Develop of compassion-based education package on mother-child interaction and its effectiveness on mother-child relationship and parental stress improvement

Introduction: The child needs an appropriate environment for growth and development. An environment where parental care is the key to achieve the desired development.The purpose of this study was to develop of compassion-based education package on mother-child interaction and its effectiveness on mother-child relationship and parental stress improvement. Methods: The research method was semi-experimental with running pre-test and post-test. 40 mothers were selected among all mothers with child aged 2 to 7 years old in kindergartens and preschools in Tehran. They were selected based on the research entering criteria and two-stage cluster random sampling. They were randomly put into experimental group and control group. The experimental group was under the education based on compassion therapy for eight 90-minute sessions. The parent child relationship scale (Pianta) and Parental stress scale was used to assess stress in the parent-child system. The Data was analyzed by covariance analysis method and SPSS software version 22 were used. P <0.05 was considered significant. Results: The findings of this study showed that educational intervention in the variables of proximity (P=0.001), dependence(P=0.001), conflict(P=0.042), and overall positive relationship(P=0.038) and all of the parents' stress variables, except for the depression variable(P=0.228), could lead to a significant reduction in the performance of the experimental group compared to the control group in the post-test. Conclusion: In general, the results of this study indicated that the compassion -based education program resulted in improvement of mother-child relationship and improvement parental stress in mothers.