Unpacking “Positive Parenting:” What to Teach Parents to Reduce Disruptive Child Behavior?

• In Event: 2-175 - Parent-Child Dynamics and Child Development: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Integrative Statement

Decades of research shows associations between parenting behavior and children’s conduct problems. This research is of paramount importance for our understanding of the undeniable link between parenting behavior and child compliance. Much of this research, however, has methodological limitations for building an understanding of the precise parenting behaviors that shape child compliance. First, much research is correlational and thus cannot easily distinguish between causes and effects of parenting and child behavior. This is especially problematic given that children may influence parenting behavior as much as vice versa. Second, most of this research relies on broad parenting constructs, such as “positive parenting” and “negative parenting.” These constructs are based on multiple, often meaningfully different, parenting behaviors. Positive parenting, for example, includes both sensitivity to children’s needs and expressing positive verbal and nonverbal affect. If more “positive parenting” is related to less disruptive behavior, it remains unclear which parenting behaviors, specifically elements of warmth (e.g., unconditional or conditional expression of affection), actually drive this association.

We capitalized on decades of rigorous parenting intervention evaluation research to identify the parenting behaviors that are important for disruptive child behavior. Understanding those parenting behaviors taught in parenting interventions that most profoundly affect child development provides an important, but underused, scientific opportunity to integrate theoretical and intervention research. It can identify the aspects of parenting that uniquely shape child behavior, and those that may be comparatively less influential. This knowledge can guide much-needed efforts to strengthen established parenting interventions, which currently yield robust but small to modest effects, at best.

In two meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of the effects of parenting interventions (Meta-Analysis 1: 154 studies, 398 effect sizes of short-term effects; Meta-Analysis 2: 42 studies, 157 effect sizes of longer-term effects), we identified the parenting behaviors that predicted stronger reductions in disruptive child behavior. In addition, we tested the influence of different parenting behaviors on children without versus with problematic levels of disruptive behavior (i.e., in prevention versus treatment trials), and whether different parenting behaviors shape immediate versus longer-term changes in disruptive child behavior.

Our findings showed that increasing parents’ use of positive reinforcement (e.g., praise), and logical or natural consequences when children misbehaved, predicted stronger reductions in disruptive child behavior. Among children with problematic levels of disruptive behavior (i.e., in treatment), parents’ use of “time-out” and daily child-led play predicted stronger reductions in disruptive child behavior, but not among children without problematic levels of this behavior (i.e., in prevention). There were no parenting behaviors that differentially predicted immediate versus longer-term changes in disruptive child behavior.

We concluded that parents’ use of positive reinforcement techniques and logical/natural consequences are key strategies to reduce disruptive child behavior. Our findings also suggest that we may need to focus on different positive parenting strategies to prevent rather than treat disruptive child behavior. 

Authors

• Patty Leijten, University of Amsterdam
  Presenting Author

• Frances Gardner, Oxford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• G.J. Melendez-Torres, Cardiff University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jolien van Aar, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Judy Hutchings, Bangor University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susanne Schulz, Utrecht University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Wendy Knerr, University of Glasgow; Oxford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Geertjan Overbeek, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author