7

Working With Parents of

Aggressive Children: Ten
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Principles and the Role of

Authoritative Parenting
Timothy A. Cavell, Amanda W. Harrist,
and Tamara Del Vecchio

Baumrind’s conceptualization of authoritative parenting describes a pat-

tern of socialization strategies that fits most parents and their typically develop-
ing children. It encompasses a particular set of parental goals (e.g., socializing
a child to be a competent citizen, facilitating development of self-discipline),
values (e.g., communication, child autonomy), and skills (e.g., setting boundar-
ies, conveying acceptance). But is an authoritative parenting style possible for
parents who are struggling to discipline or enjoy a child who is highly aggres-
sive? Researchers’ understanding of the development of aggressive behavior has
become more sophisticated; however, adaptations to Baumrind’s framework
have not mirrored these changes. Similarly, current models of parent training
have failed to fully incorporate the complex nature of aggressive parent–child
dyads. In this chapter, we review recent advances in knowledge about parent-
ing and the development of childhood aggression. We offer 10 guiding prin-
ciples for parent-based interventions that i­ ncorporate the contributions of both

DOI: 10.1037/13948-008
Authoritative Parenting: Synthesizing Nurturance and Discipline for Optimal Child Development, Robert E.
Larzelere, Amanda Sheffield Morris, and Amanda W. Harrist (Editors)
Copyright © 2013 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

165
 Baumrind’s relationship-based typologies and skill-based parent training models
and reflect an understanding of the complexity of parenting an aggressive child.
We start, however, with the case of Robert:
Robert is 10 years old and lives with his mother and his two younger half-
sisters. At home, Robert refuses to help with chores and screams and whines
if he does not get his way. He argues constantly with his sisters, occasionally
hitting them, teasing them, and taking things from them. Linda, Robert’s
mother, works part time at a nursing home and is twice divorced. She feels
overwhelmed and is unsure of how to deal with Robert. She is quick to
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react when he misbehaves, but punishing him does not seem to help. At
other times, she does not have the energy to discipline him and believes
it’s better not to aggravate him. At school, he is known for getting into
trouble—breaking rules and fighting with other kids. He even threatened
a teacher who made him sit out during recess. He’s a capable student but
typically unmotivated. Lately, he’s been hanging around some older boys,
including two who like to smoke cigarettes and talk about being in a gang.
Diagnostically, Robert would likely meet criteria for conduct disorder,
childhood onset (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In cases like
Robert’s, extant research suggests there is cause for concern. Childhood
aggression is quite stable (Loeber, 1990), and Patterson, Forgatch, Yoerger, and
Stoolmiller (1998) found that 50% of boys identified as aggressive by age 9
or 10 were arrested by age 14; in turn, 75% of boys arrested by age 14 had three
or more arrests by the age of 18. The risks are particularly serious for children
who meet what Moffitt (1993) called the life-course persistent pattern of offend-
ing, which has an early onset, is extreme in its severity, occurs across settings,
and is predictive of a later criminality and antisocial personality disorder.
Parents of children like Robert often need guidance on how best to
parent in a way that will make a positive difference for them and their fam-
ily. Such guidance has generally emanated from two sources. One source is
research on authoritative parenting, which offers a compelling case for the
combination of parental responsiveness and demandingness. It is a pattern
commonly used by parents whose children are socially competent and unlikely
to show signs of serious behavior problems. A second source is behaviorally
based parent training, a frequently recommended and often studied interven-
tion strategy that emerged simultaneously with Baumrind’s groundbreaking
studies on authoritative parenting (Cavell, 2000).
In this chapter, we explore how these two bodies of work can (a) inform
each other, (b) be updated to reflect current research on the role of parenting
in the development of childhood aggression, and (c) be integrated to offer a
more comprehensive framework for understanding the struggle facing parents
of aggressive children. We present this framework in the form of 10 guiding
principles.

166       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 Recent Advances in Knowledge About Parenting
and the Development of Childhood Aggression

Over the last 25 years, researchers have learned a great deal about
aggressive children and the role that parenting plays in the onset and main-
tenance of childhood aggression. The developmental course of aggressive,
antisocial behavior (ASB) has come to be viewed as a dynamic process that
involves biological, cognitive, and affective variables interacting with social
contextual factors (Cicchetti & Toth, 2009). Prospective longitudinal stud-
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ies demonstrate that biogenetic risks, maladaptive social cognitions, risky

