Effectiveness of communication skills training through painting therapy on parent-child relationship and social skills of female second-grade elementary students

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of communication skills training through painting therapy on parent-child relationships and social skills.

This was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest and follow-up design which using experimental and control groups. Among all second-grade elementary female students in Takestan City, 24 participants were selected using available sampling method and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The students in the experimental group participated in 11 sessions of communication skills training based on paint therapy which taken from group art therapy intervention (Martin, 2009) and previous intervention protocols (Ehsanpour, 2016; Shelani, 2015) and the control group did not receive any intervention. Data were gathered using parent-child relationship scale (Pianta, 1994) and social skills rating scale (teacher form) (Gresham & Elliott, 1990) in the pre-test, post-test and follow-up phases and analyzed using repeated measures analysis of covariance.

The results showed that in the experimental group, compared to the control group, after communication skills through painting therapy, the scores of closeness dimension in parent-child relationships (F= 28.09, P=.001) and social skills (F= 44.68, P=.001) had increased significantly and the scores of dependency (F= 22.80, P=.001) and conflict (F= 133.58, P=.001) dimension in parent-child relationships had significantly decreased.

Based on the findings, it can be concluded that to improve parent-child relationships and children's social skills, communication skills training through painting therapy can be used.