Our Behavioral Health Department has recently started offering Parent Management Training to give parents a basic understanding of behavior using the principles of Behavior Analysis.
This training is for parents of children with problem behaviors such as not following instructions, intense tantrums and meltdowns, poor communication, and aggression towards others. In most cases, the intensity of the problem behavior is greater than normal. There may also be barriers such as poor communication that make the actions more difficult for the parent to respond to. The ultimate goal is to reduce the bad behavior and replace it with good behaviors such as self-dressing, toilet training, functional communication, etc.
Our Behavioral Health team consists of psychologists and a post-doctoral fellow who are specially trained to teach parents how to receive and analyze data in order to help guide their child’s behavior.
Within this training, our team also focuses on feeding disorders such as severe food selectivity and problem behaviors at meal time. These sessions focus on teaching parents how to identify the causes of a problem and what can be changed to make meal times easier and more successful. Six sessions cover everything from determining why a behavior happens to reinforcing a daily schedule. Parents are given assignments each week to collect data that is brought back to the clinic and reviewed. Once parents become more confident with these tools, they are better prepared to address the next behavioral challenge.