social contexts (e.g., negative parenting, deviant peers), externalizing behav-
ior problems, and delinquent activity are coparticipants in a developmental
cascade, that is, a series of complex transactions that accumulate outcomes
far more intractable than what would be expected from a simple linear, uni-
directional, and mediational trajectory (Lansford, Malone, Dodge, Pettit, &
Bates, 2010).
An important area of advancement in researchers’ understanding of
childhood aggression has involved work explicating the contribution of
child effects (Lytton, 1990) and the interactive role of nature and nurture
in children’s development (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, &
Bornstein, 2000). A meta-analysis (Burt, 2009) estimated that 58% of the
variance in child and adolescent conduct problems was accounted for by
genetic endowment. An additional portion of variance was accounted for
by gene–environment interplay, including the tendency for children with
certain biologically based risk factors such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder to evoke negative parenting. Neurodevelopmental/self-regulatory
factors also contribute to the levels of aggression children display (Fairchild
et al., 2011; Nigg & Huang-Pollock, 2003). Also noteworthy are studies sup-
porting the role of callous/unemotional traits as a predictor of child and ado-
lescent ASB (Frick, Stickle, Dandreaux, Farrell, & Kimonis, 2005). Children
high in callous/unemotional traits have been shown to be relatively insensi-
tive to punishment, to hold social-cognitive expectancies that aggression
will lead to positive outcomes, and to exhibit elevated levels of externalizing
behaviors that are not predicted by parenting effectiveness (Oxford, Cavell,
& Hughes, 2003).
A second area of knowledge advancement has documented the influ-
ence of competing social contexts on the development of aggression and ASB
(see Cavell, Hymel, Malcolm, & Seay, 2007). Some contexts offer positive
influence (e.g., schools, 4-H Clubs) but are inaccessible to or overly demand-
ing for children at risk; other contexts offer “success” in antisocial activities
(e.g., deviant peers, crime-ridden neighborhoods). Such contexts represent
powerful sources of nonparental environmental influences, and efforts to

working with parents of aggressive children      167

 model the role of parenting in the development of ASB cannot ignore these
competing influences or the wider social matrix in which parenting resides
(Conger & Simons, 1997; Harris, 1995).
A final area of advancement is in researchers’ understanding of the
dyadic processes that make the parent–child relationship the key context
in children’s socialization. Much of the work in this area is tied to social
learning models of parental influence (and thus behaviorally based parent-
ing interventions), especially that involving the role of coercive exchanges
between parent and child (Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992). However,
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recent studies have expanded researchers’ models of parenting and the pro-
cesses leading to the development of aggression. Newer models have exam-
ined attachment-related phenomena, the emergence of conscience, parental
emotion socialization strategies, and the level of mutuality or reciprocity
that characterizes parent–child interactions. For example, low levels of
parent–child mutually responsive orientation (e.g., Kochanska, Aksan, Prisco,
& Adams, 2008) and dyadic synchrony (e.g., Harrist & Waugh, 2002) in
early childhood have been linked to later poor child self-regulation and
aggression.
In the 40+ years since the introduction of authoritative parenting, the
science that informs researchers’ understanding of parenting and socializa-
tion has undergone tremendous change. Conceptual models depicting the
developmental course of ASB have also become broader and more complex,
as illustrated by the integrated life-course–social learning model of socialization
and the development of ASB (Cavell et al., 2007), which situates parent-
ing with respect to other socialization forces operating over the course of
children’s development (Figure 7.1). The model has important implications
for parent-based interventions that target aggressive children. Emphasized
are robust contributions involving (a) biogenetic risk factors, (b) available
social contexts, and (c) children’s capacity to access and succeed in those
contexts. The parent–child relationship is but one context among many that
can influence developing youths, and parents of aggressive children, like most
parents, must compete with other, sometimes deviant, contexts for children’s
time and emotional investment. Aggressive children are doubly disadvan-
taged: They are less likely to succeed in prosocial contexts (e.g., schools) and
are more likely to be drawn to and more successful in deviant contexts. The
parent–child relationship, at minimum, should be a context that does not
promote ASB. But authoritative parents have to do more than limit ASB if
they are to compete well against other less prosocial contexts.
Also recognized in this model is the challenge of monitoring and man-
aging children’s involvement in other contexts. Parents who are consistently
in the dark about children’s whereabouts, companions, and activities are, by
definition, poor monitors. However, the direction of causality is not always

168       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 Availability Seek, access, Sustained
of prosocial and participate success in
contexts in prosocial prosocial
contexts contexts
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Investment in
Self- Relative benefits of
systems of
regulatory participating in prosocial
shared,
skills versus deviant contexts
prosocial
commerce

Availability Seek, access,

of deviant and participate Antisocial
contexts in deviant behavior
contexts

Figure 7.1.  Integrated life course–social learning model depicting the relation between
socialization processes and the development of antisocial behavior. Moderator effects
are indicated by arrows pointing to paths rather than to constructs. Dotted lines
indicate inverse relations.

clear: Some children are more difficult to monitor. In fact, it appears the
robust relation between parental monitoring and ASB is due in part to chil-
dren and adolescents actively managing the information they give to parents
about the other contexts in their lives (Kerr & Stattin, 2000). Thus, to view
monitoring solely as a parenting practice fails to appreciate the level of influ-
ence that children and adolescents wield in this process. And some youths
are more susceptible to the influence of deviant peers (Vitaro, Brendgen, &
Tremblay, 2001). Youths who are aggressive and disliked do not have the
luxury to be discriminating about their companions or the kinds of activities
(e.g., delinquency, substance use) deemed “necessary” to maintain compan-
ionship (Boivin, Vitaro, & Poulin, 2005). For these youths, affiliating with
deviant peers is not so much an option as it is a last resort for social inter-
change, which makes difficult parents’ efforts to limit the contexts in which
children spend their time and energy.

