Teaching parents the skills to manage their child's behavior
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is an empirically supported treatment for young children (ages 3 to 6) that was originally designed to treat children with disruptive behavior disorders (Oppositional Defiant Disorder and ADHD).

Children with behavior problems are at risk for problems in school and later delinquent behavior. Young children can be treated effectively, if the behavior problems are diagnosed early. PCIT helps improve the quality of the parent-child relationship and can be used as an effective means to teach parents the skills needed to manage child behavior. Parents who participate in PCIT with their children are taught specific skills to develop a strong, positive relationship with their child while increasing the child's pro-social behavior and reducing the child's undesirable behaviors. One of the most unique features of PCIT is that therapists coach parents during in vivo interactions to use specific skills while they interact with their child. More recently, PCIT also has been shown to be an effective treatment for children between the ages of 4 to 12 with a history of physical abuse or neglect, ADHD, separation anxiety disorder, and developmental disabilities.

Through presentation, discussion, videotape modeling, and role-play, you will learn the PCIT model, the 38 years of research that exists to support PCIT, and assessment tools used to track treatment gains. This seminar demonstrates the skills needed for mastery of the two phases of treatment of PCIT. You will also learn ways to obtain more information about PCIT clinical practice, training, and research.

Course Content

Evidence-Based Treatment and History of PCIT

• What is Empirically Based Practice?
• PCIT as an Empirically Based Practice
• ODD, CD, and ADHD
• Defining features of PCIT
• Theoretical background of PCIT
• How parent-child relationship patterns are targeted
• The two phases of treatment
• Overview of outcome data for PCIT clinical trials
• Description of key research areas in PCIT

Evidence-Based Assessment and PCIT Assessment

• Assessment in guiding PCIT
• Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory
• Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System
• Parenting Stress Index
• Therapy Attitude Inventory
• Newly-developed measures: CRI, READI, TORQ

Child Directed Interaction (CDI)

• CDI process
• Caregiver's role during the CDI teach and coach sessions
• CDI Do and Don't skills

Parent Directed Interaction (PDI)

• PDI process
• Caregiver's role during PDI teach and coach sessions
• Discipline sequence

DPICS Practice; PCIT Coaching

• DPICS during video demonstration
• How therapists coach during CDI and PDI
• Fostering prosocial behavior
• Reducing negative parenting skills

PCIT Supervision and Training Process

• PCIT International
• Current PCIT Training Guidelines
• Supervision and the PCIT training process