Helping families cope

Australian parents are concerned about their relationships with their children, as well as with ways of managing children's behaviours. What is the nature of these concerns, and did enrolling in a Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) course make a difference? This article describes two aspects of a controlled evaluation of twenty five Parent Effectiveness Training courses conducted by eleven qualified instructors in six Australian states. The first aspect of the study examined the issues that parents perceived in their management of their children's behaviour. The second examined the changes in parenting skills of the parents who completed a PET course and compared them with a group of 81 controls.