Maybe I should check the mirror to see if my ancestral squirrel genes are growing me a bushy tale. Better yet, I think I’ll stop buying books about global warming and send the money to groups that are working to alleviate the problem before we are up to our derrieres in icy water. I rather like the National Resources Defense Council (http://www.nrdc.org/ ). They are all about science–so much better than hysteria, I always think.

Thanks for your blog entry of your important conversation with Dr. Patterson. My research group here has been studying how to ameliorate coercive processes in families of children with developmental disabilities and severe problem behaviour. Just as Dr. Patterson and his team of researchers have found over the past 40 years the central role of coercive family process in the development of antisocial behaviour in young children who are otherwise typically developing, our research to date indicates that the root of severe problem behaviour in children with developmental disabilities is the coercive patterns of interaction that develop between these children and their parents at a very early age. For this population, the coercive process is typically driven by the child, who engages in problem behaviour to escape a demand, to get attention, or to get a desired item or activity. Parents tend to submit to these problem behaviours by delivering escape, attention or the item and activity, and as coercion theory predicts, the children terminate or reduce problem behaviour, thus negatively reinforcing the parent for submission. We are finding that when we teach parents to recognize these processes, to implement parenting practices that overcome these processes, and to actively build constructive processes of interaction, a tremendous amount of positive change and growth begins to occur in the child, his or her parents and the family as a whole. We find the heading of this blog — “nurturing environments” — to be highly relevant to our work in that when we step back and take an overall look at the behaviour support plans that we develop with families, they in fact aim at creating nurturing environments that promote constructive parent-child interactions, and prevent or diminish coercive parent-child interactions. And so thanks for creating this blog.

Sincerely

Joe Lucyshyn

I’ve always appreciated the ways in which my work and mentors at ORI in the 1980s — long ago, in an organization that is really just the seed-crystal of what it is today — helped launch my trajectory of behavioral research in community settings that is organized around community needs. My more recent opportunities to work on PNRC with you and your colleagues there (and nationally) both reaffirmed my sense of benefit, and helped me ‘catch up’ on the ways that conceptual and empirical understanding has matured over the years.

I too have become increasingly interested in two issues you raise in this post: First (and most important), I agree that we must pay more attention to the ways that factors we have long treated as ’separate’ may, indeed, be tightly and importantly interconnected. My own work on language and literacy development for kids with disabilities and those living in poverty has led me to wonder about features like social-emotional development, housing, parent health and mental health, preventive and comprehensive interventions. My interest in intervention development has led me to learn more about implementation science. And my interest in broad-scale implementation of effective practices has led me to wonder about the design and operation of comprehensive community interventions. Like tugging loose thread on a sweater, my curiosity about factors that contribute to, and can be scaled up to support, good developmental outcomes has led me to consider other variables that seem far away from vocabulary size and MLU.

Second, you raise sharp points, and ask piercing questions, about the conceptual and organizational factors that are needed to fully embrace and reap the benefits of this more comprehensive perspective. While your comments are focused specifically on ORI, with little adaptation they can be applied to my group and our work here at Minnesota — and, I’d imagine, to other groups of behavioral scientists collected in research and academic centers around the country. Your questions here will, I hope, elicit great conversation here in Minnesota; I hope the same happens in Eugene.

This all raises a related, but slightly different, question – one that I think was also illustrated by PNRC: What are the organizational and conceptual issues that will allow groups like the one you envision at ORI to connect across institutions and geographies? For instance, how can the work that you, Julie, Beth and Tom are proposing to do in Oregon connect with our work here with the Northside Achievement Zone? In what ways is tight coordination good, and in what ways should we encourage variation and adaptation? Are there existing (or do there need to be new) scientific and policy organizations that can facilitate this development? To what extent do the funding practices of important federal agencies (NIH, CDC, IES, etc) and national or local foundations promote this type of work (or inhibit it)?

I know this text has a specific focus on strategic discussions at ORI – and I wish you and your colleagues well with that discussion. At the same time, you raise important issues for others to consider in our own intellectual homes, as well as issues that we as a larger community might well be advised to consider. Thanks for such a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece, and best wishes with your ongoing discussion.

Art DiRocco