Parent Management Training

Parent management training (PMT), also known as behavioral parent training (BPT) or simply parent training, is a family of treatment programs that aims to change parenting behaviors, teaching parents positive reinforcement methods for improving pre-school and school-age children's behavior problems (such as aggression, hyperactivity, temper tantrums, and difficulty following directions).

PMT is one of the most investigated treatments available for disruptive behavior, particularly oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD); it is effective in reducing child disruptive behavior and improving parental mental health. PMT has also been studied as a treatment for disruptive behaviors in children with other conditions. Limitations of the existing research on PMT include a lack of knowledge on mechanisms of change and the absence of studies of long-term outcomes. PMT may be more difficult to implement when parents are unable to participate fully due to psychopathology, limited cognitive capacity, high partner conflict, or inability to attend weekly sessions.

PMT was initially developed in the 1960s by child psychologists who studied changing children's disruptive behaviors by intervening to change parent behaviors. The model was inspired by principles of operant conditioning and applied behavioral analysis. Treatment, which typically lasts for several months, focuses on parents learning to provide positive reinforcement, such as praise and rewards, for children's appropriate behaviors while setting proper limits, using methods such as removing attention, for inappropriate behaviors.

Poor parenting, inadequate parental supervision, discipline that is not consistent, and parental mental health status, stress or substance abuse all contribute to early-onset conduct problems; the resulting costs to society are high. In the context of developing countries in particular, family socio-economic disadvantage is a significant predictor of abusive parenting that impacts adolescent's psychological, behavioural and physical health outcomes. Negative parenting practices and negative child behavior contribute to one another in a "coercive cycle", in which one person begins by using a negative behavior to control the other person's behavior. That person in turn responds with a negative behavior, and the negative exchange escalates until one person's negative behavior "wins" the battle. For example, if a child throws a temper tantrum to avoid doing a chore, the parent may respond by yelling that the child must do it, to which the child responds by tantruming even louder, at which point the parent may give in to the child to avoid further disruption. The child's tantrums are thereby reinforced; by throwing a tantrum, s/he has achieved the end goal of getting out of the chore. PMT seeks to break patterns that reinforce negative behavior by instead teaching parents to reinforce positive behaviors.

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