Development and Verification of a Mother-child Group Counseling Program Integrating Positive Psychotherapy and Emotional Coaching: Focusing on School Maladjusted Children

Abstract

This study developed a mother-child group counseling program that integrates positive psychotherapy and emotional coaching and verified its effectiveness. Nine pairs participated in the experimental group and 10 pairs in the comparative group. Repeated measurement variance analysis was performed to verify program effectiveness. The program effect of children was significantly higher in self-esteem and interpersonal skills after participating in the program than that of children in the comparative group, and this effect was maintained until further tests. As for the effect of the mother program, the audit tendency and conflict coping ability of mothers in the experimental group significantly increased after participating in the program. In the case of communication skills, there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the comparative group. These results show that this program not only induced positive changes to school maladjusted children, but also was effective in causing positive changes in their mothers.