working with parents of aggressive children      169

 Parent Management Training

During the time when Baumrind (1967, 1971) was introducing the
concept of parenting style, other researchers were engaged in developing
an intervention strategy for parents whose children were defiant, disrup-
tive, or aggressive (Patterson & Brodsky, 1966; Wahler, Winkle, Peterson, &
Morrison, 1965). Parent management training (PMT) is a summary term used
to describe a therapeutic strategy in which parents are trained to use behavior-
ally based disciplinary skills to manage their children’s misbehavior (Kazdin,
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1993). PMT is the most widely studied intervention for children with oppo-
sitional defiant and conduct disorders (Serketich & Dumas, 1996). It is also
one of the most promising (Lundahl, Risser, & Lovejoy, 2006; Maughan,
Christiansen, Jenson, Olympia, & Clark, 2005). Long-term outcomes are
generally positive (Hood & Eyberg, 2003; Webster-Stratton, 1990), although
follow-up assessments following randomized control trials are often limited
in length and reveal mixed outcomes (e.g., Hagen, Ogden, & Bjornebekk,
2011). An exception is recent work by Forgatch, Patterson, DeGarmo, and
Beldavs (2009) examining outcomes for boys of divorced mothers 9 years post
intervention. PMT significantly reduced teacher-reported delinquency and
police arrests in this nonclinical sample. Despite lingering questions about
long-term outcomes (Eyberg, Edwards, Boggs, & Foote, 1998) or of the use of
PMT for disadvantaged or minority populations (Lundahl et al., 2006; Prinz
& Miller, 1991), PMT is one of the few empirically supported treatments for
children with conduct problems (Eyberg, Nelson, & Boggs, 2008).
Still, PMT’s basic assumptions about effective and ineffective parent-
ing have not kept pace with recent advances in researchers’ understanding
of parenting and its role in the development of aggression, although compo-
nents addressing parents’ role in emotion socialization are evident in some
programs (e.g., Forgatch & Patterson, 2010; see also Chapter 8, this volume).
PMT approaches the treatment of child aggression from an operant condi-
tioning perspective. A fundamental assumption is that aggression is learned
through parent-delivered contingencies that inadvertently reinforce negative
behaviors. Coercion theory (Patterson et al., 1992) posits that children learn
coercion from parents who themselves are coercive (using behaviors ranging
from nattering to physical assault) but who also give in to and thus reinforce
children’s use of coercion to resist parents’ demands. Over time, the coercive
cycle establishes coercion as a dominant influence strategy for children who
are early starters on a path toward later delinquency. When coercive behav-
ior is generalized to interactions with others, the stage is set for a series of
negative cascades, including reinforcement of more varied forms of ASB by
deviant peers (Forgatch et al., 2009). Patterson’s (1982) seminal work exam-
ining moment-to-moment contingencies in the homes of aggressive children

170       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 offered a solid foundation for PMT interventions designed to alter those con-
tingencies. The emphasis on microsocial parent–child processes was also a
sharp contrast to the more molar-level notion of parenting styles.
Patterson’s original coercion theory has undergone important revi-
sions since the publication of his 1982 volume. Snyder and Patterson (1995)
used the basic tenets of the matching law (Herrnstein, 1974) to reexam-
ine Patterson’s (1982) original hypotheses, in particular, the emphasis on
between-individuals differences in contingencies governing aggressive
behavior. The matching law places greater emphasis on within-individual
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variation and the context of competing positive and negative contingencies

that govern variation. The matching law proposes that the probability of an
individual performing a response will generally match the probability of that
response being reinforced or punished relative to other responses (Snyder &
Patterson, 1995). Equally important for understanding the role of context is
the time allocation component of the matching law, which posits that “time
spent in an environment will also be relative to the rate of reinforcement
provided by that environment” (Conger & Simons, 1997, p. 62). The dis-
tribution of reinforcing contingencies within a given context (e.g., parent–
child interactions) influences whether children perform ASB, but it is the
distribution of reinforcing contingencies across social contexts that influ-
ences whether children spend time in deviant contexts (Conger & Simons,
1997). Accordingly, it becomes critical to consider the competing value of
social contexts that differentially support prosocial versus antisocial activi-
ties (Cavell et al., 2007). The implication for parents of aggressive children
is that strict limits on misbehavior must be balanced against providing a
parent–child relationship that keeps children invested in the family context.
Granic and Patterson (2006) further revised and expanded coercion
theory, venturing beyond operant principles to apply dynamic systems prin-
ciples and methods. Retained was the core premise that coercive interac-
tions drive the emergence and stabilization of child aggression, but important
limitations were noted. Among these limitations was the use of unidirec-
tional operant principles to explain interactions better understood in terms
of reciprocal or circular causality. Also lacking was an appreciation for rela-
tionship patterns or whole systems that reflected more than the behavior of
individual members: “The relationship itself has its own features and its own
developmental history” (Granic & Patterson, 2006, p. 106). When that his-
tory involves repeated coercive interactions between parent and child, future
interactions are constrained as “the degrees of freedom along the dyadic tra-
jectory are pruned by developing habits” (p. 105).
A dynamic systems model proposes that patterns of interaction (attrac-
tors) vary in intensity, with more intense patterns becoming increasingly
resistant to change. Multiple attractors can coexist within a system, thereby

