This study examined the relationships between perceived parenting styles, academic self-efficacy, and college adjustment among a sample of 31 freshman engineering students. Through the administration of self-report surveys and chi-square analyses, strong academic self-efficacy was demonstrated in students who reported authoritative maternal parenting. These findings support previous research on the relationship between academic self-efficacy and parenting styles. Implications were drawn for parents and future research.

This study examined the effects of an Adlerian-based parent education program on parental stress and perception of Learning Disabled (LD) childrens' behavior. Forty parents, randomly assigned to treatment or waiting-list control groups, took the Parental Stress Index (PSI) and the Adlerian Parental Assessment of Child Behavior Rating Scale (APACBS) as pre and post tests. Parents in the treatment group attended a six-session Active Parenting program. No significant differences were found on the analysis of covariance for perceived parental stress following the parent education program. Seventy percent of the parents in this study had total PSI scores in the range defined as high stress by the PSI author. All of the PSI Child Domain pretest z scores were elevated indicating that parents perceive their LD children to be demanding, moody, distractible, and unadaptable. LD children's behavior is perceived as unacceptable and does not positively reinforce parents. The elevated z scores on the PSI parent Domain pretest indicate that parents of LD children feel less competent as parents and experience less attachment to their children than do parents of normal children. No significant differences were found on the APACBS following treatment, but 80 percent of the parents in the treatment group did perceive some positive behavior change. A positive correlation was found between the PSI and the APACBS indicating that perceived parental stress and child behavior are related. Parents identified 67 perceived stresors of raising LD children on a questionnaire. The results of this study indicate that parents of LD children perceive themselves to experience greater parenting stress than parents of normal childrenn. This perceived parental stress was not reduced and perception of children's behavior was not improved after participation in the Active Parenting program. Therefore, parent education groups for parents of LD children may need to be smaller, provide more time to address the issues specific to raising an LD child, and include a stronger counseling emphasis in order to provide more emotional support for these highly stressed parents.

