The porridge-like framework: A multidimensional guidance to support parents of children with developmental disabilities

Parent-Therapist Partnership Survey: Parent Feedback and Psychometric Properties

Parents of children with disabilities are an important part of their child's special education team. However, parents often have limited involvement in school-based therapies that are provided as part of a child's Individualized Education Program. The field lacks tools to assess the domain and extent of parent needs for optimal engagement in their child's special education therapies. Study one assessed the Parent-Therapist Partnership Survey's (PTPS) (formerly known as the Needs of Parents Questionnaire -School-Based Therapy Version) measure's clarity, fit, and comprehensiveness. Study two assessed the factor structure and internal consistency. Two factors emerged - Need to Be an Informed, Engaged Member of Their Child's Team, and Need for Support and Guidance. Internal consistency was 0.93 for the overall scale. The PTPS can serve as a powerful measure to better identify opportunities to engage parents in school therapeutic goals while improving parent-provider collaboration in school-based therapies.

Severity of developmental delay and parenting behavior in toddlers with neurodevelopmental disabilities

Introduction

The presence of a neurodevelopmental disability (ND) represents an adverse condition for child's development and parent-child relationship, and it is reasonable to assume that the severity of delay may influence parenting behavior. Previous research, however, did not specifically address this issue.

Methods

This cross-sectional study compared parental behaviors of mothers of toddlers with moderate/severe or mild/borderline developmental delay and mothers of toddlers with typical development, while considering maternal emotional states. A total of 88 dyads with children aged between 12 and 47 months participated in a 10-min video-recorded interaction then coded with the PICCOLO, a validated observation checklist that assesses four dimensions of parenting: affection, responsiveness, encouragement, and teaching. The mothers also fulfilled two standardized questionnaires assessing parental stress and presence of depressive symptoms. MANOVA and MANCOVA models were used to explore between-group differences in specific parenting dimensions, also considering parental stress.

Results

Mothers of toddlers with ND were less responsive than the comparison group, while the presence of a moderate/severe developmental delay specifically affected teaching behaviors. No differences emerged for affection and encouragement behaviors. Importantly, although mothers of toddlers with moderate/severe ND reported higher child-related dysfunctional interaction stress, this did not directly affect parenting behaviors.

Discussion

These findings highlight how the presence of a disability and the severity of developmental delay can affect specific dimensions of parenting (i.e., responsiveness, teaching) and might inform clinical practice and research on early parental interventions.

Scoping review: quality of life of siblings of children who are deaf and hard of hearing, have a vision or motor impairment

This study identified the current state of knowledge about the Quality of Life (QoL) of siblings of children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), have a vision impairment (VI) or motor impairment (MI). Additionally, factors associated with individual variation in QoL were examined. A scoping review was performed using PsycInfo, ERIC, Web of Science, and CINAHL. Empirical studies with siblings (age 0-18 years) of children who are DHH, have a VI or MI that investigate the QoL of siblings were included. A total of 1746 studies were identified of which 11 met the inclusion criteria. The results showed that QoL has different interpretations and various measurement tools are used. The findings showed both positive and negative outcomes for the QoL of siblings. For example, family cohesion was found as a positive consequence. A negative consequence could be a higher score on problem behavior. Personal and parental characteristics such as age and parental availability were two main factors related to individual variation in QoL. Insight in the factors related to individual variation may help researchers to consider the research perspective. In addition, healthcare providers can use the information to be either aware or intervene on specific factors that are related to the QoL of the children who are DHH, have a VI or MI and their siblings.

Applicability of a Novel Attunement Instrument and Its Relationship to Parental Sensitivity in Infants With and Without Visual Impairments

This study investigated the applicability of a novel instrument to assess parent–child attunement in free play interactions, in dyads with an infant with and without visual impairments (VI). We here report the findings on the reliability and applicability of the newly developed Attune & Stimulate Mother–Infant 56-items Instrument (A&S M-I) in two separate samples: one with infants with VI (N = 20) and one with typically sighted infants (N = 24). In addition, we assessed the contribution of parental sensitivity to attunement in dyadic interactions. The A&S M-I is an observational comprehensive instrument of behaviors that captures different body parts and their motility (i.e., finger movements, arm waving, and foot kicking), and different senses (i.e., audio, tactile, and visual). The appropriate responding of a parent to the child’s signal (i.e., matching and containing) reflects the ability to attune in the dyad as well as parent’s ability to stimulate the child to become engaged in the contact or activity. Consistency assessments revealed good reliability for maternal and infant behaviors, acceptable internal consistency and good test–retest reliability. Furthermore, both samples scored significantly above chance level on attunement, suggesting that the instrument captures parent–infant behavioral coordination, and VI was not related to parent–infant attunement. Lastly, a relation between parental sensitivity and attunement was found only in the TS sample. Altogether, these findings provide promising initial evidence of the applicability of the A&S M-I instrument for assessing dyadic attunement across different populations and ages. Having assessed the applicability of this observational instrument, future work should corroborate these findings in larger samples.