The Unforeseen Influence of Parents’ Socialization Behaviors on the Social Adjustment of Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Emilie Jacobs,Nathalie Nader-Grosbois,Stéphanie Mazzone,Poline Simon

doi:10.4236/psych.2019.109083

Abstract

This paper investigates how parents of children with intellectual disabilities (IDs) socialize emotions, and how these behaviors affect their children’s social adjustment. The goals were: 1) to identify the emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) used by parents of children with IDs, in comparison to parents of typically developing (TD) children, and 2) to examine the extent to which these reactions and conversations affect children’s social competences and (mal)adjustment. Parents’ reactions to emotions have been described as either supportive or unsupportive of children’s socio-Emotional development, and their conversations about emotions with their children have also been considered as helpful in this respect. However, little is known about these reactions and conservations in either mothers or fathers of children with IDs. The first study compared these ERSBs in 54 mothers and 32 fathers of children of preschool developmental age with or without IDs. The results showed that parents of children with IDs use more unsupportive reactions to their emotions. The second study investigated the links between parents’ reactions and conversations, and their children’s profiles (IDs, developmental age, social adjustment and externalizing or internalizing problems). Correlational and regression analyses emphasized specific links between some maternal or paternal reactions and conversations on the one hand and children’s characteristics, social adjustment or behavior problems on the other hand.

Highlights

Over the past two decades, ERSBs in parents of TD preschoolers have been studied with reference to the heuristic model of the socialization of emotions developed by Eisenberg, Cumberland and Spinrad (1998)
Concerning the impact of parents’ gender on ERSBs, a few studies have emphasized that fathers of TD preschoolers display more unsupportive reactions such as minimizing and punishing than mothers (Eisenberg et al, 1998; Eisenberg et al, 1996)
Little is known about ERSBs in parents of children with IDs, or on their impact on child’s social adjustment or maladjustment

Summary

Introduction

Over the past two decades, ERSBs in parents of TD preschoolers have been studied with reference to the heuristic model of the socialization of emotions developed by Eisenberg, Cumberland and Spinrad (1998) This model describes ERSBs as parents’ reactions to their children’s emotions, their emotion-related conversations and their emotional expressiveness. Parents can react to children’s negative emotions either supportively, by giving comfort, offering a problem-focused response and expressing encouragement, or unsupportively, by showing distress, punishing or minimizing the significance of the cause of the child’s emotions. They can react to children’s positive emotions with either supportive responses such as socialization and encouragement, or unsupportive responses such as reprimand and discomfort. Children are affected by both parents’ behaviors in their social development

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Conclusion