TPC-Journal-V5-Issue2

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 2 249 The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the practicality of PCIT as a component of behavioral family counseling, to facilitate the professional counselor’s understanding of the model through a review of PCIT and to illustrate the utility of this model for children with special needs through a case study. An Overview of PCIT PCIT (Neary & Eyberg, 2002) is an assessment-driven form of behavioral parent training designed for families with preschool-aged children. We present a brief overview of PCIT, define the key components integral to the process, provide the framework for implementation and discuss the application of PCIT to special populations. The core of PCIT is twofold—to create nurturing parent–child relationships and to model prosocial behaviors while increasing a child’s appropriate, compliant behaviors (Eyberg & Boggs, 1989). Play therapy skills are introduced to parents within the PCIT model to enhance the relationship between the parent and child. Additionally, PCIT cultivates problem-solving skills with parents who can then generalize gains made in the therapeutic milieu into the family environment. Similar to other models of family counseling, PCIT begins with the assessment process. Counselors using PCIT collect psychosocial information from the family through either structured or semistructured clinical interviews. Because PCIT is a behavioral model, family dynamics also are assessed through direct observation of clients. Once clinical interview and observational data are collected and evaluated, the counselor can explore family relationship dynamics. PCIT counselors attempt to identify family roles, interactions and maladaptive disciplinary techniques (e.g., yelling, lack of follow-through, unrelated consequences) inherent in the system. The ultimate goal of these observations is to derive methods for replacing current ineffective parenting strategies with more adaptive ones, thus creating greater stability in the family system. Similar to other parenting approaches, family counselors using PCIT offer support and assistance in improving parent–child relationships without placing blame on the child or the parents (Webster-Stratton & Herbert, 1993). The Benefits of PCIT There are many benefits to PCIT; it is a brief, short-term family counseling procedure that teaches effective parenting skills and helps parents interact better with their children on a daily basis. Fundamentally, PCIT’s two-tailed approach benefits both parents and children (Asawa, Hansen, & Flood, 2008) by reducing the internalization of problems and parent–child stress. Additionally, PCIT empowers parents through teaching positive interactive techniques that build parent–child rapport. PCIT fosters creativity and increases child self- esteem, decreases noncompliance or disruptive behavior, and increases the quality of parent-provided positive regard through developmentally appropriate play (Eyberg et al., 2001). These positive interactions effectively decrease problem behavior, resulting in a reduction or elimination of emergency counseling visits. One PCIT study reported that only 19% of participants in a randomized controlled trial with physically abusive parents re- reported physical abuse more than 2 years after the implementation of the PCIT model (Chaffin et al., 2004). While PCIT sessions may focus on home and play, the behavioral skills that the parent learns can be generalized to other children and additional settings, building stronger interactions across a spectrum of familial and social settings. According to Urquiza and Timmer (2012), PCIT focuses on the following three essential non-fixed elements: (a) increased positive parent–child interaction and emotional communication skills, (b) appropriate and consistent discipline methods, and (c) direct scaffolding for parent training in the interventions. Thus, once the parent has mastered these skills in the session with the child and therapist, the parent is able to transfer the skills to any location or setting to maintain positive interactions, emotional communication and disciplinary consistency with the child.