What Are Behavior Problems?

Children with Disruptive Behavior Disorders (DBD)  may engage in a variety of behaviors including often losing tempers, arguing with adults, refusing to comply with requests, deliberately annoying others, and blaming others for mistakes. Youth may also become easily annoyed by others and become angry and resentful. These behaviors must occur more frequently than in other children of the same age and must cause significant impairment in social, academic or occupational functioning to warrant a diagnosis.

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Behavioral Interventions

Parent Training is an intervention shown to be effective for treating disruptive, defiant, and oppositional behaviors in children. This approach teaches parents several strategies including attending, how to give effective instructions, appropriate ways to reinforce positive behavior, active ignoring, and time out (to address more clinically significant behaviors). Parents are introduced to each of these strategies and provided opportunities to practice within session before implementing them at home. Parents also receive support to set up routines at home  to provide structure for children and maximize compliance with household expectations.