Managing children’s conflict behaviour  

From an article by Child and Family Blog

Children’s conflict with their parents takes many forms. It might involve refusing to follow instructions and getting angry when things do not go their way. Conflict with other children might be more likely to involve physical or verbal arguments.

Frequent conflict with siblings and peers can increase children’s risk of later mental health problems, such as higher levels of aggression. This might occur because conflict with siblings inadvertently teaches children to behave in increasingly aggressive ways. Additionally, children may be more likely to make friends with peers who show similarly disruptive behaviours, which can encourage further aggression.

One promising intervention may be parenting programmes that target children’s disruptive behaviour more broadly. The effectiveness of such programmes at reducing the broader range of disruptive behaviour has been demonstrated in decades of research worldwide.

These parenting programs aim to help caregivers interact more positively with their children, which in turn helps reduce children’s disruptive behaviour. Goals often include replacing negative interaction patterns between parents and children, which might unintentionally reinforce challenging behaviour in children, with more constructive techniques to help support children’s development.

Although the focus of such programmes is improving parent-child relationships, improvements in the parent-child dynamic may spill over into children’s relationships with others, such as their siblings and peers.

To look at this further, Child and Family analysed data from more than 1,400 families who participated in one of 12 published studies completed in six European countries. In each study, researchers randomly assigned families of children ages 1-11 years to either the Incredible Years parenting programme or an alternative experience. The goal was to assess the Incredible Years program’s effects on children’s conflict with parents, siblings, and peers.

[Incredible Years is one of the most extensively researched group-based parenting programmes for managing young children’s disruptive behaviour. The program developers drew from scientific findings about children’s behaviour, family relationships, and effective intervention strategies. More than 50 studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in reducing children’s disruptive behaviour. Given its strong evidence base, influential organizations such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the United Kingdom, the Youth Institute in the Netherlands, and Blueprints in the United States have recommended the programme.
Caregivers are taught techniques for building warm relationships with their children (e.g., using responsive play) and encouraging positive child behaviour (e.g., using praise and rewards). Facilitators also introduce methods to discourage children’s negative behaviour through setting limits and constructive discipline techniques (e.g., time-outs, the removal of privileges).]

The research into the 12 studies found that participating in the Incredible Years programme reduced the frequency of children’s conflict with their parents. Parents who took part in the Incredible Years programme reported greater decreases in conflicts with their child (for example, fewer instances of their child refusing to follow their instructions) compared to parents who did not take part in the programme. This was what we expected, because the programme is designed to improve parent-child relationships.

The unexpected finding was that for the 22% of families with high levels of sibling conflict at the start of the programme (where parents, on average, rated their child as ‘often’ or ‘always’ having conflict with their sibling), Incredible Years also reduced children’s sibling conflicts.

This might have happened because new techniques like limit-setting helped caregivers address sibling arguments more effectively. Also, if caregivers interacted more positively with the child with the most severe disruptive behaviour in the family, that child may have modelled this behaviour with their siblings.

Finally, applying the new parenting techniques to all children in the family (e.g., praising children’s positive behaviour and selectively ignoring children’s minor negative behaviour) might have led to overall improvements in behaviour, reducing sibling arguments.

However, taking part in the Incredible Years programme did not reduce children’s conflict with peers. This might be because it is hard for children to change their behaviour outside the home in a setting where others (e.g., teachers, peers) have not changed how they interact with them. Stronger collaboration between families and schools may help ensure that positive changes in children’s behaviour at home are supported and sustained in school environments.

Read the full article here.