Background. Caregivers of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are a highly stressed group and their parenting stress has been linked to increased depression, anxiety, and reduced parenting self-efficacy (Osborne & Reed, 2008; Rezendes & Scarpa, 2011; Weiss & Lunsky, 2011). Given these areas of concern that parents of children with autism experience, there is a need to look more closely at modifiable factors that improve parental well-being. As such, health habit behaviors, including sleep, diet, exercise, and substance use are modifiable factors demonstrated to be causally related to well-being in adults. The present dissertation consists of two studies that explored how parents’ engagement in health habits (sleep, diet, exercise, and substance use) related to their well-being (stress and depression) and explored the possible determinants of health habit engagement. Specifically, how parental characteristics (both psychological and demographic), social support (both relationship-based and resource-related), and child factors (child behavior and demographic variables), relate to parents’ engagement in these habits. And, in study two, these exploratory analyses went further by examining how parent’s engagement in healthy habits relates to the observed parenting quality. Methods and Results: Study 1. Study one was a needs assessment completed by mothers and fathers (n=68) of children in an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) early intervention program in the northeastern United States, all at-risk for a developmental disability, many of whom were at risk for developing ASD. Parents completed questionnaires that included questions about their healthy habit engagement adapted from the Promise Neighborhoods RFA Indicators and the Promise Neighborhoods Research Consortium [PNRC] Measurement System (Promise Neighborhoods Research Consortium: Measures, 2001) as well as those related to parent, social support, and child characteristics. Parental characteristics included demographic characteristics of caregiver age and education level along with questionnaires on the parent’s psychological functioning; a measure of well-being (WHO-5; Topp, Østergaard, Søndergaard, & Bech, 2015), parental stress (PSI-4; Abidin, 2012), and caregiver depressive symptoms (PHQ-9; Kroenke, Spitzer, & Williams, 2001). Questionnaires covering the second domain of social support included a measure of perceived social support (Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL-12); Cohen & Hoberman, 1983), marital satisfaction (Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale; Schumm et al., 1986a), household income, and caregiver nativity. Questionnaires covering the third domain of child factors included a measure of child sleep problems (Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire; Owens, Spirito, & McGuinn, 2000), the ratio of children to adults in the home, child age, and child gender. Overall, about half of the caregivers reported an insufficient amount of sleep (less than 7 hours on average). A third of caregivers reported they did not exercise at all. Only a third reported eating breakfast every day, half ate only one serving of fruit most days and one serving of vegetables a day, half ate family meals prepared at home almost every day, a third ate fast food regularly, about half were told to lose weight. Most did not smoke or drink alcohol regularly. Additionally, about 30% reported elevated levels of depressive symptoms and elevated levels of parental stress. Significant relationships were found between parental characteristics, social support, child factors, and healthy habit engagement. Of note, caregiver stress, depression, and well-being were related adversely to mother’s sleep, diet, and substance use. Perceived social support was positively related to sleep, marital satisfaction negatively to smoking, household income negatively to diet and alcohol consumption, and nativity positively to sleep, diet, and alcohol consumption. No correlations were found with child factors and healthy habits. Examining a regression model of the facilitators and barriers to healthy habit engagement, caregiver well-being positively related (t=4.015, p<.001) while child sleep disruptions negatively related to healthy habit engagement (t=-2.344, p=.026). Additionally, depression was found tomediate the relationship between healthy habit engagement and parental stress using PROCESS (CI= (-1.811, -.324), R2=.274). Methods and Results: Study 2. Study two aimed to narrow in on a specific population of mothers of preschool-aged children with autism. Participants were 46 mother-child dyads, with children ages 2-6 to 5-6 recruited from a preschool utilizing an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) approach to schooling. Children had a classification of ASD, verified by the Autism Diagnostic Observation System – Two (ADOS-2) (Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, Risi, Gotham, & Bishop, 2012). Parenting behaviors, categorized as positive and harsh parenting, were observed across three tasks and coded using the Psychological Multifactor Care Scale — ASD Adapted Preschool Version (Brassard, Donnelly, Hart, & Johnson, 2016). Mothers completed the same questionnaires as study one for measures of healthy habit engagement, parental characteristics (excluding the WHO-5), and social support, There were additional child factor measures; however, including the child sleep problems and child externalizing behavior subscales from the CBCL (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000), child language functioning (Vineland-III Communication subscale; Sparrow, Cicchetti, & Saulnier, 2016), ASD severity (ADOS-2), along with ratio of children to adults in the home, child age, and child gender. Overall, more than half of the mothers reported an insufficient amount of sleep (less than 7 hours on average). Almost half of mothers reported they did not exercise at all. Almost half reported eating breakfast every day, a third ate only one serving of fruit most days, and half ate one serving of vegetables a day, a third ate family meals prepared at home almost every day, a third ate fast food regularly, and a third were told to lose weight. Most did not smoke. Additionally, 11% of the sample had elevated depressives symptoms and 20% had elevated levels of parental stress. Similar significant relationships were found between parental characteristics, social support, child factors, and healthy habit engagement in study two. Of note, caregiver stress and depression were related negatively to caregiver’s sleep, diet, exercise, and being overweight. More perceived social support was related to better diet, household income to not being overweight, and nativity to smoking. Correlations were also found with child factors and healthy habits; child sleep with mother’s sleep, externalizing behavior problems withsmoking, and high child to adult ratio with mother’s sleep. Examining a regression model of the facilitators and barriers to healthy habit engagement, caregiver depressive symptoms related negatively to healthy habit engagement (t=-.380, p=.049). ASD severity (t=-.511, p=.045) and child age (t=-.523, p=.014) came out as negatively related to mother’s diet in a similar model analysis. Additionally, mothers sleep directly related to both positive (R2=.213) and harsh (R2=.165) observed parenting quality. Conclusion. The results from study one and study two suggest that sleep, diet, exercise and substance use are important for parent’s well-being in both parents of children in early intervention and mothers of preschool-aged children with autism. Furthermore, parental wellbeing was the most predictive of engagement in healthy habits when examining possible facilitators and barriers. Child sleep was an important potential barrier in parents of children in early intervention and autism severity and child age were important potential barriers to mother’s diet in mothers of preschool-aged children with ASD. Furthermore, in study two, mothers sleep was an important factor not only for well-being but also for an objective measure of parentingquality, further strengthening the importance and value of sleep for a highly stressed population.

The study attempted to show that parenting styles are directly related to parents' goals with respect to their children's education. Parents' goals, and the behaviors they motivate, were assumed to be a mechanism accounting for well-established effects of parenting style on children's school achievement. The sample consisted of 223 undergraduate college mothers enrolled in psychology courses. The results indicated that parents' use of an authoritative style was positively related to their adoption of learning goals with respect to their child, as evident, for example, in their use of a process focus and indirect homework assistance strategies. Moreover, mothers' use of an authoritarian style was positively related to their adoption of performance goals, as evident in their use of a product focus. Results are discussed in terms of goal theory and the limitations of self-report methods.

Text in Afrikaans / The child in early middle childhood experiences certain developmental changes. He is absorbed in the foundation phase of the formal education system and parents are no longer the most important authoritative figures. Social interaction now also includes the school environment and peer groups start playing a very important role. To face the new challenges, the possession of EI skills is of cardinal importance. The ability to observe, recognise and understand personal and other people's emotions and to react correctly is now developed. The study, a quantitive research process, is directed by holism as the point of departure from the Gestalt approach in which `totality' is a key concept. According to this concept all situations in the child's terms of reference will influence his development, including the parental style of his parents. The purpose of the study therefore was to determine and describe the correlation between parental style and emotional intelligence. / Social Work / M. Diac. (Play Therapy)

Parents of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are often reported as experiencing more stress than parents of normal children. The bulk of this research has been conducted primarily on a Caucasian population, however, providing little information regarding multicultural aspects of parenting stress. Research has also been lacking in attention given to the stress related to parenting a child with internalizing disorders. The purpose of this study was 1) to compare parenting stress reported by mothers of children with ADHD to parenting stress reported by mothers of children with depressive disorders, and 2) to compare parenting stress as reported by Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic mothers. Results indicated that mothers of ADHD children experienced more parenting stress related only to their children's hyperactive and distracting behaviors. Contrary to previous research, Caucasian mothers reported significantly more overall and parent-related parenting stress than African American mothers.

