The Effects of a Parent Training Course on Coercive Interactions Between Parents and Children

Coercion within parent/child relationships can have lasting effects on the behavior of children. The Family Safety/Applied Behavior Analysis Initiative at the University of South Florida is part of a statewide project designed to serve foster parents and the children in the foster care system, has developed a training program entitled .Parenting Tools for Positive Behavior Change.. To date, the effectiveness of the parenting course has been evaluated in two ways. First, parents have been tested in role-play situations before and after training, and have shown improvements in their use of positive parenting skills. Second, frequency of foster home placement disruptions has been evaluated. The Preliminary results suggest that the parenting course was successful in decreasing the costs associated with placement disruptions, as well as reducing the number decreasing the costs associated with placement disruptions, as well as reducing the number of restrictive placements. Despite the promising results thus far, research has not been conducted to determine whether the parenting course reduces coercion in interactions between parents and children. The present study sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of .Parenting Tools for Positive Behavior Change. training course on the use of positive parenting tools within the context of authentic environments (i.e., within home settings) using parents and biological children. Although all parent participants. appropriate responding improved during the course of the study, results appeared more dramatic for some parents over others. In general, the parent participants seemed to do better in decreasing coercive responses with their child.s appropriate behaviors than their child.s inappropriate behaviors. Overall, affect on the parent.s coercive responses to their children.s behaviors was not as dramatic as the affect on their increase in responding appropriately to their child.s appropriate behaviors. It seems that the increase in more appropriate responses does not necessarily mean that this will also result in dramatic reductions in coercive responses by the parents