Social–emotional development in early childhood lays the groundwork for school readiness, healthy relationships, and long-term well-being. Parents play a pivotal role in this process, shaping children’s emotional awareness, regulation, and social competence through everyday interactions. This literature review synthesizes evidence from 74 peer-reviewed studies to evaluate nine evidence-based parenting interventions targeting parents of preschool-aged children. The programs were analyzed with respect to their objectives, theoretical foundations, components, and the resulting outcomes for both parents and children. Across interventions, consistent benefits emerged in children, including improved emotion recognition, regulation, empathy, and prosocial behavior, as well as reductions in internalizing problems. Parents also gained in confidence and positive discipline practices. Key elements linked to effectiveness included active parent skill-building (such as modeling, role play, and guided practice), structured parent–child interactions, multi-component designs integrating home and school contexts, and flexible delivery formats that adapt to family needs. These findings underscore the critical role of parenting interventions as an evidence-based method to enhance preschoolers’ social–emotional development.

Background/Objectives: Socio-emotional well-being during early childhood is closely associated with children’s later psychosocial adjustment, social competence, and overall developmental outcomes. Parents play a central role in fostering these competencies through everyday interactions, highlighting the importance of parent-focused interventions. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Hug and Change, a theory-informed parenting intervention developed for the Greek context, in promoting preschool children’s socio-emotional well-being by improving psychosocial adjustment and social competence. Methods: A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design with an intervention and a comparison group was employed. The study included 123 parents of preschool children aged 4–5 years attending public preschools in Greece. Parents in the intervention group participated in the Hug and Change programme, which consisted of ten weekly group sessions combining parent-focused learning with structured parent–child activities designed to strengthen everyday parent–child interactions. Children’s psychosocial adjustment was assessed using the parent version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) while social competence was measured using the parent version of the Early School Behaviour Scale (ESBS). Outcomes were assessed before and immediately after the intervention. Results: The experimental group showed significant improvements from pre- to post-intervention on the SDQ and Social Competence, with reduced behavioural difficulties and increased prosocial behaviour and social skills; no significant changes occurred in the comparison group. Between-group comparisons confirmed significantly greater gains in the experimental group for the study’s variables. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the Hug and Change programme represents a promising parent-focused intervention for promoting preschool children’s socio-emotional well-being. Strengthening parenting practices and the quality of everyday parent–child interactions may contribute to improvements in both psychosocial adjustment and social competence, highlighting the potential of parent-focused interventions implemented within early childhood education settings.

Parental burnout has been recognized as a significant family risk factor linked to problematic parental functioning and disruptions in overall family relational processes. However, to our knowledge, there is no validated instrument to study this construct in Greece. The present study therefore aimed to (a) validate the Greek version of the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA) and to (b) examine whether conflictual parent–child interactions within the home learning environment (HLE) mediate the association between parental burnout and preschool children’s socio-emotional difficulties. Two independent samples of Greek parents with children aged 0–6 years were included (EFA sample: n = 128; CFA sample: n = 202). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the original four-factor structure of the PBA (CFI = 0.982, SRMR = 0.047, RMSEA = 0.030) and demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties. Correlational analyses indicated that parental burnout was positively associated with conflictual HLE interactions and children’s socio-emotional difficulties and negatively associated with prosocial behavior. Conflictual HLE interactions partially mediated the association between parental burnout and children’s socio-emotional difficulties; given the mediator’s nonsignificant correlation with prosocial behavior, mediation was not tested for that outcome, with indirect effects ranging from 0.028 to 0.095 (all p < 0.05). These findings extend the parental burnout literature by conceptualizing parental burnout as a family relational process associated with children’s socio-emotional adjustment through conflictual HLE interactions. The study discusses implications of these findings for family-centered prevention and intervention programs during early childhood.