Presidential Address, 2019-Family-Based Practices to Promote Well-Being: A Personal Journey of Knowledge Translation

According to a study by Baker and colleagues (Baker et al., 2003), by the age of 3 years old, children with developmental delay in contrast to their typically developing counterparts, are already experiencing elevated behavior problems as measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 2000). Early on, and right out of my PhD studies, I set out to develop family-centered interventions to help parents develop skills and strategies for parenting their young children with autism and other developmental disabilities. Topics focused on fostering positive parent-child interactions and focused on teaching through play, using behavioral strategies such as praise and rewards to encourage positive child behavior, and using limit setting and other strategies to discourage negative behavior. A small randomized controlled trial design was used to test the hypothesis that the Incredible Years Parent Training intervention with modifications for people with developmental disabilities (IYPT-DD; McIntyre, 2008a) was more efficacious than a usual care control condition on reducing child problem behavior and improving parent–child interactions.