The effectiveness of a home-based parent management training for preschoolers with oppositional behaviors in Israel: A randomized controlled trial

Objective: Parent management training (PMT) is a well-established approach for treating young children's disruptive behavior. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) examined the effectiveness of Positive Parenting for Oppositional Preschoolers (PPOP), an Israeli-developed PMT intervention for treating young children's opposition and accompanying disruptive behaviors. Method: Eighty-five Israeli parental couples (170 individuals: 85 fathers, and 85 mothers) with a 3-6-year-old child exhibiting non-clinical disruptive behavior were randomly assigned to either an 8-session PPOP ( N = 42) or a waitlist control group ( N = 43). Parents completed measures of child disruptive behavior, parenting stress, and parental self-efficacy before and after the intervention and at a 3-month follow-up. Results: The intervention effects (Cohen's d) were very large for children's disruptive behavior ( d = 3.35), parenting stress (d = 1.78), and self-efficacy (d = 1.32). Improvements were only evident for the PPOP group, and all gains were maintained at follow-up. Participants in the waitlist control group did not report changes in their child's behavior, parenting stress, or parental self-efficacy. PPOP had a very low dropout rate (4.76%) and a very high attendance rate for mothers (100%) and fathers (98.7%). Both parents were highly satisfied with the parent training program. Conclusions: This study provides evidence of the effectiveness of PPOP, a new home-based PMT intervention developed in Israel. In the short and long term, PPOP effectively treats young children's non-clinical disruptive behavior, reduces parenting stress, and increases parental self-efficacy.