Helping the Noncompliant Child: Family-Based Treatment for Oppositional Behavior (2Nd Ed.)

Helping the Noncompliant Child: Family-Based Treatment for Oppositional Behavior (2nd Ed.) Robert J. McMahon, Rex L. Forehand. New York: Guilford Press (www.guilford.com). 2003, 313 pp., $38.00 (softcover). Ever since its publication in 1981, Helping the Noncompliant Child: Family-Based Treatment for Oppositional Behavior has been viewed as the gold standard of treatment manuals aimed at training parents to manage noncompliance in children. The long-awaited second edition greatly expands upon this classic text, maintaining its status as the premier guide for clinicians and trainees working with families of children with externalizing disorder. The text has numerous strengths, including its articulate presentation of the theoretical framework underlying the proposed interventions, a clear step-by-step outline of the implementation of treatment strategies, and a rich description of empirical support for the techniques proposed. The authors commence the second edition with a greatly expanded description, from a developmental psychopathology perspective, of the normal development of both compliance and noncompliance. By placing the theoretical framework within a developmental framework, the authors allow clinicians to answer the key question within the field of developmental psychopathology: What are the factors that lead normal development to go awry and consequently trigger the emergence of problem behavior? The authors discuss the developmental unfolding of problem behavior over time from initial oppositional behavior in early childhood to aggressive and delinquent behavior in adolescence, highlighting the importance of treating externalizing disorders in their early stages in order to prevent the emergence of more severe forms of psychopathology later in adolescence. The model they propose is thorough in its coverage, rich in detail, and firmly grounded in decades of empirical work examining the developmental trajectories of externalizing behaviors. For proponents of a case formulation approach toward intervention, the text provides a rich framework from which to conceptualize cases in a manner that will facilitate the choice and timing of implementation of effective treatment strategies. In the second and third chapters, the authors present an overview of parent training as an intervention for treating noncompliance in children drawing heavily upon the model devised by Dr. Constance Hanf. Basic issues such as the sequence of instructional procedures for teaching each parenting skill, skills taught in different phases of the parent training program, and session structure are clearly outlined. The authors also address methods for engaging families in the intervention and developing a sound therapeutic alliance. These chapters provide a thorough overview of the framework within which the techniques presented in subsequent chapters should be implemented and are likely to be particularly valuable to therapists and trainees in the early stages of commencing work with families. In the fourth chapter, the authors provide a rich outline to guide the assessment process. The approach is presented with great detail and is brought to life by transcripts demonstrating session content, forms to use during the interview process to ensure that all relevant avenues of inquiry are covered, self-report forms for parents to complete, and score sheets to use in observing parent-child interactions. …