working with parents of aggressive children      171

 creating competing response demands. Within parent–child relationships,
dyads move toward some attractors and away from other attractors, depend-
ing on contextual variations. However, some attractors are quite powerful in
that dyads move quickly toward them and remain stuck in them; such is the
case with mutually hostile patterns for parents and aggressive children. Granic
and Patterson’s (2006) revision of coercion theory also includes cognitive and
affective elements that were absent from previous versions. When combined
with firmly established attractors, parents’ negative attributions and expecta-
tions, along with feelings of anger or contempt, can lead to rapid escalation
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in coercive behavior, often triggered by seemingly benign, minimally aversive

actions. Cognitive and emotional aspects of parenting also help differentiate
two distinct patterns of coercive parenting: one in which parents are hostile
and coercive and one in which parents are overly lax in their response to
children’s coercion. These patterns are reminiscent of authoritarian and per-
missive parenting, respectively, but are recognized by Granic and Patterson as
leading similarly to growth in children’s use of coercion and ASB. Granic and
Patterson also noted that adverse environmental contexts, often in concert
with difficult child temperament and parental psychopathology, can disrupt
parenting practices and give rise to coercive parenting. Over time, adver-
sity produces “an imbalance” between coercive and noncoercive parenting
(Patterson, Forgatch, & DeGarmo, 2010, p. 951), limiting the availability of
prosocial exchanges as coercion becomes the stronger attractor.
Thus, within a dynamic systems framework, ineffective parenting is not
simply the inadvertent reinforcing of child coercion but a rigid returning to
coercive dyadic interaction patterns (hostile or permissive) in the face of
shifting contexts and competing demands. One can see in this latest revi-
sion of coercion theory parallels to the parenting styles first identified by
Baumrind (1973). Patterson et al. (2010) suggested that coercive parenting
functions as a stop–go mechanism and “family members are essentially coer-
cive or essentially positive in their interactions with each other” (p. 967).
Patterns of mutual hostility reduce the likelihood of positive (authoritative-
like) parenting that is needed to promote social competence and prosocial
development. Aggressive children are similarly drawn into rigid interaction
patterns with peers and others outside the family, further limiting their access
to and success in prosocial contexts.
As an intervention strategy, the core components of PMT for managing
behavior have changed little over the years. Innovations have been limited
to changes in delivery format (e.g., group, video modeling) or components
added to the core curriculum. The typical PMT curriculum borrows heav-
ily from the toolbox of behavior modification. Positive parenting strategies
designed to increase the rate of desirable child behaviors (i.e., praise, atten-
tion, rewards) are typically presented first, followed by strategies for decreas-

172       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 ing the rate of undesirable behaviors (i.e., ignoring, time out). As research in
support of PMT mounted, this set of skills came to be viewed not as borrowed
techniques for managing behavior but as the basics of effective parenting
(Cavell, 2001; Cavell et al., 2007). Interestingly, parents of nonreferred chil-
dren seldom use contingent praise, and there is evidence that it is unrelated
to the level of child compliance in clinic (Roberts, 1985) and nonclinic fami-
lies (Griest, Forehand, Wells, & McMahon, 1980). Still, parents whose children
behaved aggressively were often viewed as lacking basic parenting skills, and
a lack of skills was considered a key contributor to children’s aggression. This
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notion was a good fit for an intervention that focused on skills training.
Related to the skills-deficit hypothesis is the difference between skill
acquisition and skill performance. Much of the research linking poor parent-
ing to child misbehavior documents disruptions in the use of effective parent-
ing rather than a lack of effective skills. A classic example of this distinction
is found in the study by Green, Forehand, and McMahon (1979). In the ini-
tial phase of the study, mothers of referred and nonreferred children were
instructed every 30 seconds (through a “bug” in the ear) to give their children
specific, nonrepeated, labeled commands. Children with conduct problems
were compliant 52% of the time, whereas nonreferred children were compli-
ant 73% of the time. In the next phase, mothers were instructed to make their
children “look” compliant or noncompliant, and mothers were free to choose
how to do this. Surprisingly, both groups of mothers were able to accomplish
both tasks. Mothers became more negative when making their child look
noncompliant, and they became more positive when making their child look
compliant. The findings suggest that mothers of referred children have in
their repertoire the skills necessary to make a child look compliant, but their
performance of key parenting practices is disrupted in some way.
Despite considerable support for the efficacy of PMT, some families fail to
benefit (e.g., Webster-Stratton, 1990), and there remains room for improving its
outcomes with aggressive school-age children. Our premise is that practitioners
who work with the parents of aggressive children could benefit from a more
up-to-date model of socialization as it applies to aggressive school-age children.
Needed is a framework that considers how ASB changes from toddlerhood to
late adolescence, how changes in ASB affect the parent–child relationship, and
how parenting changes as a result of children’s transactional success or failure at
various developmental periods. Also needed is a conceptual model that recog-
nizes the chronic nature of childhood aggression (Kazdin, 1993) and the fact that
parenting an aggressive child can be a long-term task spanning nearly 2 decades.
For children on the early-onset trajectory of ASB, aggression is not a temporary
detour from prosocial development, and practitioners would be wise to recognize
that socialization is the intervention (Cavell et al., 2007). The short-term goal
of child compliance should not detract from the long-term goal of socialization.

