Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing

Sumith K. Sridharan ¹, Baby Shari ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Psychology, University of Calicut, Kerala, IN

Abstract

As Attention-Defictt/Hyperactivity Disordered children are very energetic and the symptoms of AD/HD are most often present from the age of three, and sometimes last into adult life, the burden of carrying and handling them are more readily felt by their parents. The parents were found to have more stress, less parenting satisfaction, lower self-confidence, less warmth and involvement with their children, used corporal punishment and higher levels of authoritarian parenting styles. Contradicting these finding it was also found that mothers' behavior and attitudes towards their AD/HD children, stress, and disciplinary practices themselves made children more prone to express symptoms like non-responsiveness, over-reaction, behaviour problem etc. which in turn affects the parent-child relationships. The data were collected from 52 child-mother dyads using interview and observation method and were analyzed using content analysts method. It was seen that mothers'attitude towards their AD/HD children cause an increase in the behavioural problems exhibited by them

Keywords

Attention-Deficit/hyperactivity Disorder-Parental Attitude-Behaviour Problems.

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Sumith K. Sridharan ¹, Baby Shari ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Psychology, University of Calicut, Kerala, IN

Abstract

All people have 'behaviours' in order to function in this world aptly. Sometimes it is behaviour that moves us towards our goals and sometimes the behaviour itself may become a problem and interferes with the proper functioning of an individual. The children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder are quite different from normal children both in behavioural as well as learning aspects. As AD/HD children are very energetic and the symptoms of AD/HD are most often present from the age of three, and sometimes last into adult life, the burden of carrying and handling them are more readily felt by the mothers. Mothers of AD/HD children are challenged and frustrated from time to time by the noncompliance and misbehavior of their children which makes them react negatively to such behaviours of their children. They were found to have more stress, less parenting satisfaction, lower self-confidence, less warmth and involvement with their children, used corporal punishment and higher levels of authoritarian parenting styles. These were seen to be more significant than the mothers of non problematic children. It was found that mothers' behaviour and disciplinary practices itself made the child more prone to express symptoms like nonresponsiveness, over-reaction, behaviour problem etc. The paper explores multi-dimensional parenting behaviour and parenting stress of mothers of AD/HD children and tries to see whether there is significant difference in parenting stress amongst the mothers of AD/HD children who adopt non-deviant, fully deviant and partially deviant mothering. Results show that Mothers of AD/HD children adopt positive as well as negative dimensions of parenting behavior, to a great extent and belong to a partially deviant parenting. Mothers of AD/HD children adopt different styles of parenting behavior and it differs significantly in the parenting stress and its sub-factors, which they experience.

Keywords

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disordered Children Parenting Stress - Parenting Style.

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