The effectiveness of emotional diet intervention on parent-child interaction and parental stress in mothers of young children with autistic-like behaviors and exposure to digital nanning

 In recent years, excessive use of digital devices had dramatically increased in young people and this extreme exposure has inappropriate physical, cognitive, emotional, social and psychological consequences, such as the disruption in the parent-child interaction. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of emotional diet intervention on enriching parent-child interactions and reducing parental stress in mothers of young children excessively exposed to digital devices.  The design of this research was quasi-experimental with pre-post and follow-up test without control groups. In this study, 12 young children exposed to digital devices, which referred to the Ava autism center were selected as the sample group and participate in emotional diet intervention for 2 months. To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, a short form of parent-child interaction scale (1994) and a short form of parental stress scale (1990) were used. Data were analyzed using SPSS25.  Repeated measures ANOVA results showed that participating in emotional diet intervention decreases children exposure to digital devices, increases closeness and reduces the conflicts in parent-child interactions, reduces parental stress and distress, and parent-child dysfunctional interaction. The effect size of the intervention for digital devices exposure was large and for components of parental stress and the parent-child proximity-conflict was medium. Also, the efficacy was permanent after two months of completion of the intervention.  According to our results, training parents to the emotional enrichment of their interaction with the child who exposed to Digital Nanning was associated with reduced exposure to digital devices, improvement in parent-child interaction and reducing parental stress. Therefore, this method can be used to enrich the lifestyle of young children who were excessively exposed to digital devices.