Description of the Strategy

Parent training is a widely used intervention for children with behavior problems. Unlike other child [Page 945]treatments, therapists who conduct parent training work directly with the parent to improve a child's functioning. It is assumed that by changing ineffective or maladaptive parenting practices, practitioners can indirectly help child clients.

Parent training began in the early 1960s as an attempt to teach parents the kind of behavior change techniques that professionals and paraprofessionals were using in schools, clinics, and hospitals. The assumption was that parents could alter controlling stimuli in the home in the same way that a trained behavior modifier might reengineer behavioral contingencies in a school classroom or a residential treatment facility. Because an important goal in parent ...