working with parents of aggressive children      173

 An expanded and updated model would also recognize that parenting effec-
tiveness can wax and wane as parents struggle from time to time with external
stressors and family transitions. The notion that parents are competing with
other socialization forces is also critical. Parenting an aggressive child means
managing over time the multiple contexts that influence socialization and com-
peting well when children are drawn to deviant contexts or to peers engaged in
appealing but delinquent activities. Finally, a broader conceptual model would
emphasize parents’ long-term management of the parent–child relationship, for
it is the key context in the socialization of aggressive children. In sum, cur-
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rent models of parent training only partly address the inherent complexity or
messiness of parenting an aggressive child. In the following section, we offer a
conceptual framework that appreciates that complexity, as well as the wholes
or patterns of parent–child relationships first introduced by Baumrind (1967,
1971) and recently articulated by Granic and Patterson (2006).

Ten Guiding Principles for Parent-Based

Interventions

Our organizing framework is represented by 10 guiding principles

(Cavell, 2000, 2001; Cavell & Elledge, 2007; Cavell & Strand, 2003).
Collectively, these principles provide an overarching heuristic for working
with parents of aggressive children. Metaphorically, this framework is neither
new wine nor old wine in new bottles; instead, it is a new way to blend grapes
from old proven vines. It is also an attempt to close an important gap: the gap
between what is known about parenting and the development of childhood
aggression and what is typically recommended to practitioners in the form
of PMT. Theoretically, these principles draw from social learning, family sys-
tems, and attachment theories and, more specifically, from a strong apprecia-
tion for environmental contingencies (Conger & Simons, 1997), genetically
endowed individual differences (Scarr, 1992), and children’s capacity to affect
their own development (Kuczynski, 2003) and from relationship-based models
of socialization (Kuczynski & Hildebrandt, 1997; Richters & Waters, 1991).
At the heart of these principles is the goal of helping parents of aggressive
children blend responsiveness and demandingness (Baumrind, 1971) over
the course of a long-term socializing relationship.

Principle 1: The Long-Term Socialization of Aggressive Children Takes

Precedence Over the Short-Term Management of Their Behavior

The long-term goal of socializing children into a system of shared proso-

cial commerce (Richters & Waters, 1991) is important for parents generally

174       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 and critical for parents of aggressive children (Cavell et al., 2007). This single
shift in focus could have tremendous implications for the way practitioners
approach the task of working with parents of aggressive children. Childhood
aggression tends to have a chronic course (Kazdin, 1993), but few parents
of aggressive children will have an articulated long-term socialization plan.
They are more likely to seek help with matters that are occurring in the here
and now, driven by the complaints of those affected by their child’s behavior
and by the emotional costs of parenting a child who is hard to manage and
hard to like. Parents also miss the mark of socialization when they over­
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estimate their capacity for influencing some child outcomes (e.g., intellectual
functioning) while underestimating the value of pursuing the developmen-
tally significant but long-term goal of their child’s socialization.

Principle 2: The Parent–Child Relationship Is a Useful Vehicle

for Socializing Aggressive Children

We propose that parents of aggressive children are well served when

they focus on managing the nature and quality of the parent–child relation-
ship. This recommendation stands in contrast to the dominant theme of
PMT, which is managing child behavior. Effectively managing the behavior
of aggressive children is important, but how parents respond to child behav-
ior cannot be understood apart from the context of the parent–child rela-
tionship (Cavell, 2000, 2001; Kuczynski & Hildebrandt, 1997; Richters &
Waters, 1991). Eschewed here is the notion that effective parenting involves
merely matching a specific problem behavior with the right behavior modi-
fication technique (e.g., Christophersen & Mortweet, 2001). Instead, we are
emphasizing the broader temporal context in which these processes occur. As
noted by Kuczynski and Hildebrandt (1997), a relationship-based model of
socialization “gives a time dimension to parent–child interactions” (p. 236)
and helps explain how parent–child dyads adapt to past interactions and how
they approach future interactions.

