Sustainable Parent Education: Exemplary Approaches to Enhance Children's School Readiness

Overview

The significance of fostering executive functions (EF) in early childhood lies in their crucial role in preparing children for school readiness (SR). EFs, incorporating attributes such as self-control, problem-solving, and goal-setting, are cornerstone elements to both scholastic achievements and socio-emotional development. Particularly, the preschool years are a pivotal timeframe for EF maturity, as research has found that these skills exhibit expeditious development and malleability during this phase. However, the current EF training programs often fall short in their efficacy because of their narrow focus and repetitive nature, leading to disengagement and reduced motivation in children. To fill this research gap, the speaker has developed a video-based program involving parents and children, which has demonstrated transient improvements in children’s EF skills (Lau et al., 2025). Building the success of this intervention, the speaker will introduce a newly developed integrated parent-child program that features both EF training and SR activities to enhance the real-world applicability of EF skills and consolidate the lasting impact of this intervention. The integrated parent-child program will pave the way for low-cost, tailored, optimised, and impactful programs that prepare young children for formal school education, reducing parents’ anxiety and alleviating the long-term societal burden.