Connect and shape: A parenting meta-strategy

• Two worldviews dominate: behavioral and relational/emotional.
• Both may be incorporated in a contextual evolutionary science paradigm.
• Child misbehavior commonly co-occurs with child distress.
• Connect and shape is a parenting meta-strategy.
• The focus is on building a broad and flexible behavioral repertoire.

The existing parenting literature is dominated by two worldviews: the behavioral worldview and the relational/emotional worldview. Points of tension between these worldviews are apparent within the scientific literature; however, both approaches can be fully incorporated into an evolutionary science paradigm including contextual behavioral science. Connect and shape is a parenting meta-strategy that combines behavioral and the relational/emotional strategies into a single parent–child interaction. The elements of connect and shape are not new. What is new is the combination of parental responsiveness/emotion coaching and behavioral parenting strategies into a single, clearly elucidated meta-strategy that can be easily incorporated into parenting intervention.