Description of positive parent response to child behaviors
Population
Primary theoretical model/Intervention
Reference
“Instances of fussing or crying served as targets for behavior change in sensitive responsiveness to negative infant signals.”
“If soothing did not occur, mothers were asked to soothe their infants, and the importance of soothing a crying infant was highlighted.”
6-month-old infants in low income households selected for neonatal irritability and their biological mothers
Attachment (Skill-based parent coaching for mothers of irritable babies)
van den Boom 1994
“Attention-seeking behaviors (e.g. whining, nagging, temper tantrums, interrupting) can be ignored.”
“Decide ahead of time which “not OK” behaviors to ignore.”
3- to 8-year-old children presenting with noncompliance
Behavioral (Helping the Noncompliant Child)
McMahon and Forehand 2003
“Some mothers worked on recognizing and responding sensitively to infant cues of distress more quickly, and others focused on allowing the infant to explore.”
6-month-old infants in low income households and their biological mothers
Attachment (Circle of Security Home Visiting)
Cassidy et al. 2011
“Specifically, the therapist would help the parent ignore the infant when yelling and praise the infant for being calm and quiet as soon as the infant stopped yelling.”
“parents were especially encouraged to use positive physical touch (e.g. patting the infant’s back) and nonverbal praise (e.g. clapping hands) along with verbal praise to enhance reinforcement for appropriate behaviors.”
12- to 15-month-old infants in low income households and their biological mothers
Behavioral (Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT))
Bagner et al .2013
“Ignore his request for candy and his knocking over of the truck. Instead, get the other truck and begin to enthusiastically roll it on the floor, making an engine sound as you roll it.”
23-month-old maltreated toddler and his biological mother
Behavioral (Parent-Child Attunement Therapy (PCAT))
Dombrowski et al. 2005
“Most importantly, parents were encouraged and supported in responding to their children’s distress in the moment throughout the remaining sessions.”
Parents of children between the ages of 1 and 21 months enrolled in a program to divert children from foster care due to identified needs such as domestic violence, parental substance abuse, and child neglect
Attachment (Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC))
Bernard et al. 2012
“Ignoring can reduce children’s attention-seeking behavior (yelling, sassing, whining, crying for no real reason)”
Children between the ages of 2 and 6 years, 11 months with disruptive behavior disorders, at risk for disruptive behavior disorders, or at risk for child abuse, and their caregivers
Behavioral (PCIT)
Eyberg and Funderburk 2011
“sensitivity involves: (a) responding to child distress signals with comfort and appropriate structuring and (b) promoting and supporting active child exploration when the child is not distressed.”
Children between 12 and 71 months of age being monitored for child maltreatment and their primary caregiver (biological mother or father)
Attachment (Relationship Intervention Program)
Moss et al. 2011
Similarities between Behavioral and Attachment-Based Parenting Interventions
When moving from theory to practice, it is clear there are a number of similarities between behavioral and attachment-based parenting interventions. As in most of the literature on psychosocial interventions, relatively few studies of parent-child interventions examine the mechanism leading to improvements. Thus, improvements may be due to similarities between behavioral and attachment-based parenting interventions.
One commonality between a number of behavioral and attachment-based parenting interventions is the focus on increasing play between children and parents. Thus, increasing the amount of time parents play with their child may be a core component of effective interventions for young children regardless of the theoretical approach guiding the intervention. A recent study of low income mothers compared behavioral coaching of child-led play (i.e. coaching mothers to praise and describe their child’s play) to a “play-as-usual” control group where mothers were simply encouraged to play with their child as they usually would (Kochanska et al. 2013). In both groups, there were significant increases in children’s cooperation with their mothers and the effect size for the play-as-usual group (d = 0.58) was actually somewhat larger than the effect size for the child-led play group (d = 0.31). Mother’s ratings of their child’s social-emotional competence also improved significantly in both groups (Kochanska et al. 2013).
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