Principle 3: Socializing Relationships Provide Aggressive Children,

Over Time, With Emotional Acceptance, Behavioral Containment,
and Prosocial Values

Cavell proposed that parents who establish and sustain a relationship

that offers all three conditions will be more likely to alter the risk trajectory of
their aggressive child. It is not easy to discipline firmly or accept emotionally
children who are extremely coercive and combative (Granic & Patterson,
2006), and some parents of aggressive children display behaviors or espouse
beliefs that are decidedly antisocial (Pettit, Dodge, & Brown, 1988; Tapscott,

working with parents of aggressive children      175

 Frick, Wootton, & Kruh, 1996). Parents of aggressive children must find a
way to provide these relationship conditions over time in the face of dramatic
shifts in children’s ASB and the contextual factors influencing ASB.
The notion that good parenting is multifaceted is certainly not new, and
Baumrind’s (1971) concept of authoritative parenting is but one well-known
case in point. PMT programs routinely train parents to use both positive
(e.g., praise, rewards) and disciplinary techniques (Eyberg, 1988; Forehand &
McMahon, 1981; Webster-Stratton, 1987). However, the implicit model of
parenting reflected in PMT is one that trains positive parenting and discipline
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practices in a piecemeal fashion: Parents are expected to use both, but rarely
considered is the challenge of performing both tasks more or less simultane-
ously over time. The separation of these two tasks is particularly problematic
for parents of aggressive children who must restrict their child’s use of coercion
while not resorting to coercion themselves (Granic & Patterson, 2006).

Principle 4: The Ratio of Emotional Acceptance to Behavioral

Containment Is a Key Parameter of the Socializing Relationship

Effective parents can successfully navigate two competing demands:

(a) imposing strict limits on coercive behavior and (b) maintaining an emotion-
ally positive parent–child relationship (Baumrind, 1971; Maccoby & Martin,
1983). Such parents give children the opportunity to learn right from wrong
without feeling threatened emotionally or relationally. Parents of aggressive
children often struggle to meet these competing demands: They pursue one but
not the other; they switch back and forth between the two; or they simply give
up on both (Patterson et al., 1992; Webster-Stratton & Spitzer, 1996).
Recent studies have converged on the notion that the ratio of ­positive-to-
negative exchanges is an important parameter when d­ istinguishing between
functional and dysfunctional interpersonal relationships. Relationships tend
to be more stable and adaptive when the proportion of positive emotional
exchanges consistently exceeds the proportion of negative exchanges (Dumas,
LaFreniere, & Serketich, 1995; Gottman, 1994). Mothers of nondisruptive
children express positive maternal affect about 80% of the time (i.e., a 4:1
ratio), whereas mothers of disruptive children express positive affect only
30% of the time (Dumas et al., 1995), parents of young preschool children
maintain a 6:1 ratio of positive-to-negative comments (Hart & Risley, 1995),
and mothers of nonreferred school-age children tend to initiate only one
instruction-compliance exchange for every seven positive social exchanges
(Wahler, Herring, & Edwards, 2001). From a matching law perspective, a
positive interaction ratio provides dyadic partners with an overall level of
reinforcement that lessens the relative value of performing aversive behavior
(McDowell, 1982).

176       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 In parent–child dyads, most negative exchanges occur when parents try
to correct or restrict children’s behavior. Parents of aggressive children are thus
operating within a kind of disciplinary “quota system” in which efforts to man-
age child misbehavior are constrained by the need to provide an emotionally
positive relationship. Needed is a disciplinary approach that is yoked to the level
of positive interactions, one that is forceful enough to counter child ASB but
not so forceful that it spoils the affective quality of the p­ arent–child relationship.
Most parents can think of any number of reasons why children should
perform this or that prosocial behavior or why children should not engage in
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various undesirable behaviors. But parents’ expectations can exist separately

from what is feasible and necessary, given the nature of the parent–child rela-
tionship. And parents’ expectations will matter little if the affective tone of
the parent–child relationship becomes overly harsh and punitive. As noted
by Stormshak and colleagues (Stormshak, Bierman, McMahon, Lengua, &
Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2000), “punitive discipline
is clearly a core parenting deficit and may be the most relevant parenting
problem to work on with children and families in clinical settings” (p. 27). Even
parents who use empirically supported behavior management techniques will
likely find that aggressive children continue to display some level of coercive
behavior (Forgatch, 1991; Webster-Stratton, 1990). Waging too strong a disci-
plinary campaign could reduce the ratio of positive-to-negative exchanges and
jeopardize the foundation for socialization (Dumas et al., 1995; Kochanska,
1997; Richters & Waters, 1991; Wahler, 1997). Thus, with this principle, we
are endorsing a neo-Baumrindian model integrating supportive relationships
and firm discipline into a single coordinated system over time.

Principle 5: Characteristics of the Parent, the Child, and the Ecology

Surrounding the Parent–Child Relationship Affect the Degree to Which
Socializing Relationships Are Established and Maintained

In theory, parents whose children are generally cooperative and non­

coercive operate under the same quota system as parents of aggressive chil-
dren. That possibility is likely to go unappreciated, however, when children
meet most, if not all, of parents’ expectations. And if the parents are generally
calm and deliberate, the notion that parents are working under a “disciplin-
ary quota” is even less obvious: Parents set high expectations; children meet
those expectations; and the parent–child relationship is none the worse for
it. But families with aggressive, high-risk children operate under different
circumstances. Parents are often inconsistent and emotionally reactive, and
children can be uncooperative and coercive. Typically added to this mix are
marital strife, economic disadvantage, beleaguered schools, and violent neigh-
borhoods. All these factors make it difficult to foster a positive p­ arent–child

working with parents of aggressive children      177

 interaction ratio, thereby hampering parents’ ability to provide an effective
socializing relationship.

