.​​​​​​​​

Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) parent training is a method aimed at addressing harmful and destructive behaviours, particularly child-to-parent violence and abuse.  Its goal is to help parents resist the problematic and often self-destructive behaviours of their children. As research indicates, it is crucial to directly confront aggression or self-destructive behaviours in specific ways with careful, supportive planning (PartnershipProjects, n.d.), much time in NVR is spent planning, preparing and carrying out concrete action against the violence in life outside the session.  Parents/carers learn to acquire a position of strength, developing resistance against the violence in a step-by-step manner, discussing and planning each new step whilst reflecting and building on what they experience in the process.  Outcome studies have shown that NVR is effective in improving the behaviour of a large percentage of young people, reducing parents’ feelings of helplessness and raising their confidence as well as bringing a more peaceful atmosphere in the family (Omer & Lebowitz, 2016) For more info about NVR see www.partnershipprojectsuk.com