Objective: The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of a 12-week parent training program with an ethnically diverse sample of parents and teachers of 2-3 year olds in day care centers serving low-income Chicago families. The purpose of the training program is to promote positive parent-child relationships, reduce parental reliance on coercive discipline strategies, enhance parenting self-efficacy, and reduce child behavior problems. Design: The intervention is based on a social learning model and was tested using a quasi-experimental design. Eleven day care centers were matched and randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (a) parent training only (PT), (b)teacher training using the parent training program(TT), (c) parent training delivered to parents and teachers in separate groups (PT+TT), and (d) a no-intervention control group (C). It was hypothesized that (a) compared to controls, the intervention would lead to increased parenting competence and reduced toddler behavior problems and (b) PT+TT would be more effective for reducing child behavior problems than PT and TT alone. Sample: The sample included 112 teachers and 264 parents and their toddlers. 97% were families of color, mostly African-American (57%) and Latino (29%). 96% of parents were working or in school. All families were low-income based on Illinois state criteria. Outcome Variables: Outcomes of interest were parenting self-efficacy, discipline strategies, child behavior problems, consumer satisfaction, and quality of parent-child and teacher-child interactions. Three stress variables (depressive symptoms, everyday stress, neighborhood problems) were included in all analyses to control for parent stress on parent training outcomes. Methods: Parents and teachers in the PT, TT and PT+TT conditions completed the intervention in separate groups at their respective day care centers. Participants met in groups led by nurses for 2 hours, once a week for 12 weeks. Participants watched and discussed videotaped vignettes of parent and child models engaged in a variety of situations typical of families with young children. Topics included child-directed play, helping young children learn, praise and rewards, limit-setting, handling misbehavior, and problem-solving. Mean attendance was 7.6 sessions among parents and 8.8 sessions among teachers. Outcome data included parent-reports, teacher-reports, and observations collected four times over 15 months. Data were analyzed using growth curve modeling and chi-square analyses. Findings: Consumer satisfaction rating were uniformly high. After controlling for stress, PT and PT+TT parents had higher self-efficacy, used more positive behaviors with their toddlers, and used less coercive discipline than C and TT parents. Children in the PT, PT+TT, and TT conditions who had high rates of classroom behavior problems showed greater behavioral improvements than controls. Most experimental effects were retained at the one-year follow-up however benefits were greatest when parents directly received the intervention. Few effects were found when teachers received the intervention. There was no evidence that PT+TT was more effective than PT alone for reducing child behavior problems. Conclusions: Previous research has shown that parent training can be effective. However, most of this research has been conducted with middle-income Caucasian parents of older children. This study indicates that parent training is also effective with parents of color with very young children (2-3 years) living in low-income urban communities. Implications: Data suggests that parent training delivered in day care centers is a cost-effective method for promoting positive parent-toddler relationships and reducing behavior problems in young children. However, the data also suggest that parent training is more effective when delivered directly to parents by trained nurse group leaders than when offered through day care teachers.
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