Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)

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• Is your child destructive? For example, do they break things on purpose?
• Do they easily lose their temper?
• Tired of getting phone calls from school about your child’s behavior?
• Feeling overwhelmed by your child’s tantrums or defiance?
• Love your child, but don’t like his or her behavior?

Parenting a young child with behavioral, emotional, or social difficulties can be stressful and challenging. Oftentimes, caregivers are unclear whether their child’s behaviors are “normal” for their age and adopt a “wait and see” approach hoping that the behavior will eventually resolve as their child gets older.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy or PCIT is a therapy for families with children typically between the ages of 2 and 7 who have trouble listening, are impulsive, hyperactive, or even aggressive and destructive.  PCIT uses live coaching by a therapist over a bug-in-the-ear device to help caregivers manage problem behaviors in the moment.  PCIT is divided into two phases.  The first phase is designed to help children calm down, improve their attention and focus, feel less angry, and help caregivers strengthen their relationships with their child which often gets strained when children misbehave.  The second phase  helps caregivers to reduce and manage problem behaviors and helps children to accept consistent consequences and limits.  On average families are able to complete PCIT in 12-20 sessions; however, PCIT is not time limited.   

Over 40 years of research has demonstrated that PCIT is effective at helping improve behavior problems and reduce parenting stress.  As a child’s problem behaviors decrease, parenting skills improve, and the quality of a parent-child relationship is enhanced. PCIT can improve behavior in other settings, such as school, day care, and with siblings. 

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Adaptation for Older Children  (PCIT-OC) is a therapy  that uses a live coaching model where parents work directly with the child while getting in the moment help applying new techniques.  It aims to keep as much standard PCIT in place as possible, with some developmentally appropriate adjustments.  PCIT-OC has two phases: a relationship and positive reinforcement phase, followed by a discipline and consequences phase.

PCIT-OC helps you enhance your relationship with your child, increase the behaviors you want to see more of, and get rid of challenging problem behaviors.

PCIT-OC is for:

• Children ages 7-10 who still enjoy playing with toys.
• Children who are  strong willed, defiant, aggressive, destructive, or have frequent temper tantrums.
• Parents who are feeling stressed, overwhelmed and unsure how to handle their child’s challenging behaviors.

Though no randomized controlled trials have been done to date, a small sample size outcome study showed significant changes in parent skills and reduction of problem behavior.