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Adjunctive Parental Support Within Manualized Parent Training for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

Parent training is a central focus of behavioral intervention, with emphasis on teaching parents to become change agents for their children by using behavioral management skills. However, its effectiveness is limited by a parent’s ability to engage in the learning process. Parents managing external stressors, psychopathology, or poverty often do not gain the skills and thus, the treatment may minimally impacts parent and child behavior. In order to increase a parent’s ability to acquire and implement new skills accurately, referred to as parent treatment integrity, the current study added a parent-support component to the RUBI Autism Network’s Parent Training for Disruptive Behaviors protocol. The parent-support component was intended to remove barriers to skill acquisition during the parent training session by alleviating some of the interfering parental stress. In an alternating treatments design, a community-based sample of five parent-child dyads (average age of child = 32 months) participated in the parent-training protocol; half of the intervention sessions included a 15-min parent-support component. The addition of the parent-support component increased parent engagement, treatment integrity, and learned parenting skills, like parent praise. Results support a model of change for parenting behavior. Inclusion of a parent-support component is supported as an effective practice for parent training.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Cole Hague and Savanna Duley and their contributions to this study via data collection. Additionally, the team at the Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Mark Bushong, Adrian Dyer, Leticia Hines, Trina Picquet, and Mayte Colmenero, supported the current study and cared for the families who participated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 6363 Forest Park Road, Suite BL5.320, Dallas, TX, 75235, USA

    Julia E. Cartwright & Katherine Bellone Mount

  2. Division of Psychology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, TX, USA

    Julia E. Cartwright

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Correspondence to Julia E. Cartwright.

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Cartwright, J.E., Mount, K.B. Adjunctive Parental Support Within Manualized Parent Training for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 53, 1293–1308 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-021-01210-w

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