PCIT is an empirically-supported treatment for young children with behavioral difficulties. PCIT focuses on decreasing negative behaviors and improving the quality of the parent-child relationship. In PCIT, parents are taught specialized skills to establish a nurturing and secure relationship with their child while increasing their child’s positive social skills and decreasing negative behaviors.
Target Population:
- Children ages 2-7 and their caregivers
- Children with behavioral problems
- Acting out and disruptive behavior in school
- Aggression towards parents, siblings, and/or other children in the home
- Sassing back to their parents
- Refusing to follow directions
- Frequent temper tantrums
- Swearing
- Defiance
- Oppositional behaviors
- Children who have experienced trauma
- Perpetrators of abuse / neglect and protective parents
Benefits:
- Children decrease disruptive behaviors, increase listening skills and positive social skills
- Increase positive parenting skills
- Lasting effectiveness of treatment
- Reduces reoccurrence of child abuse more significantly for parents who have successfully completed PCIT versus parents who have not completed the program.