A Study On Resilience Of Parents Of Special Children

In the face of adversity, individual will be to mobilize internal and external resources to adapt. Resilience plays a role in this process. At present, the concept of resilience is controversial. However, people recognize its role to promote individual for active adaptation and good development.Because of special children's impaired function, their parents have to face a long-term sustained pressure. As the impact of past negative psychology, people pay more attention to the negative psychological factors of special children's parents. In fact, the parents show lots of positive qualities in process of adaptation, which is a manifestation of resilience. This thesis, from the perspective of positive psychology, concerns on the resilience of special children's parents and commends their ability to adapt to parenting stress.This study investigates level and characteristics of resilience and explores relationship among stress, personality and resilience of special children's parents. On this basis, risk factors and protective factors of their resilience are discussed. Analysis relies on questionnaires and interviews to 214 parents whose children are mental retardation, autism, hearing impaired children or visually impaired children in special education schools or kindergartens in Shanghai. The results are in the following:1) The resilience of special children's parents is in the medium level. In the six dimension scores of resilience, the parents' problem-solving skill is highest while their control feeling is lowest.2) With the growing of income level, the special children's parents show a trend of increasing in the aspects of problem-solving skill, self-confidence, acceptance and resilience overall. Among primary education level and below, high school education level, college education level and above, the special children's parents with higher education level have higher self-confidence scores. Compared to parents of children with hearing impaired and visually impaired, parents of mental retardation and autism are likely to get lower level of spirit support, optimism & perseverance, and acceptance attitudes. Special children's fathers perform significantly better than the mothers in aspects of control feeling and confidence.3) The parents with more lack of sense of achievements, economic burden, life-long care burden, are likely to be with lower resilience level. The parents with more special altruism, adaptability and sense of morality are likely to be with higher resilience level.4) Risk factors of resilience of special children's parents prominently exist in negative personality characteristics, burdens of parenting and social pressures. While, positive personality characteristics, family support and social support are protective factors of special children's parents.Finally, on the basis of analysis and discussion of resilience of special children's parents, several recommendations on mental health are given.