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Review and Case Study: Improving Early Childhood Parenting as a Strategy to Reduce Adolescent Bullying

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Handbook of Anger, Aggression, and Violence

Abstract

Bullying starts in early childhood, and parents play an important role in shaping problematic behaviors of children. Improving parenting in early childhood, therefore, may be an effective strategy to reduce children’s bullying aggression in the long term. Few bullying prevention programs target the early childhood period, however. This chapter presents the effects of Triple P (Positive Parenting Program) on children’s bullying aggression at 10-year follow-up. Parents of young children received education and training on children’s development, positive parenting, and discipline strategies in a randomized, universal, group-based parent training intervention. Unlike earlier studies that showed that parenting intervention could reduce early childhood bullying, the current study examined bullying aggression during adolescence, when children were 10–14 years old. The results show lower levels of physical bullying reported by children, primarily boys, whose parents received Triple P training. Verbal bullying and victimization were unaffected. These findings suggest that early childhood parenting intervention can reduce adolescent bullying aggression.

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Abbreviations

ACT-RSK:

ACT Raising Safe Kids Program

Be-Prox:

The Bernese Program Against Victimization in Kindergarten and Elementary School

ECFP:

Early Childhood Friendship Project

IPW:

Inverse Probability Weighting

ITT:

Intent to Treat

MI:

Multiple Imputation

TOT:

Treatment on the Treated

Triple P:

Positive Parenting Program

TSLS:

Two-Stage Least Squares

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Correspondence to Jun Hyung Kim .

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Kim, J.H. (2023). Review and Case Study: Improving Early Childhood Parenting as a Strategy to Reduce Adolescent Bullying. In: Martin, C., Preedy, V.R., Patel, V.B. (eds) Handbook of Anger, Aggression, and Violence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98711-4_158-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98711-4_158-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-98711-4

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