Mind-Mindedness and Stress in Parents of Children with Developmental Disorders.
Fionnuala Larkin, Marianna E Hayiou-Thomas, Zaynah Arshad and 9 others
PMID 32562123WHAT IT FOUND
Parents of children with developmental disorders were not less focused on their child's mental life.
Parents of children with ADHD or ASD reported highest stress, and negative child descriptions were linked to higher stress.
Key findings
01Overall mental descriptions did not differ across diagnostic groups.
02Parenting stress was significantly higher for parents of children with ASD or ADHD than all other groups, and higher for parents of children with 22q11.2DS than for parents of TD children.
03Negative child descriptions were associated with higher stress, and positive child descriptions with lower stress.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Children's diagnoses were reported by parents and not independently verified by the study team. The study did not measure the severity of children's difficulties with symptom scales. The diagnostic groups were not evenly matched in size, and the study did not consider children's IQ, adaptive functioning, or language ability. All data were collected by parent self-report in an online survey.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as showing that helping parents use more positive descriptions will reduce their stress. The study measured associations in one online survey; it did not test an intervention or show change over time.