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

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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.

Using a collaborative and flexible approach, the intervention can be shaped by each parent to meet the needs of their own family. The 3rd edition has many new features. It is formatted for easier reading, with pull-out sections highlighting key principles and parenting tools. It includes pictures from the video program chosen to remind parents of the vignette discussions they had in their groups. There are also detailed scripts that include social, emotion, academic and persistence coaching dialogues for parents to model, prompt, describe, expand and praise. Scripts are also included to support parents use of puppets and pretend play designed to enhance their children’s learning, modeling and practice of appropriate social and emotion behaviors, thoughts and feelings. All of these approaches will enhance parent-child positive relationships and attachment, build language development and promote positive peer interactions. Children involved in these interventions were between two and 10 years old. Older and younger children were found to be equally likely to benefit from involvement in the Incredible Years programme. 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. Conduct problems have been shown to be the single most important predicting factor of later chronic antisocial behaviour problems. These can include poor mental health, academic underachievement, early school leaving, teenage parenthood, delinquency, unemployment and substance abuse. Many young people displaying these behaviour problems go on to engage in youth offending, family violence, and ultimately serious adult crime.

The evidence was high strength and based on studies in England, Wales, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Portugal.

The Incredible Teachers book is for day care providers and teachers of young children ages 3-8 years. The book presents a variety of creative classroom management strategies for teachers to use to meet children’s developmental milestones and teach emotional literacy, friendship skills, self-regulation and problem solving skills. 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. Five- to six-year outcome and its prediction for children with ODD/CD treated with parent training. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(5), 559–566. The purpose of this study was to pilot-test the effect of the Incredible Years (IY) parenting program among Korean American mothers. First-generation Korean American mothers of young children were randomly assigned to the IY intervention or to a control group. Mothers reported on discipline styles (positive, appropriate, and harsh), level of acculturation, and their child's outcomes (behavioral problems and social competence) at pre-, post-, and 1-year follow-up intervals. Measures included the Parent Practices Interview, Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory, Social Competence Scale, and a modified version of the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II). After completing the program, intervention group mothers significantly increased use of positive discipline as compared to control group mothers. Among intervention group mothers, high acculturated mothers significantly increased appropriate discipline whereas low-acculturated mothers significantly decreased harsh discipline. In the 1-year follow-up, intervention group mothers maintained the significant effect for positive discipline. Limitations include the small sample size and the larger number of drop-outs in the control group. Research issues such as program evaluation, consultation regarding research design, assuring program fidelity, and measures to use with IY programs.Between September 2017 and August 2018, CAPS delivered 75 Incredible Years parenting courses to 989 parents of children aged under four. 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?

The Incredible Years Child Training Program (Dina Dinosaur Social Skills and Problem-Solving Curriculum) - The Child Training program promotes social competency and reduces conduct problems. Children are trained in four areas: 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. Reid, M. J., Webster-Stratton, C., & Baydar, N. (2004). Halting the development of conduct problems in Head Start children: The effect of parent training. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 33(2), 279-291. Status — Participants were parents requesting services at the University of Washington Parenting Clinic; either self-referred or referred by physician or teacher. The groups are shown videos of parent-child interactions covering a range of topics such as, relationship building through playing or spending special time with the child; providing praise and rewards as reinforcements of positive behaviour; effective limit-setting; adequate disciplining techniques such as ignore and time-out techniques; and coaching children in social, emotional and academic skills.The Attentive Parenting ® program is a 6-9 session group-based “universal” parenting program. It can be offered to ALL parents to promote their children’s emotional regulation, social competence, problem solving, reading and school readiness. The Incredible Years BASIC Parent Training Program targets parents of high-risk children and those displaying behavior problems. Highlighted parenting skills include: wpfilebase tag=fileurl path='resources-for-teachers/Chapter-4-Teacher-Book.pdf' linktext='"Incredible Teachers" Excerpt (Chapter 4)' /][spacer] Long-term outcomes of Incredible Years parenting program: Predictors of adolescent adjustment. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 16(1), 38-46.

The role of mental health factors and program engagement in the effectiveness of a preventive parenting program for Head Start mothers. Child Development, 74(5), 1433-1453. 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. Status — Participants were children in the targeted neighborhoods who scored above the clinical cutoff on the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) problem or intensity scale.Status — Participants were self-referred or professionally referred parents of children with child misconduct problems lasting at least six months. This book is the text for teachers using the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Program and the Child Dinosaur Emotional, Social and Problem Solving Curriculum. It can be useful as a stand-alone guide for teachers and caregivers. The Incredible Years: A Troubleshooting Guide for Parents of Children Aged 3-8 Years (3rd Edition) book Webster-Stratton, C. (2009). Affirming diversity: Multi-cultural collaboration to deliver the Incredible Years parent programs. International Journal of Child Health and Human Development, 2, 17–32.