This study examined the association between poverty and child neglect. The existence of a general association has been established for some time. However, there is much debate, and little detailed research, on the specific processes that create this association. This study focused on the form of neglect that involves the most health risk for children—physical neglect. It was hypothesized that poverty should increase the likelihood of a specific type of physical neglect, neglect of safety and basic needs, occurring more than other types. Using official child protective services data from a national data set three types of physical neglect were examined: abandonment, lack of safety or basic needs, and inadequate supervision. Hypothesis 1 was that poverty increases the odds of safety/basic needs neglect more than it influences the odds of either abandonment neglect or inadequate supervision neglect, controlling for prior neglect. Hypothesis 2 focused on a test of whether the link between poverty and physical neglect is not direct, but is instead mediated by caregiver stress. Three waves of longitudinal data were used for this test to establish causal time order between poverty and stress, and between stress and physical neglect. This study analyzed data from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN), Assessments 0-3 from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University. The data was analyzed using multinominal logistic regression for both models. The results did not confirm Hypothesis 1, though the analysis was limited somewhat due to low frequencies of some physical neglect types in certain age groups. Hypothesis 2 was confirmed showing that the effect of poverty on physical neglect was completely mediated by caregiver stress for the abandonment and safety/basic needs types of physical neglect. Implications of the results for research on the effects of poverty on child neglect, and for preventing child neglect are discussed. / Graduation date: 2012

Text in Afrikaans / The child in early middle childhood experiences certain developmental changes. He is absorbed in the foundation phase of the formal education system and parents are no longer the most important authoritative figures. Social interaction now also includes the school environment and peer groups start playing a very important role. To face the new challenges, the possession of EI skills is of cardinal importance. The ability to observe, recognise and understand personal and other people's emotions and to react correctly is now developed. The study, a quantitive research process, is directed by holism as the point of departure from the Gestalt approach in which `totality' is a key concept. According to this concept all situations in the child's terms of reference will influence his development, including the parental style of his parents. The purpose of the study therefore was to determine and describe the correlation between parental style and emotional intelligence. / Social Work / M. Diac. (Play Therapy)

Ce travail de thèse repose sur une recherche qui s'est intéressée à un groupe de 151 adolescents de 15 à 18 ans bien différenciés au départ. Nous avons recruté un groupe de jeunes « hospitalisés » en unité pédopsychiatrique, un groupe d'adolescents délinquants institutionnalisés dans une institution publique de protection de la jeunesse et un groupe d'adolescents « contrôles » recrutés dans un lycée bruxellois.<p><p>Ces groupes ont été comparés en fonction de trois concepts importants de la pédopsychiatrie du développement. Il s'agit du parenting, de la séparation individuation, et de l'attachement.<p>Les outils utilisés sont des auto-questionnaires mesurant d’une part, le parenting, la séparation-individuation et l’attachement et, d’autre part, les aptitudes socio-émotionnelles des jeunes (résilience, empathie, intelligence émotionnelle). Nous avons aussi fait passer une interview diagnostic (Kiddie- Sadds) ainsi qu’un test d’évaluation intellectuelle (WISC IV ou WAIS III).<p><p>La première partie de la recherche a consisté à évaluer si les outils utilisés étaient suffisamment fiables et valides pour un usage en langue française dans un échantillon plus important. Au cours de la deuxième étape, nous avons comparé les trois groupes en fonction des trois concepts définis auparavant. <p><p>Ce sont surtout les résultats de la comparaison des trois groupes qui ont été développés dans le travail qui suit. L’autre partie des résultats peut être retrouvée dans les articles publiés.<p><p>\ / Doctorat en Sciences médicales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

I examined the effectiveness of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) and person-centered teacher consultation (PCTC) for elementary school children identified with clinical or borderline levels of ADHD behaviors on the Teacher Report Form and the Conners' Teacher Rating Scale Revised - Short Form. Additionally, I examined the impact of CCPT and PCTC on the levels of parenting and teaching stress. Due to the current trend to determine interventions that are evidence-based through between-group or single case designs, for this study, I utilized a single case design experiment for which the behaviors of five children were examined. Trained observers utilized the Direct Observation Form in observations of all five students three times per week. Additionally, parents and teachers completed behavioral rating scales and stress inventories at pre-, mid-, and post-intervention. To prevent biased observational ratings, observers were blind to the assignment of the five children. Three students participated in 24 sessions of twice-weekly 30-minute sessions of CCPT, and these students' teachers participated in six sessions of once-weekly 10-minute PCTC. Two students participated in twice-weekly 30-minute sessions of reading mentoring, after which they participated in 14 sessions of CCPT. Visual analysis of the data indicated mixed results. Three students demonstrated substantial improvement in the observed ADHD behaviors within the classroom. Results of the parent and teacher assessment data were inconsistent, but did indicate behavior change for some children and a reduction in teaching stress for one teacher. Parenting stress appeared unaffected. Implications for future research regarding the use of single case design, the measurement of student behavior change, and issues of comorbidity are indicated.