The Incredible Years: A Trouble-Shooting Guide for Parents of Children Aged 3-8

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Families who displayed greater levels of distress and higher levels of problems, particularly higher child disruptive behaviour or parental depression found greater positive effect, with more improvement from this intervention. The program has been assessed through multiple randomised controlled trials in the U.S., New Zealand, and Europe. The programs have been found to be effective in strengthening teacher and parent management skills, improving children’s social and emotional competence and school readiness, and reducing behaviour problems. Clinical issues such as promoting attendance, managing resistant parents or teachers, being culturally responsive, managing disruptive children, setting up practice role plays, tailoring programs for children with developmental issues, and getting accredited or certified in the program. This summary comes from the original systematic review: Gardner, F., Leijten, P., Mann, J., Landau, S., Harris, V., Beecham, J., ... & Scott, S. (2017). Could scale-up of parenting programmes improve child disruptive behaviour and reduce social inequalities? Using individual participant data meta-analysis to establish for whom programmes are effective and cost-effective. Public Health Research, 5(10)

The Incredible Years: A Troubleshooting Guide for Parents of Children Aged 3-8 Years (3rd Edition) bookChildren also benefited from the intervention in Manchester with the proportion of children with clinical behavioural problems falling from 69 to 32 per cent.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: A group that received The Incredible Years training or to a control group that did not receive the training. Mothers with mental health risk factors (depression, anger, history of abuse as a child, and substance abuse) exhibited poorer parenting skills than those without risk factors, as measured by the Parenting Practices Interview, Dyadic Parent-Child Interactive Coding System, and Coder Impression Inventory. However, mothers with risk factors engaged with and benefited from the parenting training program at a level comparable to mothers without these risk factors. Program engagement was assessed by number of sessions attended, percentage of homework assignments completed, and the group leader's rating of engagement. Intervention mothers had lower scores on both harsh/negative parenting and ineffective parenting and higher scores on supportive parenting. wpfilebase tag=fileurl path='resources-for-teachers/Chapter-4-Teacher-Book.pdf' linktext='"Incredible Teachers" Excerpt (Chapter 4)' /][spacer] Incredible Years tended to show no effect for child emotional problems.This is based on high strength evidence. No differences were found in child emotional symptoms between children whose parents took part in Incredible Years and those who did not. Findings also suggest equal benefit to those families experiencing social disadvantage, and those who don’t. This suggests that this intervention will neither increase or decrease existing social inequalities in child disruptive behaviour. Comprehensive leader manuals are available at http://incredibleyears.com/programs/implementation/. Research on How to Implement the ProgramIncredible Years parenting programme was developed by Carolyn Webster-Stratton in 1997. It is designed to be a community based programme to help parents of children with ADHD, conduct problems and promote emotional and social development, emotional regulation, and improve academic success. Underpinned by social learning theory and attachment theory the intervention is designed to teach parents techniques to break coercive cycles of parent-child interaction which reinforce negative and aggressive behaviours. The Incredible Years programme is similar to other parenting programmes such as ‘Triple-P’, ‘Parent-Child Interaction Therapy’, and Parent Management Training: Oregon Model. With regards to the potential for the programme’s enhanced applicability to socio-economically disadvantaged families and ethnically diverse families, the authors suggest this is due to the collaborative and culturally sensitive nature of the programme. What are the evaluated outcomes?

Improved teacher-student relationships, proactive classroom management skills, and strengthened teacher-parent partnerships The Incredible Years Parents, Teachers and Children’s Series are evidence-based programs evaluated in numerous randomized control group studies by the developer and other independent researchers to prevent and treat behavior problems in young children. This series was selected as a Blueprints for Violence Prevention program in 2001 because it was shown to reduce risk factors for violence and crime. Additionally the programs have been shown to promote protective factors such as positive parenting and teaching focused on strengthening children’s social and emotional competence and school readiness. The evidence was high strength and based on studies in England, Wales, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Portugal. The high strength of evidence rating for this meta-analysis is based on having a large overall sample size and inclusion of only Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs).The curriculum includes over 60 lesson plans for use by teachers for children aged 3-8 (the curriculum is broken up into three “levels” for different developmental stages). The training also includes classroom management strategies that enhance children’s prosocial skills and reduce behavior plans. The preliminary effect of a parenting program for Korean American mothers: A randomized controlled experimental study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45, 1261-1273. The Incredible Years BASIC Parent Training Program targets parents of high-risk children and those displaying behavior problems. Highlighted parenting skills include: The study uses the same sample as the Baydar, Reid, & Webster-Stratton (2003) study. Participant families were randomly assigned to an intervention group where parents received The Incredible Years parenting program or to a group where the parent received the standard Head Start curriculum. Teachers in the intervention groups also received training on the program content. Data on children's behavior was obtained through both parent and teacher reports and through independent home observation. Pre and post intervention, children were measured on the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI), an inventory of conduct problems. Data was also obtained from the Dyadic Parent-Child Interactive Coding System which allows recording of behaviors of children with conduct problems and their parents, and the Coder Impression Inventory, which describes parenting style, child affect, and behavior. Mothers and children who had parenting or behavior problems at baseline were also identified. Analyses showed that families with problems at baseline benefited most from the program. Changes in conduct problems were also related to maternal engagement in the program and to mothers' success in implementing the positive parenting strategies taught in the program. The programme is delivered by accredited therapists, counsellors, social workers, nurses, teachers or physicians.

CAPS deliver the Incredible Years programme for 14 weeks to parents of children aged two to four, or for 10 weeks for parents of children aged up to two.

Scott, S., Briskman, J., & O’Connor, T. G. (2014). Early prevention of antisocial personality: Long-term follow-up of two randomized controlled trials comparing indicated and selective approaches. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171, 649–657. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2014.13050697.