The Rational Positive Parenting Program

This brief but potent reference combines cognitive-behavioral and rational-emotive theory and techniques in an effective group program for parents of children with externalizing disorders. The Rational Positive Parenting Program (rPPP) addresses irrational emotions and their underlying beliefs that contribute to ineffective parenting, while modeling skills for improved parent-child relationships and management of children’s problem behaviors. The book reviews the full-length, brief, and online protocols for rPPP, with session content, objectives, therapeutic techniques, activities, and assignments. Also included are a digest of the evidence base for the program, and a kit of parent handouts targeting emotion-regulation skills.

This highly practical volume:

• Overviews externalizing disorders in children, and their treatment.
• Examines parenting practices as an etiological factor for child psychopathology.
• Situates the Rational Positive Parenting Program in CBT and REBT theory.
• Presents empirical support for rPPP.
• Details the full-length, brief, and online protocols for rPPP.
• Includes rPPP forms, worksheets, and measures.

The Rational Positive Parenting Program is a ready resource for practitioners working in REBT, including therapists, clinical psychologists, and counselors, as well as for researchers addressing externalizing disorders in children in clinical practice.

Oana A. David, Ph.D., is currently Senior Assistant Professor within the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Babeş-Bolyai University (BBU) Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She received her Ph.D. from BBU with the thesis Evidence-based parenting programs for reducing child disruptive behavior, based on which she investigated the emotion-regulation processes of parents and has developed the Rational Positive Parenting program for approaching child externalizing disorders. Dr. David has received training from the Albert Ellis Institute, NY, where she is a fellow, and is the president of the International Association for Cognitive Behavioral Coaching.

Raymond DiGiuseppe, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychology, at St. John’s University and he has served as Director of Professional Education of the Albert Ellis Institute, since 1980. He received the Jack Krasner Early Career Contribution award from American Psychological Association’s Division of Psychotherapy (29) where he currently serves as President; and he was elected fellow of the American Psychological Association’s divisions of Psychotherapy, Clinical, School, and Family Psychology. Dr. DiGiuseppe is world-wide expert in Rational-Emotive Therapy and he has worked with the famous psychologist Albert Ellis until his death in 2007. He has trained hundreds of therapists in REBT and CBT throughout the world. He is Co-editor of the Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive Behavior Therapies, and his present scholarship focuses on clinical aspects of anger, child externalizing disorders and parenting interventions, and RE&CBT, on which he lectures widely.