Parenting a disabled child often requires more special efforts from the parents compared to parenting a child without any disabilities. In order to up bring a disabled child for the best, self confidence of the parents are important, as this shows hig...
Parenting a disabled child often requires more special efforts from the parents compared to parenting a child without any disabilities. In order to up bring a disabled child for the best, self confidence of the parents are important, as this shows high levels of parenting efficacy. Also, it will drive the parents to have positive attitudes, eventually resulting in the reduction of the parenting stress. Therefore, the improvement of parenting efficacy as well as the efficient method of controlling over the stress for the parents is essential because these processes allow not only promoting the parents' emotional health, but also creating the better environment for parenting a disabilitychild. The major purpose of this research was to examine the effects of GAT on the mothers who havea developmental disability child. Especially, in this report, it will emphasize on the mother's stress againstparenting their disabled child, parenting efficacy and the mother's self-concept.
The sample participants selected includes ten mothers who have a developmental disability child attending a special school located in the western part of Seoul. They were divided into two groups. The first sample group of five mothers was provided with the GAT program. The meetings were held twice a week for 90 minutes per session and a total of 12 meetings. The psychological tests were conducted before and after the meetings. Then, right after providing whole sections, the pre post-psychological test is carried out. After 6 weeks of the program, one final psychological test was performed to examine the durability of the effect of GAT. On the other hand, the second sample group of five mothers was not provided with the GAT program and tests were carried out in same procedure.
During the research, two questionnaires were designed to collect data on the parenting efficacy and stress level. Once data were collected, PSOC (Parenting efficacy index) and parenting stress index (short from; PSI/SF, 1990)were used as two main tools for measuring such levels. Lastly, Mann-Whitney, one of the nonparametric statistics, was usedto analyze the data collected. The HTP drawing tests were conducted before and after every psychological test to observe the effectiveness and stainability of the program. In order to examine the objectivity for individuals' characteristic, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was carried out before staring the GAT program. Lastly, the effect of GAT was examined through the children's conversations and their art works during the 12 sessions of the therapy.
From the study, the following results were found.
Firstly, GAT provided positive effects on the improvement of parenting efficacy for mothers who have a developmental disability child.
Secondly, GAT showed positive influences on the reduction of parenting stress for the mothers with a developmental disability child.
Thirdly, GAT affected the mothers' self-concept by relieving their emotional tensions, and the development of communication techniques and linguistic autonomy.
Finally, GAT program is an important element to promote psychological changes for mothers of a developmental disability child. For instance, the participants' defensiveattitudes caused tension among them in the beginning. However, as the program progressed by, they became more relaxedand open-mined. The motivation of self-insight also appeared to increaseby self-knowledge and communications among the participants enabled them to share their feelings and opinions In conclusion, the positive influences of GAT for mothers of a developmental disability child were significant. Theses included the enhancement of parenting efficacy, the reduction of parenting stress and the acquirement of optimisticself-concept. Also, by analyzing the process of GAT, the effects of GAT were recognized. Based on the fact that the importance of this study was clearly identified, the significant and limitation has been discussed and further study was proposed.