Parent-child interaction training for parents with a history of mental retardation.

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The purpose of the present report was to describe parent-child interaction among families with a history of parental retardation and to explore the possibility of modifying the interaction through parent training. Subjects were six parents who attended eight small group sessions designed to teach relationship building skills. Parents learned to describe, praise, and reflect and to interact nondirectively by refraining from commands during play sessions with their child. Parents decreased directiveness (p less than .01) and increased positive verbal behavior (p less than .01) between pretraining and posttraining, but at one-month follow-up only the decrease in directiveness was maintained (p less than .01). Mentally retarded parents at follow-up were similar to a normative comparison group in number of praises used, but continued to lag behind in descriptive statements. Results suggested that parents with a history of mental retardation can acquire subtle attentional skills, but that they continue to use only the nondirective skills when training is discontinued. It was concluded that additional efforts to understand family interaction patterns and to provide parent training for parents with a history of mental retardation are worthwhile.