The immediate education (IE) group will receive the intervention, Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making a Difference! in period 1. In period 2, IE will receive no education and will be followed longitudinally for periods 2 and 3.

The delayed education (DE) group will serve as controls in period 1, receiving no intervention. In period 2, the treatments will cross over, so DE will receive the Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making a Difference! intervention.

The Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making a Difference! intervention was developed by the investigators for low-income parents and caregivers focusing on the behaviors most likely to help children avoid unhealthy weight gain.

The checklist is a 16-item instrument that assesses parents'/caregivers' parenting and personal practices around food and physical activity, as well as the target child's food and physical activity practices. The checklist asks parents to report frequency (per day/week/month) of practices on 5-point Likert-type scales. The constructs measure parent diet quality and physical activity, child diet quality and physical activity, and parenting practices. Each question on the instrument is converted to a numeric value, 1 for the least desirable to 5 for most desirable response. The values for the entire instrument are summed (range 1 - 80 - only those checklists with at least one response are included) and divided by the number of items with a response (0 - 16), resulting in a mean score range of 0 - 5. The questions within each sub-scale are handled in the same way, with a sub-scale range of 0 - 5.

Six sub-scales (24 items) aligned with the learning objectives of the intervention, were selected from the original CFPQ. The constructs assessed by the sub-scales include encouraging balance and variety, use of food as reward, parent allowing child to control eating, parental modeling, parental pressure for child to consume more food, and home environment. Response options for 6 items include frequency on a Likert-type scale (never to always) and for 18 items include a Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree). Each response is converted to a numeric value, 1 for the least desirable to 5 for the most desirable option. These values are then summed (range 0 - 120) and divided by the number of items with a response, resulting in a mean scale score range of 0 - 5. The items within each sub-scale are handled in the same way, with the sub-scale ranges of 0 - 5.

Four items were selected assessing parental efficacy for influencing behaviors addressed in the interventions: child's physical activity; and fruit, vegetable, and sugar sweetened beverage intake. The item responses included a 5-point Likert-type scale (not sure to extremely sure). Each question is converted to a numeric value, 1 for the least to 5 for the most desirable. These values are summed (range 0 - 20) and divided by the number of items with a response (0 - 4), resulting in a mean scale score range of 0 - 5.