Evidence-BasedParenting Program
At Let’s Connect®, we believe that strong, healthy relationships between parents and children grow from everyday moments of connection.
Parenting isn’t about being perfect—it’s about showing up, offering support, repairing when there’s disconnection, and building trust over time.
Our Philosophy, Approach, and Skill Building result in positive Impacts for parents and children.
Our Philosophy and Approach
Let’s Connect is grounded in research on emotion socialization, parenting, and contemplative practices. Emotion socialization—the process by which children learn about emotions through daily interactions with parents—includes modeling healthy emotional expression, responding sensitively to children’s feelings, teaching about emotions, and scaffolding social and emotional skills.
Our approach gives parents simple, practical tools to strengthen bonds with their children while supporting their emotional, social, and behavioral wellbeing. Through Let’s Connect, parents help children:
- Understand and name their feelings
- Recognize emotions in themselves and others
- Develop healthy coping and emotion regulation skills
- Build strong, connected relationships
These same skills reduce stress, ease behavioral challenges, and foster resilience and mental health.
We also know parenting can be overwhelming without support. That’s why Let’s Connect focuses on you, too—building your emotional awareness, regulation, and self-compassion. When you feel grounded, it’s easier to respond with patience and care.
Through guided discussion, reflection, hands-on practice, and simple mindfulness tools, you’ll gain the confidence and skills to navigate tough moments, have meaningful conversations, and respond to challenging behaviors in ways that build safety, connection, and trust—without relying on punishment.
Skills Building
In Let’s Connect, we teach tools and exercises to help build stronger relationships, deepen connection, and build a healthier, more peaceful home. We also teach skills to support parent well-being, like Hand to Heart.
Hand to Heart
Hand to Heart is the first part of a three-step practice of Let’s Connect® that promotes parent emotional awareness and regulation, self-compassion, and well-being.
Building a House
The Let’s Connect® “House” illustrates our philosophy about the skills needed for effective parenting. Just like a house, strong relationships are built from the ground up. Without a solid foundation, the walls and roof cannot stand. We teach the Let’s Connect® skills in sequence so that parents can build their skills step by step – foundation, walls, and roof.
The Foundation
The foundation includes two essential skill sets:
- Intentional Environments – using routines, rituals, and rhythms to create consistency, predictability, and emotional safety which opens the door for meaningful parent-child connection
- Connection Skills – noticing and appreciating children, listening to understand their feelings, and helping them express emotions. These skills help children feel seen, heard, and valued while strengthening positive relationships.
The Walls
Once the foundation is in place, parents can build the walls with Emotion Support Skills.
These include showing empathy, validation, affection, and kindness. Together, they deepen trust, encourage children to share openly, and foster stronger bonds.
These skills help children feel understood and valued which supports mental health and resilience.
The roof
The roof is made of Emotion Coaching Skills. Here, parents help children expand their emotional understanding (such as recognizing mixed or underlying feelings), practice collaborative coping, and problem-solve together.
These skills support children’s social-emotional growth, emotion regulation, executive functioning, mental health, and resilience.
Positive Outcomes
Benefits for Parents & Caregivers
Parents who participate in Let’s Connect® report feeling less stressed, more supported, and more confident in their parenting. They gain skills in listening, understanding emotions, and staying open to their child’s experiences—helping them connect more deeply, even in stressful moments. Parents also learn to respond to challeging behavior with patience, care, and mindful discipline.
- Greater emotional awareness, acceptance and regulation
- Increased self-compassion
- More effective parenting strategies
- Better tools for managing challenging behavior
- Stronger, more supportive communication
- Less parent–child conflict
- Reduced parenting stress
Benefits for Children
Children who take part in Let’s Connect® develop skills that strengthen resilience, mental health, and overall well-being. These changes help children feel more secure with their parents and thrive at home, in school, and in their communities.
- Improved social and emotional skills
- Stronger emotional and behavioral regulation
- Reduced anxiety and depression
- Fewer trauma symptoms
- Fewer behavior problems
Our Research
Let’s Connect®: An emotion-focused parenting program, Journal of Applied Development Psychology, 2025
This paper describes the Let’s Connect® parenting program. It summarizes the supporting theory and research, outlines who the program is for, and explains its key components and how it is delivered.
Let’s Connect: A developmentally-driven emotion-focused parenting intervention, Journal of Applied Development Psychology, 2019
This paper introduces the Let’s Connect emotion-focused parenting intervention as an innovative treatment modality for increasing supportive emotion socialization in families, drawing on developmental theory as a guiding framework.
A Parent’s Perspective
I didn’t have high hopes—but it has gone beyond my expectations. I’ve realized that what I thought would take hours, like when my 11-year-old uses bad language, can change in a moment. As soon as I connect and understand the feeling behind it, it’s like everything just melts away.
The skills that were shared—like how to approach, body posture, listening, repeating, normalizing, understanding, never questioning the feeling—do 90% of the work. I can honestly say it’s been very useful, very effective, and has brought a lot of peace to our home.”