The Treatment Research Says Works Best

This article is for educational purposes and isn't a substitute for individualized clinical care.

Your tax dollars have paid for researchers to find out what treatment helps families with behavioral challenges, but that knowledge is stuck in the ivory tower.

Decades of clinical research, hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding, has shown time and time again what works: Behavioral Parent Training.

It's not perfect. No therapy is. But meta-analyses consistently show Behavioral Parent Training improves aggression, outbursts, and refusal to complete routines or daily tasks significantly more than other therapies in children 2–10 years old.

So why haven't you heard of it? Here's the ugly truth. Most therapists and psychologists are not trained in Behavioral Parent Training, and many have never heard of it themselves. It's a huge shame, and something I'm passionate about changing.

To be clear about who this is for: when we talk about behavioral challenges, we're not referring to standard, normative child behavior, which, yes, includes challenges. It's the children with intense challenges that cause significant impairment in their everyday lives. Home, school, and/or extracurriculars detrimentally impacted.

The outbursts, anger, and meltdowns. Being kicked out of sports, preschools, and daycares. Avoiding the store or restaurants. I've seen this every day in my decade in this field.

An hour a week one-on-one with a therapist helps a lot of children with anxiety, panic, depression, trauma, or social skills challenges. But aggression, explosiveness, defiance, and endless screaming and conflict are different. The research is clear: an hour a week does not tend to improve the problem in full, and certainly not quickly. How could it? It can take years to see improvement if you, the parent, don't know what to do at home.

The focus is on you. Not because it's your fault, but because you are the solution. The agent of change. The one who will make a difference.

That's the gap Behavioral Parent Training closes. Not more sessions. The right sessions, teaching you the specific skills the research says work. So you're not waiting years to find out if therapy is helping.

Decades of research, funded by taxpayers, sitting in journals that aren't free or accessible outside a university. And I used to be one of them. I left my research professor position to get this knowledge out of the journals and into your living room.

Thanks for trusting me with your family.

P.S. Don't forget to practice observing the ABCs of behavior. Parent Steps, my Behavioral Parent Training program, Step #2 will be posted this Sunday.