Changing the System, Not Just the Child: The Clinical Power of Parent Management Training (PMT)

Parents often send a defiant, over active or dysregulated child to therapy to try to get a handle on their behavior. But, we know from a mountain of research that this isn’t going to have much impact. Their behavior is supported or changed in the environment that it is occurring. I know that therapists are doing a great job of helping parents with most behavior problems, but there are some situations that are beyond the garden variety childhood misbehavior. Those times require a more targeted and evidenced based approach that gets results for a family. Parent Management Training that was developed at the Yale Parenting Center is an empirically validated framework focused on altering the antecedents (triggers) and consequences that drive a child’s behavior.
Parent Management Training is recognized by the American Psychological Association as Level 1, gold-standard, evidenced based treatment for childhood disruptive behavior. The Kazdin method developed at the Yale Parenting Center demonstrates an impressive success rate at reducing severe non-compliance, aggression, and oppositional behavior. PMT consistently out performs standard “talk therapy” or unstructured play therapy for behavior modification.
PMT is not “parenting advice.” It is a targeted intervention for specific, disruptive behavioral patterns including;

• Disruptive Behavior Disorders
  
• ADHD Driven dysregulation
  
• Severe Emotional Outburst from anxiety or emotional difficulties.
  

Parent training is a highly structured, behavioral curriculum. It treats parenting as a skill set that can be learned. It does not focus on the WHY of the behavior, it focuses on how the system in the family is supporting the behavior and teaches parents how to change that system.
If you have a family that would benefit from PMT, send me a message so we can get them headed in the right direction.
Text (404) 465-3439‬
[email protected]
www.leighswanson.com ​