| Abstract [eng] |
This work touches on little – researched topic of mothers' representations of their relationship with their child in Lithuania and compares mothers raising children with typical development and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which allowed to reveal their differences and better understand the difficulties faced by mothers of ASD children and their children. The purpose of the study – to investigate how maternal representations of the child – mother relationship and maternal distress are associated with children's behavioral and emotional difficulties in samples of typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder. Method. This study involved 46 mothers of typically developing and 40 mothers of 6–10-year-old children with ASD. The invitation to participate in the study was shared in the communities of the VšĮ ISADD Lithuania and Vilnius Kindergarten “Vieversys” and in target groups on the social network Facebook. The instruments used in the study were: Child–Parent Relationship Scale – Short Form (Driscoll and Pianta 2011), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and Patient Health Questionnaire – 4 (Löwe et al. 2009). Results. Mothers of children with ASD had statistically significantly less expressed representations about the closeness of the relationship with the child and more expressed representations about conflict, compared to mothers of typically developing children. Mothers' representations about the conflict of the relationship with the child and maternal distress were statistically significantly positively correlated with the overall difficulty score in both samples, while representations about the closeness of the relationship with the child were statistically negatively correlated only in the sample of mothers of typically developing children. Conclusions. Different predictors of children's behavioral and emotional difficulties were revealed in samples of children with ASD and typically developing children. Greater behavioral and emotional difficulties in typically developing children are explained by greater perceived conflict in the relationship by the mother, and in the sample of autistic children - by greater distress experienced by the mother. |
