Confident parents for easier children : strengthening parental self-efficacy to reduce young children's externalizing behavior

Mouton, Bénédicte [UCL]

By interacting with their child, parents build their own sense of competence as a parent. This parental self-efficacy relates to each parent’s representation of a “good parent”, an ideal parent-child relationship and the belief that he is doing a good job or not as a parent. What if the child is being difficult, non-compliant, aggressive or agitated? This dissertation presents an innovative parenting program called Confident Parents designed for parents of young children displaying difficult behavior such as agitation, non-compliance or aggressiveness. The innovation of this program is twofold: it is focused and exclusively cognitive, as it intends to specifically focus on parental self-efficacy enhancement. Effects of this intervention on both parent and child behaviors are measured through both questionnaires and observations. Its effects are discussed taking into account child initial behavior severity, socio-economic status and child temperament as predictors of the effects of this parental self-efficacy program.