Parent Training for Families of Children with ADHD

Abstract

:Parent training is often recommended as a treatment for children with ADHD. This review outlines and discusses three well-known programs from the current clinical literature, those formulated by Barkley, Patterson, and Forehand. All three programs rely heavily on social learning principles such as coercive interaction and coercion escalation to explain children's behavior problems. Training in a wide variety of positive social reinforcement and specifically defined punishment methods is emphasized. Differences among the programs are highlighted, including issues such as the balance between informal social reinforcement versus formal behavior reward systems, and the exact procedures for implementation of time-out. Selected outcome research is summarized and general guidelines for clinical implementation are suggested.