Families who have left Myanmar for Tak province, Thailand, are raising children in the midst of armed conflict, forced migration, and poverty. In our 2023 survey of 2,249 caregivers there, 78 percent had no legal status in Thailand, 73 percent had gone without enough food for their family in the past month, and 44 percent had been forced to hide or flee their homes. Very little parenting support reaches families in settings like this, where infrastructure, funding, and trained providers are all scarce.
Parenting on the Border is a project within the Global Parenting Initiative that builds a tiered model to close that gap, with universal prevention at the base, reaching large numbers in a population at once, and more focused support for caregivers who need more.
“After seeing the film, I realised how to control my mind and then control my hand that was about to beat the child.”
Being Family
Being Family is a film-based intervention, an entertainment-education approach that uses storytelling to reach large audiences at low cost and with minimal infrastructure. The film is a 66-minute narrative drama co-created with migrant and displaced communities and produced by Sermpanya Foundation, with a cast and crew of migrants and displaced people from Myanmar. It carries evidence-based parenting skills through its story, including play and positive parent-child interaction, praise and positive family communication, rules and non-violent alternatives to harsh discipline, and caregiver coping. Communities gather for a screening, a facilitator leads a discussion afterward, and a short video and posters carry the key messages home. In a cluster randomized trial across 44 communities with 2,249 caregivers, the film reduced physical violence against children compared with the control group. It also improved parenting knowledge, caregiver engagement in children’s early learning, family functioning, and social support, and reduced caregivers’ belief in the need for harsh punishment.
Parenting for Resilience
Parenting for Resilience is the more intensive intervention, developed for caregivers experiencing high levels of psychosocial distress. It is trauma-informed, and it treats caregiver mental health as both an outcome in its own right and a driver of parenting behavior. Across six weekly group sessions, non-specialist community facilitators teach parenting skills and mental health skills together, both integrated within each session. Evidence-based coping skills, including those drawn from acceptance and commitment therapy, are practiced both for staying steady in difficult parenting moments and for carrying the daily stressors of displacement. Being Family is screened in the first session and returns in clips throughout.
In a randomized controlled trial with 477 caregivers, the program reduced physical and psychological violence against children and reduced caregiver psychological distress, at one month after the program and again at six months. Benefits extended well beyond those primary outcomes, improving positive parenting, parenting knowledge and beliefs, engagement in children’s early learning, family functioning, post-traumatic stress symptoms, emotion regulation, psychological flexibility, and well-being. Together the two components form a full tier of support, from a film that can reach an entire community to focused group sessions for the caregivers who need more.
Key Publications
Sim, A., Lwin, K. Z., Eagling-Peche, S., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Vyas, S., Calderon, F., Jirapramukpitak, T., Lachman, J., Punpuing, S., Gonzalez, A., Soan, M., Oo, N. N., Castello Mitjans, I., Tyrosvoutis, G., & Puffer, E. S. (2025). Effectiveness of a universal film intervention in reducing violence against children and increasing positive parenting among migrant and displaced caregivers from Myanmar: A community-based cluster randomised trial. The Lancet Regional Health, Southeast Asia, 33, 100526.
Sim, A., Puffer, E. S., Eagling-Peche, S., Lwin, K. Z., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Vyas, S., Jirapramukpitak, T., Lachman, J., Soe, S. T., Moo, T., Soan, M., Chalk, J., & Van Vijfeijken, H. (2025). Parenting on the border: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of a trauma-informed, edutainment-enhanced intervention to improve parenting and mental health among migrant and displaced caregivers in Thailand. SSM Mental Health, 8, 100516.
If you are interested in partnering on implementation or research related to Parenting on the Border, please reach out to Eve Puffer at eve.puffer@duke.edu.