Incredible Years

Incredible Years is a set of comprehensive, multifaceted, and developmentally based curricula targeting 2- to 12-year-old children and their parents and teachers. The parent, child, and teacher training interventions that compose Incredible Years are guided by developmental theory on the role of multiple interacting risk and protective factors in the development of conduct problems. The three program components are designed to work jointly to promote emotional and social competence and to prevent, reduce, and treat behavioral and emotional problems in young children.
The parent training intervention focuses on strengthening parenting competencies and fostering parents' involvement in children's school experiences to promote children's academic and social skills and reduce delinquent behaviors. The Dinosaur child training curriculum aims to strengthen children's social and emotional competencies, such as understanding and communicating feelings, using effective problem- solving strategies, managing anger, practicing friendship and conversational skills, and behaving appropriately in the classroom. The teacher training intervention focuses on strengthening teachers' classroom management strategies, promoting children's pro-social behavior and school readiness, and reducing children's classroom aggression and noncooperation with peers and teachers. The intervention also helps teachers work with parents to support their school involvement and promote consistency between home and school. In all three training interventions, trained facilitators use videotaped scenes to structure the content and stimulate group discussions and problem solving.