Research Study

We recently concluded an important five-year research study investigating the addition of optimism training to parent education in positive behavior support. Our project looked at the impact of helping parents become more optimistic about their own parenting skills as well as their child’s ability to change on the severe challenging behaviors of their children. We not only teach families the skills to better understand and treat their child’s challenging behavior, we also help them become aware of their thoughts and feelings about themselves and their child and how these might interfere with success. In our work with the parents of children with autism spectrum disorders and challenging behavior we find that many are “pessimistic.” Someone who is highly pessimistic might describe a child’s difficult trip to the supermarket this way – “Shopping with my child is a disaster”.  On the other hand, parents who are more optimistic might describe it this way – “My child is not ready yet for long shopping trips.”  We present pessimistic families with their styles of describing situations and have them practice more adaptive optimistic styles (Durand, Hieneman, Clarke, & Zona, 2009).

Our treatment program involves eight weekly individual sessions, lasting 90 minutes each.  All families received positive behavior support (PBS), including instruction on how to identify problem behaviors, how to assess the function of these behaviors, prevention strategies, managing consequences and replacing behavior problems with communication. The cognitive-behavioral intervention component is integrated into the same sessions. The full plans for conducting these sessions are now available (Durand & Hieneman, 2008a, 2008b).

In analyzing the results of this large project, we found the following important changes.

• The families who complete our program experience highly positive outcomes for their children. The very severe challenging behaviors that they presented to us are much less of a problem.
• Children in families who received the additional optimism training improved even more.
• Improvements in child behavior lasted for at least one year after our eight week program.
• At the same time, families with optimism training report improvements in their quality of life, such as being able to go out more in the community and feeling less stressed at home.

We are finding that tailoring behavioral parent training to meet the particular needs of the family as well as the child leads to highly successful child behavior outcomes. This “help” (behavioral intervention) and “hope” (optimism training) is opening up new opportunities for reaching families that have to date not benefited from our treatments.  See our ten tips for becoming a more optimistic parent. As we publish the results of this project we will list these papers on this website.

Table 1. – Ten Tips to Optimistic Parenting

1. Explore your thoughts and feelings before, during and after meltdowns. Practice noticing these experiences so you can see later if they help or hurt your parenting skills.
2. If your spouse or partner doesn’t help – ask why. Just as your thoughts and feelings interfere with good parenting, so might your spouses’ self-doubts or doubts about your child.
3. Believe you are a good parent. When you add up all you do for your child, the positives far outweigh any occasional lapses you may experience. Focus on the positive.
4. Believe your child can change. All of our experience tells us any child can improve his or her challenging behavior.
5. Parent in the moment. Keeping reminding yourself to focus on what is happening now with your child (for example, having a good bath) rather than other things (for example, thinking about what to make for dinner while bathing your child).
6. List three good things that happen each day. We sometimes have a tendency to focus too much on negative events (for example, a bad tantrum in the car) rather than on the positive ones (for example, playing nicely with siblings). Each night practice reminding yourself of the good things that happened that day.
7. Express gratitude toward those who help you. One of the most powerful exercises in becoming a happier person is expressing gratitude. Thanking those who help you with your child will make you feel better and will make the other person feel better as well.
8. Take care of yourself. You can’t help your child if you are hurting. Give yourself permission to occasionally be “selfish.”
9. Leverage – don’t multi-task. Doing two things at once means you are doing two things poorly. If you’re stretched, try to combine activities with your child that achieve multiple goals (for example, having your child help set the table, which gets the chore done but also provides a learning experience).
10. Sometimes bad is OK. Feeling bad is inevitable for everyone. Accept the fact that there will be “down times” and don’t fight them. As they say, “What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger.”

Adapted from: Durand, V.M. (in preparation). Optimistic parenting: Hope and help for you and your challenging child. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

References

Durand, V. M., & Hieneman, M. (2008a). Helping parents with challenging children: Positive family intervention, facilitator’s guide. New York: Oxford University Press.

Durand, V. M., & Hieneman, M. (2008b). Helping parents with challenging children: Positive family intervention, workbook. New York: Oxford University Press.

Durand, V. M., Hieneman, M., Clarke, S., & Zona, M. (2009). Optimistic parenting: Hope and help for parents with challenging children. In W. Sailor, G. Dunlap, G. Sugai & R. H. Horner (Eds.), Handbook of positive behavior support (pp. 233-256). New York: Springer.