Parent-child emotion psychoeducation workshop with a set of creative board game

Abstract

Chinese parenting is featured with a strong emphasis of academic achievement. A number of studies have reported the lack of emotional support in Hong Kong families. Typical emotional supportive programs involved either parents or children. This study reports a two session parent-child emotion psychoeducation workshop to promote parental emotional support and enhance the interaction between parents and children through playing together an emotion board game. 67 emotional cards with cartoon characters give both parents and children an opportunity to identify and express their own emotions in a subtle way. 45 situational cards (at school, with friends, in family) facilitate dialogues between parent and child about wide topics other than academic performance. A set of tool cards give parents handy tips how to respond to the emotion of their children. The board game with a clear route and other magic cards provide both parents and children a relaxing and playful atmosphere in exchanging their emotions in their daily events. This study reports the effectiveness of a two-session psychoeducation workshop with six pairs of parent and children playing the board games. The analysis of the self-report programme evaluation form and the comments from both parents and children participants confirms the effectiveness of this parent-child emotion psychoeducation workshop. The success of this workshop hopes to bring insight to wider application of parental emotional support programme in Hong Kong community.