Abstract

Parent Training is considered the most effective intervention for the construction of educational competencies specific for parents of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The present contribution aims at: 1) inquiring which are the main areas around which the narration of parents participating to a Parent Training group are oriented and how they are modified during the change process; 2) assessing how Parent Training modifies some parental competencies and children's disattentive, hyperactive and impulsive behaviors. Four pairs of parents of children affected by ADHD participated to this study, for a total of nine meetings. Participants were given questionnaires aiming at inquiring parental aspects and child's behavior (analyzed also from the teacher's perspective). Each session was audio-recorded and transcribed. A textual analysis was carried out on the transcriptions, through the software The knowledge Workbench-Atlas. ti 5.0. Results from the qualitative analysis showed three main dimensions: educative-relational aspects, emotional aspects, and aspects of couple coherence. Each dimension was split in a positive polarity (positive parenting, relief state, parental accordance) and a negative one (scarce supervisions, dejection state, parental discordance). Results from the quantitative analysis were not statistically significant, however a tendency towards the increase of positive parental practices and the reduction of physical punishments during the Parent-Training was found.