The Incredible Years

What is The Incredible Years? The Incredible Years (IY) BASIC Parenting Training was designed as both an intervention and a prevention model for families with children who have children with extremely challenging behaviors. The Incredible Years is a thorough and developmentally appropriate program series for children, parents and teachers. The programs are designed to encourage social and emotional proficiency while preventing and reducing negative behaviors in children. The Incredible Years Parent Trainings focuses on parents of children ages 4-12.

Parents bring their children for treatment because of difficulties in managing their children's social, emotional, and behavioral problems. Approximately 50% of these children are co morbid for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and for language/learning and developmental delays. Many of these children are also co morbid for internalizing problems (e.g. anxiety or depression) and are suffering from somatic complaints.¹

The IY's Parenting Program is an evidence based practice that has demonstrated to reduce internalizing and externalizing problems in these children and to strengthen parent-child relationships. The program consists of 12-14 week group sessions (for two hours each week) in which 10-14 parents meet to learn effective parenting skills. The group leaders are trained in collaborative problem solving which they model for parents.

The BASIC Parenting Program focuses on: modeling appropriate behaviors through watching videotapes; coaching; performing role plays; and doing homework. For example, parents watch videos of parents and children who are behaving in pro-social ways. Because the leaders are trained in a collaborative approach, they do not consider themselves as experts. This allows the parent-facilitator relationship to engage in partnerships that are not judgmental or hierarchal. This model also demonstrates respect for families, especially to those who have low self-esteem or self-blame. It also increases parent engagement and reduces drop out rates. Many of these parents are socially isolated with little or no social supports. The group model of The IY helps parents to establish social supports by assigning each parent a "buddy" in Session Two. The facilitator asks buddies to call each other during the week to check up on homework assignments. The buddies are changed every few weeks to allow for different experiences. Social isolation is often a risk factor for children with conduct problems and the "buddy" system alleviates some of this isolation.

The videotapes show parents children from various cultures, socio-economic backgrounds, ages and temperaments so that parents can identify with at least one of these attributes and, as a result, accept the videotapes as germane to their own life situations. The videotapes show parents how to parent the "right" way and the "wrong" way to demonstrate how to learn from one's mistakes.

This approach emphasizes a coping and interactive model of learning (Webster-Stratton and Herbert, 1994). Parents view a videotape vignette of a parent "doing it wrong" and then discuss and role play how the parent might have handled the interaction more effectively. This enhances parents' confidence in their own ideas and their ability to analyze different situations with their children and selecting appropriate parenting strategy. In this respect, the training differs from most other parent training programs in which the therapist is the "expert" and provides the analysis and recommends a particular strategy.²