This revised and expanded edition focuses on a highly intensive behavioural parenting program that can be used with parents of children with Disruptive Behaviour Disorders. The book begins with an excellent chapter that investigates the root causes of oppositional behaviour. In addition, this chapter also outlines compliance and non-compliance in normally developing children. The second chapter of the book describes the development of parent training programs and compares the most commonly used behavioural parenting programs. The following chapters describe McMahon and Forehand’s Helping the Noncompliant Child program and adaptations of the program that can be used for specific populations, such as children with developmental disabilities. The book ends with a review of current research in the area of behavioural parenting techniques and with a number of reproducible parent handouts.
Overall, this is an excellent book for any clinician who is working in an intensive treatment setting for children with behavioural difficulties. The first chapter, which reviews the development of behavioural difficulties, is a must for anyone who is working with children who present with oppositional behaviour. I plan to make it the first item my students read when they train with me. This chapter is an easy, enjoyable read and would be helpful for both clinicians and front-line staff in many settings. The second strength of the book is the reproducible parent handouts at the back of the book. They include instructions on Active Ignoring, Giving Clear Instructions and other important parenting techniques. The book also includes many excellent diagrams that show the progression and development of behavioural difficulties, and record sheets that can be filled out by parents when they are trying to implement a new technique. I also enjoyed the chapters describing McMahon and Forehand’s parenting program, specifically the techniques used to quantify the parent’s use of specific parent skills (e.g., attends, rewards), to determine areas needing further work and measures of improvement.
The most important weakness of this book, in my opinion, is the title. Many clinicians may read the title and assume that this book can guide their work in an office-based environment. In fact, the book describes an extremely intensive parenting program that involves training staff to watch parents and children through a one-way mirror or in the home environment. Optimal scheduling is described as twice a week for 75–90 minutes each time (5–14 sessions total). The authors note that weekly 50-minute sessions were less successful. Although the authors describe the program as flexible, it is clear when reading the book that this book is describing treatment techniques that would be best administered in a highly intensive setting. Many clinicians are not working in a clinic that provides the time or the appropriate setting for implementing the program, and would be better served by reading Forehand’s book, Parenting the Strong Willed Child and some of the other excellent parenting books that are available.
Another weakness of the book is that on several occasions the authors discuss the use of spanking without discussing the multitude of research describing the negative effects of its use. On one occasion the authors note that they no longer recommend spanking but appear to gloss over their reasons for this change (noting that it has become “increasingly less acceptable”). On another occasion (p. 88) the authors note that they use “punishment of one sort or another (e.g., spanking, loss of privileges)”. I believe that the authors had a real duty to fully outline the research on spanking, as this is an important subject that I discuss with all parents in my work.
Overall, I concluded that the parenting techniques provided in the book were excellent. However, I had some differences with the authors. On one occasion, they noted that they tell parents that active ignoring is “much easier to use than punishment”. In my work, I have found that many parents of children with behaviour problems have anger management problems of their own. Therefore, parents often find active ignoring to be an extremely difficult technique to learn and, in my opinion, benefit from a great deal of support about how tough it will be to implement.
Overall, this is an excellent book for any clinician who is able to implement an intensive, structured parent skills training program. However, for clinicians who work in public health clinics which do not allow for long sessions of observation and frequent appointments, they would be better off reading several of the other books aimed at clinicians. For my purposes, as a psychologist working in a Day Treatment setting, the book is a welcome addition to my bookcase and will be used often.