Preliminary evaluation of a parent training program to prevent gun play.
Parents can run BST plus real drills to teach young kids to skip gun play.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four young children and their parents joined a safety program.
Parents learned to teach their kids to walk away from toy guns.
Each family got step-by-step coaching and real-life drills at home.
What they found
Three kids stopped touching the toy gun after the parent-led lessons.
One child still reached for it, so the team added more practice.
All parents kept using the steps without help from the coaches.
How this fits with other research
Moya et al. (2022) checked 21 safety lessons and found half only work when every step is kept.
That warns us to test if the full parent package is needed, not just the first three steps.
Rast et al. (1985) showed that reward systems beat praise alone in class; here, praise plus drills beat lectures at home.
Why it matters
You can train parents in one short meeting and send home a script.
Add a follow-up visit to watch them run a real drill and fix any weak spots.
This keeps kids safe without waiting for school-wide programs.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Recent research has shown that behavioral skills training with in situ training is an effective strategy to teach children the safety skills needed if they ever encounter an unattended firearm. The current study evaluated the use of parents as trainers to increase the efficiency of training. The success of parent training on their children's safety skills was evaluated in a multiple baseline across participants design. The results showed that the training was effective for 3 of the 4 children.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2007 · doi:10.1901/jaba.2007.691-695