Applying behavioral Management Strategies to Children Parental Counseling

Abstract

According to Mash and Terdal (1996), the purpose of any behavioral assessment and
intervention must be very clearly defined, ie to be relevant to the allegations made by the child and his
family, to be relevant to the child’s current and future adaptation, to be based on a appropriate theory
of developing and maintaining adaptation. The main target of this intervention program, the noncompliant
and difficult child, certainly meets these requirements (Forehand and McMahon, 1981). The
child’s behavior does not correspond to normal age-specific behaviors and is statistically deviant, in the
sense that it occurs significantly more often than usual in the case of children in the same age group.
For effective control of children’s inappropriate behavior, the consequences, whether positive or
negative, must be immediate. Often, parents have unilateral beliefs about the causes of their children’s
problematic behavior, in the sense that they believe that either they as parents are exclusively to blame,
or the child is to blame.