Parent-child interaction of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and mother with depression

• Main Authors: Pei-chin Lee, 李佩秦
• Other Authors: Wern-Ing Niew
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/11575086371596982134

博士 === 高雄師範大學 === 特殊教育學系 === 98 === Raising a child with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is an incredible challenge for parents because of the child noncompliant, overactive, and demanding behavior. Parents of children with ADHD had higher rates of depression and parental distress. This study was designed to examine the differences of parent-child interaction quality, including flexibility, affective expression, and interaction sequence in neutral discussion and conflict discussion for children with ADHD and mothers with significant depressive symptoms. The participants included ten dyads with childhood ADHD and maternal depressive symptoms, fifteen dyads with childhood ADHD only and eighteen normal dyads. Video recording of parent-child communication was conduct in a laboratory. Contents of parent-child communication included neutral and conflict issues. Specific Affect Coding System- 20 codes version was used to count the duration of affective expression including positive engagement, negative engagement, negative disengagement, and neutral categories of affect. Four Coders blind to the status of each dyad coded the film using Observer 7.0 software. The results showed there were no group differences in terms of interaction flexibility among three dyad groups. There were no condition differences in terms of emotional transition per minute among the dyads. In the conflict condition, compared with the neutral condition, mother-child dyads experienced more affect combinations of the mother and the child. Boys of 4th to 6th grade and his mother would express positive as well as negative emotion when they had conflicts. They can move from positive emotion to negative emotion, and negative emotion to neutral emotion and so on. The dyads are not trapped in a mutual negative and rigid interaction pattern. Mothers of the normal dyads and of the dyads of children with ADHD and normal mothers have significant higher positive engagement emotion in the neutral condition than in the conflict condition. However, depressed mothers of children with ADHD have no significant positive emotion time percentages between the neutral condition and the conflict condition. Among three groups of mothers, depressed mothers have highest time percentage of positive emotion in the conflict condition, and lowest time percentage of positive emotion in the neutral condition. Maternal depression has been showed to have flat affect and it is showed in the group of mothers with depressive symptoms and of children with ADHD. These depressed mothers show less encouragement, warmth, and positive affection toward their children with ADHD in the relaxed interaction condition. The depressed mothers might need professional assistance to deal with their depression symptoms, to evaluate their quality of parent-child interaction as well as to arrange intervention accordingly. Dynamic systems theory can explain the interaction pattern of children with ADHD and their mothers with depressive symptoms. The interaction behavior of children and their mothers are in a tightly linked manner, with the emotional expression of each member being significantly related to the antecedent emotion of the other. Communication condition, attributes and variables of the child and the mother such as childhood ADHD and maternal depressive symptoms may play a role to the quality of parent-child interaction. Implications of this study are suggested. Mother-child interaction should be an important part of mental health care and education for children with ADHD. The recipients of services should include mothers, especially mothers with depressive symptoms. Future research should recruit more dyads to increase study power. A group of normal children and depressed mother might help to verify the role of maternal depressive symptoms in parent-child interaction. Adolescents’ interaction with parents should be included in future research using conflict resolution research protocol.