The Effectiveness of Parental Discipline for Toddler Misbehavior at Different Levels of Child Distress (original) (raw)
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Developmental psychology, 1986
Children's misbehaviors and parental discipline strategies were investigated in families with abusive and nonabusive parents. Participants were 20 abusive families with children between the ages of 4 and 10. A matched control group of 20 families also participated. Parents were trained to report children's misbehaviors, parental disciplinary and affective reactions, and children's responses to discipline for 5 consecutive days. Abused children committed more transgressions of an aggressive nature and were more likely to oppose parental interventions than control children. Abusive parents used punitive disciplinary practices more frequently than control parents, who made more frequent use of reasoning techniques and simple commands. Abusive parents more often reported being angry and disgusted after disciplinary interventions. Finally, sequential analyses indicated that the type of discipline used by control parents depended on the type of child misbehavior. For abusive parents, punishment was the predominant type of discipline regardless of the types of child misbehavior. The findings were discussed in terms of coercion models of family interaction and in terms of internalization models of socialization.
Families and the Origins of Child Behavior Problems
Family Process, 1987
This article reviews recent research into the relationship between family variables and child behavior. Although a diversity of factors may be associated with the development and maintenance of conduct/oppositional disorders in children, of primary importance are the moment-to-moment interactions that the child has with his or her primary caregivers. These are often marked by coercive, aggressive behaviors that may be functional for parents and children within the family system. However, the likelihood that parents will engage in coercive interactions with the child is also related to the latter's personal adjustment, which, in turn, is often dependent upon the parents' perceptions of the quality of marital and social support available to them. The goal for clinicians working with families of oppositional/conduct-disordered children is to retain the demonstrated efficacy of direct intervention into parent-child interactions while developing methods of assessment and treatment that attend to broader family variables, for example, marital discord, interfering in-laws, and social isolation that may be functionally related to the occurrence of coercive parent-child interactions. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PLoS ONE, 2014
Parental harsh disciplining, like corporal punishment, has consistently been associated with adverse mental health outcomes in children. It remains a challenge to accurately assess the consequences of harsh discipline, as researchers and clinicians generally rely on parent report of young children's problem behaviors. If parents rate their parenting styles and their child's behavior this may bias results. The use of child self-report on problem behaviors is not common but may provide extra information about the relation of harsh parental discipline and problem behavior. We examined the independent contribution of young children's self-report above parental report of emotional and behavioral problems in a study of maternal and paternal harsh discipline in a birth cohort. Maternal and paternal harsh discipline predicted both parent reported behavioral and parent reported emotional problems, but only child reported behavioral problems. Associations were not explained by pre-existing behavioral problems at age 3. Importantly, the association with child reported outcomes was independent from parent reported problem behavior. These results suggest that young children's self-reports of behavioral problems provide unique information on the effects of harsh parental discipline. Inclusion of child self-reports can therefore help estimate the effects of harsh parental discipline more accurately.
Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2013
In the parent intervention outcome literatures, discipline practices are generally quantified as absolute frequencies or, less commonly, as relative frequencies. These differences in methodology warrant direct comparison as they have critical implications for study results and conclusions among treatments targeted at reducing parental aggression and harsh discipline. In this study, we directly compared the absolute frequency method and the relative frequency method for quantifying physically aggressive, psychologically aggressive, and nonaggressive discipline practices. Longitudinal data over a 3-year period came from an existing data set of a clinical trial examining the effectiveness of a psychosocial treatment in reducing parental physical and psychological aggression and improving child behavior ( N = 139). Discipline practices (aggressive and nonaggressive) were assessed using the Conflict Tactics Scale. The two methods yielded different patterns of results, particularly for no...
Intensity and Sequence of Parental Discipline in High-Risk Families
1989
Purposes of this study were to assess: (1) the manner in which parents modify their choice of discipline when dealing with continuing child noncompliance; (2) the relation of family risk for delinquent behavior to parental intensity of discipline with adolescents and their younger siblings; and (3) parental ratings of intensity of discipline in four disciplinary situations. A total of 29 mother-adolescent-sibling triads from father-absent families participated in the study. In 13 of the families, the adolescent had a history of delinquent behavior. Assessment was conducted in the family home by trained interviewers. Mothers rated both children on the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist and on a modified version of the Intensity of Parental Punishment Scale. Each mother indicated how she would respond to the first, second, and third occurrences of each of 33 misbehaviors. Results showed that mothers in both high-and low-risk families responded to noncompliance at hypothetically different times with increasingly intense discipline. Moreover, this pattern was evident in each of the discipline situations: misbehavior in school, crying, cruelty to children and animals, and misbehavior in public. Mothers in low-risk families chose higher intensities of discipline for the younger siblings in school-related situations than did mothers in high-risk families. (RH)
The Effects of Discipline Responses in Delaying Toddler Misbehavior Recurrences
Child & Family Behavior Therapy, 1996
To compare the effectiveness of maternal punishment (e.g., time out, spanking), reasoning, and the combination of the two, 40 volunteer mothers recorded their responses to incidents of toddler fighting and disobedience in a structured diary for 4 weeks. Punishment frequency correlated positively with misbehavior frequency, but non-punishment responses correlated even more strongly with misbehavior. The mean delay until a misbehavior recurrence was significantly longer after a punishment-reasoning combination (e.g., 20.0 waking hours until a fighting recurrence) than after punishment Robert E.
Objective: To create a parent-to-child version of the Conflict Tactics Scales, the CTSPC. Method: Description of the conceptual and methodological approaches used and psychometric data for a nationally representative sample of 1,000 U.S. children. Results: (1) Improved Psychological Aggression and Physical Assault scales. (2) New Nonviolent Discipline scale, supplementary scale for Neglect, and supplemental questions on discipline methods and sexual abuse. (3) Reliability ranges from low to moderate. (4) Evidence of discriminant and construct validity. Conclusions: The CTSPC is better suited to measuring child maltreatment than the original CTS. It is brief (6 to 8 minutes for the core scales) and therefore practical for epidemiological research on child maltreatment and for clinical screening. Methodological issues inherent in parent self-report measures of child maltreatment are discussed. © 1998 M. A. Straus. Published by