Cool Little Kids Online: A parenting program to increase young children’s confidence and prevent anxiety problems

Participants receive 10 weeks access to the Cool Little Kids Online website program. The program aims to help parents of shy young children who at risk of developing anxiety problems. The program has 8 interactive online modules containing a mix of written information, videos, audio narration, activities and parent experiential stories. The modules contain the same content as in the Cool Little Kids parenting group program developed by Rapee and colleagues. Modules take about 30 to 60 minutes to complete. Parents are advised to work at an ideal pace of one module per week, although they can choose to work at whichever pace suits them best. Just like the group parenting program, Cool Little Kids Online sets parents home practice tasks to work on with their child between modules. To encourage program adherence, participants receive emails upon completion of each module, half-way through the program, and after 2 weeks of not logging in to the program. Two versions of the program are being evaluated: one is self-guided, and the other is guided by a clinician. Participants allocated to the clinician arm will receive up to 2 support phone calls during the study, one after module 2 (or week 3) and one after module 5 (or week 6).