Principle 6: The Primary Goal of Parent-Based Interventions

for Aggressive Children Is Helping Parents Establish and Maintain
a Parent–Child Relationship That Offers Minimal Coverage but
Maximum Sustainability of the Conditions Necessary for Socialization

The parent–child relationship is a useful vehicle for socialization, but

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an effective socializing relationship can be an elusive goal for parents of

aggressive children. Practitioners must address the following question: How
can this parent and this child live peaceably together in a way that does not
promote the child’s use of antisocial behavior? Complicating matters are vari-
ous risk factors that can impact the parent, the child, and the child-rearing
context. Therefore, practitioners should strive to help parents identify and
implement those strategies that provide at least minimum coverage but maxi-
mum sustainability of the relationship conditions necessary for socialization.
As such, it is important to define the lower boundaries of these conditions.

Principle 7: Behavioral Containment Begins With Strict Limits

on Aggressive, Antisocial Behavior

The typical PMT curriculum recognizes the critical importance of firm

discipline, but this task has been poorly integrated with the task of balancing
positive and negative emotional exchanges. At issue here is not simply how
parents discipline but what and when they discipline. In many PMT programs
parents are encouraged to punish (e.g., through time out) acts of noncompli-
ance because noncompliance is purportedly a keystone behavior in the devel-
opment of children’s aggression (Loeber & Schmaling, 1985). But for some
parent–child dyads, an overly inclusive stance against noncompliance could
undermine the affective quality of their relationship (Cavell, 2001). Cavell
recommended tailoring disciplinary goals to fit the characteristics of the parent
and child involved. Parents who are seldom harsh or overly reactive can pursue
a compliance-based disciplinary strategy without undo damage to the relation-
ship, especially if their child was not overly aggressive and defiant. But for par-
ents who are harsh and overly punitive and whose children are prone to using
coercion, the need is for a discipline strategy that is both effective and selective.
Cavell (2001) drew from work by Patterson et al. (1992) to show that progres-
sion from children’s use of nonphysical coercion to physical aggression is more
robust than the link between noncompliance and aggression. Developmental
studies also reveal that children can be noncompliant without being aggres-
sive (Kuczynski, Kochanska, Radke-Yarrow, & Girnius-Brown, 1987) and that

178       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 some forms of compliance are unrelated to children’s internalization of par-
ents’ values (Kochanska, Aksan, & Koenig, 1995). Because coercion carries
greater developmental significance than noncompliance, effectively contain-
ing aggression and other forms of coercion is where discipline should begin,
especially for emotionally reactive parents of highly aggressive children.

Principle 8: Emotional Acceptance Begins With an Implicit

Message of Belonging
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Positive parenting has been traditionally defined in one of two ways.

In the behavioral literature, positive parenting has been traditionally repre-
sented by parents’ contingent use of attention or encouragement (e.g., praise,
rewards) when children exhibit prosocial behavior. In the developmental lit-
erature, positive parenting is often viewed as responsiveness or warm involve-
ment (Baumrind, 1971; Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Unfortunately, parents
of aggressive children struggle in their efforts to be warm and agreeable, and
they can find it difficult to be consistent and contingent in their use of posi-
tive reinforcement (Wahler & Dumas, 1989).
An alternative strategy is to view positive parenting as emotional accep-
tance, which Cavell (2000) defined as any behavior that fosters in chil-
dren a sense of autonomy while not threatening their relationship security.
Critical here is the distinction between change and acceptance as ways to
enhance the quality of close relationships. As Jacobson (1992) observed, a
healthy relationship “involves the ability to accept the inherent unsolvabil-
ity of some relationship problems” (p. 502). Emotional acceptance is akin to
what Baumeister and Leary (1995) referred to as a need to belong, which they
defined as “the need for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongo-
ing relational bond” (p. 497). Baumeister and Leary argued that the need to
belong is a fundamental human motivation. The value of defining positive
parenting in this way is that parents who are ill-equipped for warm involve-
ment or who fail to track and contingently reinforce good behavior can still
maintain a posture of acceptance (Cavell, 2000), a default mode of interacting
in which the need for parental intervention is not assumed and the use of
emotional rejection is the exception and not the rule.
In many families, frequent active parent involvement communicates
explicit messages of affection or praise. But in families with aggressive chil-
dren, parental involvement can devolve into negative affectivity and inad-
vertent messages of emotional rejection. At minimum, parents of aggressive
children should steer clear of interactions that lead predictably to overly harsh
parenting and unnecessary control attempts. Less could actually be more for
conflict-ridden parent–child dyads, and practitioners should consider how to
help parents simply be with their children in ways that convey a more implicit

working with parents of aggressive children      179

 or unstated message of belonging. Emotional acceptance, at minimum, should
start with this implicit message of belonging, a message that can be achieved
through carefully selected interactions and an overall posture of acceptance.

