Early Childhood Parent Coaching Interventions: Examining Adaptations and Coaching Process

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Early parenting-focused intervention can enhance children’s long-term social and emotional development. Coaching parents has emerged as an important tool of early childhood parenting interventions. This symposium is focused on two early childhood parent coaching interventions: Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). ABC is an evidence-based preventive intervention for high-risk infants, in which therapists coach parental sensitivity in order to promote children’s positive developmental outcomes, including attachment and self-regulation. PCIT is an evidence-based treatment for three- to six-year-olds with behavioral problems, in which therapists coach parents’ positive parenting skills, effective commands, and use of time out.

Each of the presentations in this symposium describes an extension or adaptation of the original intervention for new populations. The first talk describes long-term effects of ABC for toddlers, while the second talk describes effects of ABC for children adopted internationally. The third talk examines differences in PCIT delivery among English- and Spanish-speaking families, and the fourth talk is focused on PCIT-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED), an adaptation of PCIT for preschoolers with depression.

Further, the presentations in this symposium range in focus from testing intervention efficacy to understanding intervention process. Specifically, the two ABC talks present intervention efficacy results. The third talk uses the Therapist-Parent Interaction Coding System (TPICS) to examine PCIT therapists’ coaching with English- and Spanish-speaking families, while the fourth talk uses the TPICS to investigate associations between therapist coaching and PCIT-ED outcomes. Together, these complementary perspectives provide broad representation of exciting current developments in early childhood parent coaching research.

Sub Unit

• Prevention and Interventions

Chair

• EB Caron, University of Hartford

Individual Presentations

• Parent Coaching Intervention for Toddlers in Foster Care Enhances Later Inhibitory Control: Preschool Follow-up RCT Results - Presenting Author: Teresa Lind, San Diego State University; Non-Presenting Author: Mary Dozier, University of Delaware

• Reducing Behavior Problems in Children Adopted Internationally: Evidence from Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up - Presenting Author: Heather Yarger, University of Maryland - College Park; Non-Presenting Author: Teresa Lind, San Diego State University; Non-Presenting Author: Lee Raby, University of Utah; Non-Presenting Author: Lindsay Zajac, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Non-Presenting Author: Mary Dozier, University of Delaware

• Comparing English and Spanish Speaking Therapists’ Coaching Behaviors - Presenting Author: Yessica Green Rosas, University of California - Santa Barbara; Non-Presenting Author: Miya Barnett, University of California, Santa Barbara; Non-Presenting Author: Kristen McCabe, University of San Diego

• Does Therapist Coaching Predict Outcomes in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy - Emotion Development? - Presenting Author: EB Caron, University of Hartford; Non-Presenting Author: Leah M. Williams, Fitchburg State University; Non-Presenting Author: Alexa J. Russo, Fitchburg State University; Non-Presenting Author: Matthew Legere, Fitchburg State University; Non-Presenting Author: Joan L Luby, Washington University in St. Louis