Using the PICCOLO with Parents of Children with a Disability

All children benefit from positive parenting behaviors that support early child development. For a parent of a child with a disability, the child's characteristics and possible limitations can make positive parenting behaviors challenging, and yet, these interactions need to be a focus of early intervention to promote optimal family and child development. Family‐centered practice, which includes strengthening parenting skills, has been advocated by the early intervention field. Although early intervention programs realize the importance of supporting parent–child interaction as part of family‐centered practice, it has not been an emphasis of most early intervention programs. The lack of easy‐to‐use, psychometrically strong parenting measures is an issue in early intervention. The Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO) provides a practical observation measure of parenting with young children. We tested the reliability and validity of this measure with parents of children with an identified disability. Early parenting behaviors predicted cognitive and language outcomes for children with an identified disability up to 9 years after the first assessment. The PICCOLO demonstrated strong reliability and both construct and predictive validity, and shows promise as a useful measure for practitioners working with parents who have a child with a disability.