A R T I C L E USING THE PICCOLO WITH PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH A DISABILITY MARK S. INNOCENTI, LORI A. ROGGMAN, AND GINA A. COOK Utah State University ABSTRACT: All children benefit from positive parenting behaviors that support early child development. For a parent of a child with a disability, the child’s characteristics and possible limitations can make positive parenting behaviors challenging, and yet, these interactions need to be a focus of early intervention to promote optimal family and child development. Family-centered practice, which includes strengthening parenting skills, has been advocated by the early intervention field. Although early intervention programs realize the importance of supporting parent–child interaction as part of family-centered practice, it has not been an emphasis of most early intervention programs. The lack of easy-to-use, psychometrically strong parenting measures is an issue in early intervention. The Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO) provides a practical observation measure of parenting with young children. We tested the reliability and validity of this measure with parents of children with an identified disability. Early parenting behaviors predicted cognitive and language outcomes for children with an identified disability up to 9 years after the first assessment. The PICCOLO demonstrated strong reliability and both construct and predictive validity, and shows promise as a useful measure for practitioners working with parents who have a child with a disability. Abstracts translated in Spanish, French, German, and Japanese can be found on the abstract page of each article on Wiley Online Library at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imhj. * * * Mark S. Innocenti, Center for Persons with Disabilities, Utah State Uni- versity; Lori A. Roggman, Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development, Utah State University; Gina C. Cook, Center for Persons with Disabilities, Utah State University. Most of the observations and measures used were based on research conducted as part of the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project funded by the Administration of Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Contracts 105-95-1936, 282-98-0021, and 233-02-0086 to Mathematica Policy Research, Princeton, NJ, and Columbia University’s Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, in conjunction with the Early Head Start Research Consortium. The Consortium consists of representatives from 17 programs participating in the evaluation, 15 local research teams, the evaluation contractors, and the ACF. Research institutions in the Consortium (and principal researchers for conducting this research through 36 months of age) include the ACF (Rachel Chazan Cohen, Judith Jerald, Esther Kresh, Helen Raikes, Louisa Tarullo); Catholic University of America (Michaela Farber, Harriet Liebow, Nancy Taylor, Elizabeth Timberlake, Shavaun Wall); Columbia University (Lisa Berlin, Christy Brady-Smith, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Allison Sidle Fuligni, Anne Martin); Harvard University (Catherine Ayoub, Barbara Alexander Pan, Catherine Snow); Iowa State University (Dee Draper, Gayle Luze, Susan McBride, Carla Peterson); Mathematica Policy Research (Kimberly Boller, Barbara Lepidus Carlson, Jill Constantine, Julie Ingels, Ellen Eliason Kisker, John M. Love, Diane Paulsell, Christine Ross, Peter Schochet, Susan Sprachman, Cheri Vogel, Welmoet van Kammen, Jerry West); Medical University of South Carolina (Richard Faldowski, Gui-Young Hong, Susan Pickrel); Michigan State University (Holly Brophy-Herb, Hiram Fitzgerald, Tom Reischl, Rachel Schiffman); New York University (Mark Spellmann, Catherine Tamis-LeMonda); University of Arkansas (Robert Bradley, Richard Clubb, Andrea Hart, Lor- raine McKelvey, Mark Swanson, Leanne Whiteside-Mansell); University of For infants and toddlers at risk for poor developmental out- comes because of environmental factors, a responsive home envi- ronment that includes good parenting and positive parent–child in- teractions is predictive of better developmental outcomes (Bradley, Corwin, Burchinal, McAdoo, & Coll, 2001; Bradley et al., 1994; Love et al., 2005). Similarly, for children with a disability, these same home and parent characteristics predict optimal outcomes (Spiker, Boyce, & Boyce, 2002; Spiker, Hebbeler, & Malik, 2005). In a review of the mother–child interaction research with young children with a disability, Spiker et al. (2002) found that several types of parenting behaviors such as warmth, positive affective California, Los Angeles (Carollee Howes, Claire Hamilton, Alison Wishard Guerra); University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (Robert Emde, Mary Maguire Klute, Jon Korfmacher, Jini Puma, JoAnn Robinson, Paul Spicer, Norman Watt); University of Kansas (Jane Atwater, Judith Carta, Jean Ann Summers); University of Missouri-Columbia (Mark Fine, Jean Ispa, Kathy Thornburg); University of Pittsburgh (Beth Green, Carol McAllister, Robert McCall); University of Washington School of Education (Eduardo Armijo, Joseph Stowitschek); University of Washington School of Nursing (Kathryn Barnard, Susan Spieker), and Utah State University (Lisa Boyce, Gina Cook, Catherine Callow-Heusser, Lori Roggman). We also thank the members of the Disability Early Head Start Consortium Working Group. Development of the PICCOLO was supported in part by Grant 90YF0050 from the ACF, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Direct correspondence to: Mark S. Innocenti, Center for Persons with Dis- abilities, 6580 Old Main Hill, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-6580; e-mail: Mark.Innocenti@usu.edu. INFANT MENTAL HEALTHJOURNAL, Vol. 34(4), 307–318 (2013) C  2013 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI: 10.1002/imhj.21394 307