This proposal is built around the hypothesis that at-risk children often fail to profit from Head Start or other early education programs because they are cognitively, emotionally, and socially unprepared, especially in areas of attention, attachment, receptive and productive language, mastery motivation, and self-regulation. We propose to refine and integrate the best of existing parent training modules so as to foster the emergence of a sequence of interdependent developmental skills in 450 first-born children, culminating in enhanced self-regulation and pre-academic skills. Children who progress more rapidly and successfully because of the components of our overall intervention should be """"""""ready"""""""" to take fuller advantage of Head Start programs (as shown in pre-academic reading and math skills) when compared with children in a control condition or with children in the treatment conditions who are less successful in achieving these developmental milestones. We propose a complex intervention, across at least three research sites that have heavy concentrations of children living in poverty. The intervention will focus on the parents and caregivers of first-born at-risk children from birth to age 4. The three conditions are: (1) an attentional control, (2) a professionally delivered intervention, and (3) an intervention staffed by trained volunteers. Each of the treatment conditions will be subdivided at 18 months after modules 1 and 2 have been implemented: one half of the participants will receive modules 3 and 4 (ending at 36 months of age) whereas the other half will receive periodic booster sessions. This manipulation will enable us to judge the necessity of continuing interventions over a long time span, continuing to increase parenting competencies in support of child development across the first 3 years of life. Assessments of 5 developmental milestones and parenting beliefs (and practices) will be taken yearly during the 4 year duration of the project. In addition, each site will conduct a subproject in which factors likely to influence intervention effectiveness are measured (i.e., substance abuse in South Bend; conflicted relationships in Mobile; depression and affect regulation in New Orleans). Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses (HLM) will be used to assess intervention effectiveness, the predictors and correlates of """"""""success"""""""", and the interrelationships been changes in parents and caretakers and the achievement of developmental milestones by children. In short, most Head Start programs--even those with enriched curricula--are likely to produce minimal changes in the pre-academic skills of high-risk children, because of entrenched poverty and non-stimulating home environments. Hence, we propose to conduct a comprehensive, early intervention in order to give these children a better chance of eventual school success by helping to """"""""ready"""""""" them for Head Start.
