Training Parents as Behavior Therapists: A Review

This chapter concerns training parents as behavior therapists for their own children, a development emerging from the systematic application of learning principles. This approach attempts to overcome some major limitations of traditional child psychotherapy, at least as seen by behavior therapists, i.e. traditional therapy is seen as an essentially "artificial" situation, occupying only a small portion of the child's life and possibly only having incidental relation to it. The therapist operating in an isolated office might never directly observe parent-child interaction in its natural environment or the behavior which brings the child to the clinician. The chapter reviews published and unpublished reports in which children's problem behaviors were treated through direct training of their parents in behavior modification concepts and techniques. It also reviews empirical, theoretical, and ethical rationales for the training of parents as behavior therapists for their own children.