Preparing Parent Trainers

Although parent training is an important aspect of many early intervention programs, little research has investigated strategies for preparing parent trainers. The study described in this article examined the effects of teaching novice trainers to teach parents to implement milieu teaching with their preschool children who had disabilities. In a multiple baseline design across trainer–parent–child triads, trainers systematically were taught to use three components of a model of effective parent training. The results of the study demonstrated that following intensive training, novice trainers' parent training skills improved. Parents learned the milieu teaching procedures when the trainers implemented the targeted parent training procedures. Two of the three children showed marked increases in their targeted language responses as a result of their parents' milieu teaching. Generalization to home interactions was observed for two of the three parents and their children.