If you watch young children playing you’ll notice how they “check in” with their parents every so often, as if to make sure that Mom or Dad is still there, and that the world is still safe. A child who has been brought to an unfamiliar room with toys may begin by holding onto his mother’s leg and looking out at the possibilities. In order to encourage her son to leave the safety of her presence, Mom may engage in conversation: “Do you see that boat over there?” Or, “Hey, Jack, look! That’s the same Lightning McQueen car that you have at home!” Eventually, with the implicit blessing that these prompts provide, Jack is likely to walk over to the toys and begin exploring.
Perhaps while Jack is playing, Mom is commenting on what Jack is doing, letting him know that she is still there, he hasn’t lost her attention, and giving him further license to engage in his play. “That’s a nice boat…Is it going fast…? I like the sounds you’re making. They sound just like a speedboat!” At some point, you may see Jack get up from his play, go over to Mom and touch her, look at her, sit on her lap. This may be only for a moment. Then, he is safe to explore the area again.
In the 1970s and 1980s, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth studied the interactions between parents and their children, and noticed that there were differences in how much children trust their parents to provide them with a secure base for exploring the world. As a result of their observations, Bowlby and Ainsworth crafted their still highly-regarded attachment theory. In attachment theory [1], securely attached children are the product of parents who provide support and comfort when their child is upset, and encouragement and understanding when they are engaging in play and exhibiting curiosity. Securely attached children come to expect their parents to be responsive when they have a need, and are therefore much more able and willing to express their feelings.
Insecurely attached children have parents who are not or are inconsistently responsive or empathetic, and have a much harder time taking risks, handling negative emotions, and interacting with others in prosocial ways. The key difference between the parents of securely and insecurely attached children is the degree to which the parents are sensitive to their children’s needs. In a series of paradigmatic experiments, called “the Strange Situation,” [2] children are placed in an unfamiliar environment, sometimes with a stranger. When the parent leaves the room, the researchers observe the children to see how they react – how much distress, anxiety, or fear do they show? Children whose parents demonstrated high levels of sensitivity with them were more likely to handle the Strange Situation with relative ease. Ainsworth defined sensitivity as “the ability to accurately perceive and interpret the child’s signals and respond to those signals in an adequate and prompt way.”
This combination of sensitivity and responsiveness comprise the two main characteristics of positive parent-child relationships, according to attachment theory. When Jack’s face shows signs of worry, does his mother notice? If she does, she is sensitive to the signal he is sending out. After she notices his worry, does she respond with understanding, empathy, and comforting reassurance? If she does, she is also responsive to his needs when in emotional distress.
Ask almost any teacher, and she will be able to tell you which of her students have secure attachments and which are more insecure, just by the way they behave with other children. Securely attached children have higher levels of well-being and confidence, are more socially competent, and have fewer externalizing (taking out frustrations on others) or internalizing (frustrations turned inward, in the form of anxiety or depression) behaviors. Teachers, when you see a child exhibiting frequent behavior problems, demonstrating social anxiety, or manifesting an impaired attention span, it may not surprise you that the source of these problems may be the environment in the home. Specifically, a child who does not feel heard or valued in the home comes to school with a deficit in the kinds of interpersonal skills that are a part of being a good student.
Considering how vital positive parenting behaviors are for children’s development, it is no wonder that psychologists have been interested in trying to create interventions that can teach parents how to change their parenting to be more sensitive and responsive. One such program, called the Video-Feedback Intervention [3] to Promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD), has been shown to be a highly effective method for doing so. There is mounting evidence that the ability of VIPP-SD to positively change parenting behaviors makes it successful in improving the outcomes of the children whose parents complete the program. In other words, the program changes parents, who in turn change their children for the better.
VIPP-SD is a training program that has evolved over time, in response to research on the effectiveness of its various components. Here is a description of the main structure of the program:
- VIPP-SD is one of the only parent training programs that uses video of the parent him/herself interacting with the child. Many other programs use videos, but they tend to show videos of other people (normally actors) modeling positive parenting behaviors. Several studies have found that many parents cannot internalize the behaviors they are seeing on those videos, because they are watching a stranger interacting with an unknown child. Parents may feel like what they are watching does not relate to their own parenting challenges, which could lead them to be dismissive of the usefulness of the videos. In VIPP-SD, parents are asked to interact with their children, while the trained professional video records the interactions. Then, the videos of the parent and her children are used to reflect on parenting practices. In a recent meta-analysis, this kind of feedback about the parent’s own behaviors is highly effective in motivating change.
- The first step in the VIPP-SD parent training program is to watch the videos with the parent, and help the parent learn to recognize the signals that the child is sending. When the child begins to whine, the trainer can point out this whine as an indication that the child is beginning to feel frustrated or bored. If the child holds up a toy and makes eye contact with the father, this is a signal from the child that she wants the father to notice what she is doing. Since young children are unable to provide sophisticated communication about their needs, it is important for parents to learn to recognize the nonverbal signals that a child uses to let parents know what she wants. This first phase focuses solely on noticing the signals, and continues until the parent seems to have become adept at seeing the patterns in her child’s communication repertoire. This first phase can be handily identified as teaching parents the skill of sensitivity.
- The second step in the VIPP-SD parent training program is to then watch the videos to discuss the parent’s way of responding to the child’s signals. When the child holds up the toy, does the parent say anything? Does he look at the toy? Does he ask questions or make comments about the toy? Does the parent use the opportunity of the signal to praise or compliment the child? If attachment theory is trying to teach us anything, it is that children thrive on a parent’s attention and pride in their accomplishments. While it may not seem earth-shatteringly amazing that your child can put two blocks on top of one another, there was a time when you had just learned to do so yourself. It is important for parents to recognize how their children are mastering their world, and to make themselves a part of the reflection and satisfaction that can be felt as new skills are acquired.
- The final step in the VIPP-SD training program is to discuss the use of sensitive discipline. When the videos depict the child acting in a way that is displeasing, or does something (e.g. throw a block across the room) that the parent does not want the child to do, the professional engages in reflection about how the parent responded, and helps the parent think through alternate responses. If the parent uses spanking, scolding, or insulting, the professional can discuss the negative consequences of those approaches, and then provide approaches which accomplish the same goal (letting the child know that you do not want them to repeat the behavior) without conflating a displeasure about the behavior with a displeasure about the child.
All in all, VIPP-SD is a promising method for helping parents be more intentional about their parenting. The focus on improving one’s own behaviors, there on video for retrospective reflection, has been shown to have many positive effects on the parents who participate in the program, and the children who are the beneficiaries of their improved parenting. These positive effects are depicted in the figure below:
“Figure: Positive parenting and child outcomes after the intervention, reported in the twelve VIPP-SD randomized controlled trials (total N = 1116). Source: [3]
References
[1] Bowlby, J., Ainsworth, M., Boston, M., & Rosenbluth, D. (1956). The effects of mother‐child separation: a follow‐up study. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 29(3‐4), 211-247.
[2] Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bell, S. M. (1970). Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child development, 49-67.
[3] Juffer, F., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2017). Pairing attachment theory and social learning theory in video-feedback intervention to promote positive parenting. Current opinion in psychology, 15, 189-194.
