[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Alan Kazdin, I'm Professor of Psychology and Child Psychiatry at Yale University. I'm also Director of the Yale Parenting Center, where we are right now. The Yale Parenting Center has helped nearly 5,000 parents with a variety of challenges in parenting and child rearing over the past 25 years. In addition to my professional experience, I have personal experience as a parent with my own two wonderful daughters. From my contacts with parents and personal experience, I know that even on a good day, parenting can be frustrating and challenging. Add a little bit of stress, mix in some oppositional behavior, sprinkle in a reprimand and some shouting, and we have all the ingredients for a typical day in many homes. The course will focus on parenting techniques that will make your typical day in the home easier as you develop the behaviors you would like in your child. The course is a way to share what we have learned from directly working with parents at the Yale Parenting Center. The techniques we trained parents to use in the home are more than just our accumulated experience. We have directly studied these techniques using rigorous research methods, and other researchers have studied these techniques as well, and we know that they really work. Many of the concepts and techniques in this course will be familiar, such as praising, and punishing. But what is unfamiliar is how to use these techniques effectively. The changes in how these techniques are used can really increase your effectiveness as a parent and greatly reduce your daily frustrations. As part of this course we have produced a collection of videos that will shed light on many parenting misconceptions, and provide concrete methods to improve your course of action with both children and adolescents. If you are a parent with any frustrations about parenting and child rearing, or you'd really like to improve your effectiveness in changing child behavior these videos will be very useful. [MUSIC] Let me say a bit about the structure of the course. The first section of the course is organized by the ABCs, and these stand for antecedents, behaviors, and consequences. For example, antecedents refer to how to ask your child to clean his room. That leads to behavior, whether he cleans his room, and that should result in a consequence. How you react to your child based on his actions. Many behavior change techniques are organized separately under the ABC umbrellas, but are combined to form a more general approach to changing child behavior. Later in the course, I will outline general aspects of family life, that can make child rearing easier. Whether it is handling oppositional behavior, in young children, or challenges, that often emerge among adolescents. We will start with fundamentals, and build on these, very much like starting to learn, a martial art. By the end of this course I hope you'll be a black belt in applying effective parent techniques. At the end of this course you've a set of tools and techniques that you can apply to your individual situation, and to reach your unique goals for your children. Throughout the course we will ask you to identify specific behaviors you either want to promote, or reduce. This will guide your focus and make the process more manageable. You don't have to start with changing everything you want to in your child. Start out with one thing you would like to change our develop in your child. I mentioned martial arts as one way of building skills,so by the end of the course you'll be a black belt. Another way to think about this is like learning to play a musical instrument, we start out very small. A few skills like playing notes on an instrument, and then some simple songs, and then we'll build on these with more practice and more complex skills until we get to the end. The key to the course is practice, practice, and practice. This course is a collection of tutorials, but not abstract concepts, rather the lessons focus on what to do and how to carry out various techniques that change real behaviors of concern to you. What I cover in the course is only half of the process. The other half is you trying out the techniques and carrying them out in the special ways that make them effective. This is the practice part of the course and is absolutely key. Are there prerequisites for the course? Not necessarily, it would be helpful if you were a parent or a guardian responsible for a child. We'll be focusing on preschool children through adolescents. I encourage you to begin the course with a specific challenge in mind in relation to your child or adolescent. Does your child refuse to do chores when you ask? Not get ready on time without an argument? Fight with a sibling? Throw massive tantrums in the supermarket? Whatever you may want to change, please write this down and we will help make that goal become a reality. I'm very eager to begin this process with you.
