Key takeaways for caregivers
- While occasional arguments with siblings or peers are a normal part of childhood, more frequent conflicts may harm children’s behavioral and emotional development.
- Managing children’s conflict behavior can be challenging for caregivers, especially since few evidence-based interventions specifically target sibling or peer conflict.
- Our research explored an evidence-based parenting program designed for preschool and primary school aged children with disruptive behavior. The program aims to improve parent-child relationships. Our results suggest that this program may also reduce sibling conflict in families with high levels of sibling conflict. However, we did not find broader benefits for children’s relationships with peers.
- For families dealing with frequent sibling conflict, evidence-based parenting programs may be a promising resource for learning techniques to reduce conflict between siblings.
- We need to understand more about how to support families when children struggle with conflicts outside the home, such as with peers. This might involve collaborations between families and schools to promote children’s positive development.
Introduction
In this blog post, we briefly answer five main questions:
- What is children’s conflict behavior?
- How might conflict harm children’s development?
- How can communities support caregivers to reduce children’s conflict behavior?
- What is the Incredible Years parenting program?
- What do we know and what do we still need to understand about how to reduce children’s conflict behavior?
What is children’s conflict behavior?
Children’s conflict with their parents takes many forms. It might involve refusing to follow instructions and getting angry when things do not go their way. Conflict with other children might be more likely to involve physical or verbal arguments.
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How might conflict harm children’s development?
Frequent conflict with siblings and peers can increase children’s risk of later mental health problems, such as higher levels of aggression. This might occur because conflict with siblings inadvertently teaches children to behave in increasingly aggressive ways. Additionally, children may be more likely to make friends with peers who show similarly disruptive behaviors, which can encourage further aggression.
How can communities support caregivers to reduce children’s conflict behavior?
Evidence-based interventions that specifically address children’s conflict with other children are limited, especially those that address sibling relationships. One promising approach may be group-based parenting programs that target children’s disruptive behavior more broadly. The effectiveness of such programs at reducing the broader range of disruptive behavior has been demonstrated in decades of research worldwide.
Group-based parenting programs aim to help caregivers interact more positively with their children, which in turn helps reduce children’s disruptive behavior. Goals often include replacing negative interaction patterns between parents and children, which might unintentionally reinforce challenging behavior in children, with more constructive techniques to help support children’s development.
Although the focus of such programs is improving parent-child relationships, improvements in the parent-child dynamic may spill over into children’s relationships with others, such as their siblings and peers.
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Understanding whether parenting programs for children’s disruptive behavior can also reduce children’s conflicts with their siblings and peers is important. If these relationships do improve, it suggests that these programs might be even more effective than previously thought. In contrast, if the programs do not improve children’s conflict behavior, families may require additional support.
What is the Incredible Years parenting program?
To address this research gap, we analyzed data from more than 1,400 families. Each family participated in one of 12 published studies completed prior to 2016 in six European countries. In each study, researchers randomly assigned families of children ages 1-11 years to either the Incredible Years parenting program or an alternative experience, such as a normal care provision, or a waiting list to receive Incredible Years. Our goal was to assess the Incredible Years program’s effects on children’s conflict with parents, siblings, and peers.
About the program
Incredible Years is one of the most extensively researched group-based parenting programs for managing young children’s disruptive behavior. The program developers drew from scientific findings about children’s behavior, family relationships, and effective intervention strategies. More than 50 studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in reducing children’s disruptive behavior. Given its strong evidence base, influential organizations such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the United Kingdom, the Youth Institute in the Netherlands, and Blueprints in the United States have recommended the program.
In the program, caregivers meet in small groups led by trained facilitators for 12 to 18 weekly sessions. Caregivers are taught techniques for building warm relationships with their children (e.g., using responsive play) and encouraging positive child behavior (e.g., using praise and rewards). Facilitators also introduce methods to discourage children’s negative behavior through setting limits and constructive discipline techniques (e.g., time-outs, the removal of privileges).
Although the focus of such programs is improving parent-child relationships, improvements in the parent-child dynamic may spill over into children’s relationships with others, such as their siblings and peers.
An important part of the program is its collaborative approach. Caregivers work with group facilitators to set and pursue their own parenting goals. For example, some caregivers might choose to focus on strategies to reduce fighting between siblings. Since caregivers decide their own parenting goals, some families might focus on addressing disruptive behaviour in multiple children, while others might concentrate on the behaviour of one child.
Our research
We combined the data from the 12 studies. In all studies, caregivers were randomly assigned to either take part in the Incredible Years program or to a control condition in which they did not participate in the program. Each study measured caregivers’ perceptions of the frequency of their child’s conflict with parents, siblings, and peers. When families had more than one child, we used data from the child with the highest level of disruptive behaviour at the beginning of the study.
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The 12 studies took place in six European countries: England, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Wales. The children in the studies ranged from 1 – 11 years old, with most children aged between 4 and 7 years. Of the children, 61% were male. The participating caregivers were primarily mothers (97%), with an average age of 34 years. Families had diverse socioeconomic backgrounds: 60% had low incomes, 36% were from families in which no one was employed, and 30% were from an ethnic minority.
Our findings
Participating in the Incredible Years program reduced the frequency of children’s conflict with their parents. Parents who took part in the Incredible Years program reported greater decreases in conflicts with their child (for example, fewer instances of their child refusing to follow their instructions) compared to parents who did not take part in the program. This was what we expected, because the program is designed to improve parent-child relationships.
The unexpected finding was that for the 22% of families with high levels of sibling conflict at the start of the program (where parents, on average, rated their child as ‘often’ or ‘always’ having conflict with their sibling), Incredible Years also reduced children’s sibling conflicts. This might have happened because new techniques like limit-setting helped caregivers address sibling arguments more effectively. Also, if caregivers interacted more positively with the child with the most severe disruptive behavior in the family, that child may have modelled this behavior with their siblings. Finally, applying the new parenting techniques to all children in the family (e.g., praising children’s positive behavior and selectively ignoring children’s minor negative behavior) might have led to overall improvements in behavior, reducing sibling arguments.
Stronger collaboration between families and schools may help ensure that positive changes in children’s behavior at home are supported and sustained.
However, taking part in the Incredible Years program did not reduce children’s conflict with peers. This might be because it is hard for children to change their behavior outside the home in a setting where others (e.g., teachers, peers) have not changed how they interact with them.
What do we know and what do we still need to understand about how to reduce children’s conflict behavior?
Group-based parenting programs targeting children’s disruptive behavior are well-known for strengthening parent-child relationships and promoting positive child development. Our study shows that one such program, the Incredible Years program, not only enhances parent-child relationships, but may also help reduce sibling conflicts, particularly for families experiencing high levels of sibling conflict.
Taking part in the Incredible Years program did not have an effect on children’s conflict with peers. This does not necessarily mean these programs cannot reduce peer conflict, but that communities need to understand more about how to support families when children’s conflict with peers is a concern. Stronger collaboration between families and schools may help ensure that positive changes in children’s behavior at home are supported and sustained in school environments.
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