Principle 9: Prosocial Values Begin With Explicit Statements Against

Antisocial Behavior

Studies have documented that children are influenced by explicitly

endorsed values and behavioral norms of family members (e.g., Bogenschneider,
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Wu, Raffaelli, & Tsay, 1998; Brody, Flor, Hollett-Wright, & McCoy, 1998).
For example, Bogenschneider et al. (1998) found that the relation between
paternal monitoring and adolescent substance use was stronger among adoles-
cents whose fathers held more disapproving views of alcohol use. If children’s
participation in a socializing relationship facilitates the internalization of
parental values, then it helps if those values are prosocial. That may not be the
case, however, especially for aggressive children whose parents have a greater
likelihood of evincing antisocial personality disorder or a history of crimi-
nal behavior than parents of other children (Frick & Jackson, 1993; Tapscott
et al., 1996). Children prone to ASB also need more than the absence of
antisocial norms; they need strong, explicit messages against ASB. Brody et al.
(1998) found that family norms against alcohol use that departed even slightly
from an abstinence-based message were more likely to be misinterpreted as
relaxed standards by children with high-risk temperaments. Therefore, our
recommendation is that parents of aggressive children begin their efforts to
foster prosocial values by making explicit statements against ASB.

Principle 10: Effective Parent-Based Interventions for Aggressive

Children Are Multisystemic

With this principle, the focus is extended beyond the dyad to include
other factors that influence children’s socialization experiences, many of
which are mediated through disruptions in parenting practices or family
functioning (Patterson et al., 1992). Marital conflict, divorce, family vio-
lence, parental psychopathology, and economic deprivation are common
examples of disruptive forces that can distort how families operate. Typically,
when these issues are addressed in the context of parenting training, it has
been through additional training modules (e.g., communication skills, prob-
lem solving, coping) tacked onto the PMT curriculum (Cavell, 2000). This
approach creates a rather long list of skills that parents theoretically lack and
that practitioners ideally should teach. For example, the Triple P parenting
intervention encompasses 40 different parenting skills from nine different
domains of functioning (Sanders, Markie-Dadds, & Turner, 2003). Kazdin

180       cavell, harrist, and del vecchio

 and Whitley (2003) found support for their added-on parental problem-­
solving component, but they questioned the value of enhancing PMT out-
comes in this way:
One cannot keep adding components to a treatment that might enhance
or indeed actually does enhance therapeutic change. . . . Patient attrition,
already high in child, adolescent, and adult therapy (40%–60%) is partially
a function of the demands made of the client (Kazdin, Holland, & Crowley,
1997) and duration of treatment (Phillips, 1985). Adding a component to
treatment that increases either one of these is quite likely to cause greater
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attrition so that fewer patients will complete treatment. (p. 513)

A different approach is to recognize that parenting and, therefore, ­parent-
based interventions involve two critical but non-dyadic areas of functioning:
family structure and parental self-care.
Both domains of functioning can have direct bearing on parents’ efforts
to establish and maintain a socializing relationship. For example, Patterson,
DeGarmo, and Forgatch (2004) found that reductions in maternal depression
6 months post PMT treatment predicted continued gains in maternal and
child functioning over the next 18 months. The investigators speculated that
“perhaps for many, simply being enrolled in a structured program is associated
with a reduction in depression (i.e., now there is renewed hope)” (p. 631).
Parents who are overwhelmed and continually despondent, who rely on their
children for emotional support, or who refuse to accept the role as their fam-
ily’s leader cannot provide aggressive children with the kind of relationship
they need to develop into law-abiding citizens. Finding reliable ways to refuel
and compelling reasons to reengage in the difficult task of parenting are not
luxuries for parents of aggressive children. Similarly, without adequate fam-
ily structure, parents of aggressive children will fall prey to automatic but less
adaptive ways to parent and to cope (Dumas et al., 2005).

Conclusion

The parent–child relationship is a particular kind of social context. It

involves biological connections, recurring interactions, enduring social roles,
culturally laden meaning, and strong emotional investments. All things being
equal, these attributes give the parent–child relationship distinct advantages
in its competition with other possibly deviant contexts (Maccoby, 1992),
and it offers unique protective functions against the emergence and stabi-
lization of ASB (see Masten, 2001). A long-term relationship-based model
of ­socialization has advantages over models that emphasize the short-term
management of child misbehavior and gives a time dimension to parent–child
interactions (Kuczynski & Hildebrandt, 1997). Parents and children have

working with parents of aggressive children      181

 overlapping ­histories as well as shared expectations that can significantly affect
the quality of their interactions (Granic & Patterson, 2006). For children with
early-onset ASB, the parent–child relationship is only one of many available
contexts, but it remains a unique resource in the campaign to promote their
integration into society. Over 40 years ago, Diana Baumrind introduced the
concept of authoritative parenting around the same time that applied, behav-
iorally based investigators developed interventions for the parents of aggressive
children. For too long, these lines of research have proceeded along separate
trajectories, neither having much influence on the other. We believe parents
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of aggressive children are better served when parenting interventions help

parents build and sustain a noncoercive relationship that effectively integrates
responsiveness and demandingness over the course of children’s development.

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