US television’s the Today Show carried a segment about child management featuring Alan Kazdin’s methods. The segment, called “Meltdown! How to tame your tot’s tantrum,” has two main parts. In the first, Matt Lauer describes some basic features of the parent management procedures, described in Professor Kazdin’s book, The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child while one sees brief video clips of a child tantruming, parents interacting with the child, Professor Kazdin discussing behavior management concepts, and a therapist talking with the parents and child. In the second part, Mr. Lauer and Michelle Borba discuss the ideas parent management (getting some of it right and making a few minor misstatements).
It’s marvelous to see that research-based practices are getting mainstream attention. Thanks for people with the background of Professor Kazdin, whom one might say cut his teeth with behavior analysis, we have prominent proponents of effective methods for parents and teachers. An important task is to get those methods into practice, to get them used (with fidelity). Taking to the airwaves offers potential for doing so. Professor Kazdin’s been actively disseminating the ideas via promotion of his book, as a perusal of his Web site will reveal.
I also see this spot as a good tool for teaching about behavior management. I plan to use this snippet in my classes. Of course, not everyone shares my enthusiasm, so I’ll probably pair it with some criticisms of the content. I found one in which a blogger rejected the idea of ignoring misbehavior: “Parenting through a tantrum.”
For more, see the the Yale Parenting Center site.
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