The Effects of Actual Treatment Parent Education Program on Parenting Stress, Internal Control, and Happiness of Mothers of Infants and Toddlers

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the reality treatment parent education program on parenting stress, internal control, and happiness of mothers of infants and toddlers. Methods For the study, 12 out of 24 mothers of infants and toddlers using daycare centers located in S-gu, Busan, were assigned to the experimental group, and 12 were wirelessly assigned to the control group. The reality therapy parent education program provided in the experimental group consisted of eight sessions of group reality therapy parent education, including wind exploration, human five needs, understanding good and perceived worlds, understanding human behavior selection and pre-behavior, and learning communication skills to help relationships. Before the experiment, the researcher conducted pre-test on the subjects' parenting stress scale, internal control scale, and happiness scale, and after the end of the reality treatment parent education program, the same post-test as the pre-test was performed on the experimental group and the control group. Results he results of the study are as follows. First, it was found that the reality treatment parent education program was effective in lowering the parenting stress of mothers of infants and toddlers. Second, it was found that the reality treatment parent education program has no effect on internal control and has a significant effect on external control among the sub-factors of internal and external control of infants and toddlers. Third, it was found that the reality treatment parent education program was effective in improving the happiness of mothers of infants and toddlers. Conclusions The real-life treatment parent education program needs to be developed that can be applied not only to mothers of infants and toddlers but also to parents of children of various ages. This study is meaningful in that it is a preemptive study that provided the effectiveness of the reality treatment parent education program as a ZOOM method experimented during the global epidemic of COVID-19.