Watching TV can improve parenting and child behaviour
November 2006Watching television parenting programmes like Driving Mum and Dad Mad really can help improve parenting skills and modify children's behavioural problems, according to a study by the School of Psychological Sciences.
The six-part ITV series followed the progress of five families whose children showed clear behavioural problems through Professor Matt Sanders' 'Triple P–Positive Parenting Programme', which provides guidance on parenting skills which promote good behavioural and emotional adjustment.
The Great Parenting Experiment
In 'The Great Parenting Experiment' study, Dr Rachel Calam and Matt himself then studied a sample of the 4.2 million parents tuning into the series. Funded by the Home Office's Respect Task Force, they assessed how much watching the programmes actually helped parents at home.Rachel said: "This is the first national experiment to monitor parents working alongside a 'TV info-tainment' series and trying out the techniques shown. We wanted to assess whether, by adopting the ideas suggested, mums and dads were able to improve their children’s behaviour and reduce their own stress levels.
"Parents reported significantly fewer problems with both their children’s conduct and their parenting practices 12 weeks after watching the series. Over 40% of the children who had had severe behavioural problems at the beginning of the study showed clinically-reliable changes in behaviour, and moved into the ‘normal’ range on measures of disruptive behaviour.
"The parents also reported higher confidence in their ability to manage behavioural problems; 45% of them saying they were very much less likely to over-react to difficult behaviour."
Matt added: "The improvements associated with watching the series were maintained after six months, and it is extremely encouraging to see that so many parents benefited from it. Our findings indicate that the media can be used constructively to provide parenting information and advice in an entertaining way, and can bring real positive outcomes to both parents and children." The University of Manchester is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
