| Intervention: |
Raising a Thinking Child: I Can Problem Solve for Families aims to develop a set of interpersonal cognitive problem-solving (ICPS) skills that relate to overt behaviors as early as preschool. By enhancing ICPS skills, the goal is to decrease future serious problems by addressing the behavioral predictors early in life. In addition, the parent intervention is designed to help parents use a problem-solving style of communication that guides young children to think for themselves. The program consists of 10 to 12 weekly sessions, though a minimum of 6 weeks is sufficient to convey the approach. The first section concentrates on learning a problem-solving vocabulary in the form of games. The second section teaches children how to listen. It also teaches them how to identify their own and others’ feelings and to realize that people can feel different ways about the same thing. In the last section, children are given hypothetical problems and asked to think about people’s feelings, consequences to their acts, and different ways to solve problems. During the course of the program, parents are given exercises to help them think about their own feelings and become sensitive to their children’s feelings. Parents also learn how to find out their children’s view of the problem and how to engage their children in the process of problem solving.
This program is available in Spanish.
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| Evaluation Methodology: |
Study 1 (Shure and Spivack, 1979) investigated a group of mothers who were given ICPS training of their own, in addition to administering ICPS–games and dialogs to their children. The study sought to clarify whether training increases mothers’ ICPS skills, whether mothers’ ability to guide their children in solving real problems could be enhanced, and how change in mothers’ problem-solving thinking and childrearing style might affect their children’s ICPS ability or school behavioral adjustments. Subjects included 40 African American mother–child pairs, 20 of whom received training and 20 of whom served as controls. The pairs were equated for ICPS ability, and the children were comparable in mean age (4.3 years), school behavioral adjustment level, and sex distribution (10 boys, 10 girls per group). All of the children regularly attended federally funded daycare programs. Pretest and posttest outcome measures for children included individually tested ICPS skills and teacher-rated school behavioral adjustment. Pretest and posttest measures for mothers included the problem-solving style a mother used in handling actual problems her child brought to or created for her and the mother’s own ability to solve hypothetical problems.
Study 2 (Shure, 1993), used a longitudinal design that included 562 low-income, innercity African American children. Children were trained by their kindergarten teachers, some were retrained by their first grade teachers, and some were retrained by their mothers. All were compared with children who were trained only in kindergarten or never trained at all. The study followed children from kindergarten through fifth grade. Study results were based on peer and independent observer ratings. Outcomes included individually tested ICPS skills, teacher-rated school behavioral adjustment, independent observer-rated behavior, and peer-rated sociometrics.
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| Evaluation Outcome: |
Child participants in study 1 experienced increases from pretesting to posttesting in ICPS skills when compared with control children. The pattern of the gain was similar for boys and girls. Another important result is that children exposed to ICPS training in one environment (the home) improved their behavior as observed in a different one (the school). Specifically, as a group, children trained by their mothers at home became better able to wait for what they want, better able to share and take turns, and less easily upset in the face of frustration while they were in school as measured against their control counterparts. Moreover, inhibited children became more socially outgoing, better able to stand up to attack, less fearful of entering into social situations, and better able to express appropriate emotions. The study showed significant positive training effects for mothers’ reported childrearing style and for means–ends ability when the problem concerned hypothetical mother–child or child–child situations. In addition, mothers who better learned to think through hypothetical child-relevant problems were better able to guide their own children to think for themselves when real problems arose. These increases in mother outcomes appear to affect child ICPS skills and behaviors. For instance, increases in trained mothers’ problem-solving childrearing scores were related to significant changes in the children’s solutions scores. What’s more, an increase in mothers’ hypothetical child-relevant means–ends thinking skills significantly related to change in their children’s solutions scores and their consequence scores.
Study 2 showed that, at the end of grade 2, mother-trained girls were the least impulsive and the least inhibited and showed the fewest behavior problems as observed by independent raters. Moreover, mothers who better learned to apply the problem-solving approach when real problems arose at home had children who improved most in behaviors. This was especially true for girls in the mother-trained group, who still maintained their significant behavior gains when the study concluded at the end of grade 4.
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| References: |
Aberson, Bonnie, and Alfredo Ardila. Unpublished. “An Intervention for Improving Executive Functioning and Social/Emotional Adjustment of ADHD Children: Three Single Case Design Studies.”
Shure, Myrna B. 1984. “Enhancing Childrearing Skills in Lower Income Women.” In Annette U. Rickel, Meg Gerrard, and Ira Iscoe (eds.). Social and Psychological Problems of Women: Prevention and Crisis Intervention. New York, N.Y.: Hemisphere, 121–38.
———. 1993. Interpersonal Problem-Solving and Prevention: A Comprehensive Report of Research and Training. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Mental Health, No. MH–40801.
———. 1996. Raising a Thinking Child. New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books.
———. 1999. “Preventing Violence the Problem-Solving Way.” Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Shure, Myrna B., and George Spivack. 1978. Problem-Solving Techniques in Childrearing. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey–Bass.
———. 1979. “Interpersonal Problem-Solving, Thinking, and Adjustment in the Mother–Child Dyad.” In Martha W. Kent and Jon E. Rolf (eds.). The Primary Prevention of Psychopathology (Vol. 3: Social Competence in Children). Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 201–19.
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