It turns out the process WAS running in parallel but the windows script commands within the batch file that was being called were not actually being executed.  Once i assimilated those commands directly into a system call from within TalenD instead of calling the batch file everything started working the way i expected.

Hello everyone,
  Talend OS 3.2.2.r33000 on a Windows server.   I have built a java process that listens for emails and exectutes various child jobs based on the subject line.  I have been trying to get the child jobs to run in parallel but so far they have continued to run sequentially.  I have the listener process as the main job set to allow multi-threaded execution as well as each child job.  The iterate row between tPop widget and tFileInput set to parallel 4.    As some of the child jobs take 2 plus hours running them in sequence may not be feasible. 

Is there something else that I should be doing to get the driving process NOT to wait on a child job?