Parenting a Child with Learning Disabilities: Mothers’ Self-Forgiveness, Well-Being, and Parental Behaviors

Abstract

Parenting a child with learning disabilities (LDs) can not only be a fulfilling experience, but also a challenging one which can increase parenting stress as well as impair parenting self-efficacy, parental psychological well-being and interactions with the child. Informed by the parenting three-term causal model and the parenting stress model, the present research explored whether self-forgiveness was inversely associated to these undesirable outcomes in mothers of a child with specific LDs. Mothers’ self-forgiveness for perceived failures in dealing with the child’s disabilities was expected to be associated with their psychological well-being and their parental behaviors and relation with the child, both directly and indirectly through parenting stress and parenting self-efficacy. The hypothesized direct and indirect associations were assumed to be moderated by partner support. Data were obtained cross-sectionally from 92 mothers (M age = 43) of children (M age = 12) with diagnosed specific LDs. Self-forgiveness, conceived as a bi-dimensional construct, related to greater psychological well-being and to more accepting and less rejecting behaviors toward the child. For the negative dimension of self-forgiveness, these relations were mediated by parenting stress and parenting self-efficacy, whereas for the positive dimension of self-forgiveness the hypothesized mediational model was supported only for mothers who reported poor support from their partner. The implications for programs designed for parents of children with LDs are noted and several avenues for future research are described.