In Macao there has been little research on parenting stress faced by parents of children with disabilities. The objective of my research was to understand such parenting stress in Macao, the difference between stress felt by the father and that by the mother, and the influences of parenting stress on the emotional and behavioral disorders of disabled children. At the same time, it tried to explore the effects of sandplay therapy on relieving parenting stress of parents of disabled children. The results of this research will serve as a scientific evidence from an empirical research for the construction of parents’ psychological mechanism to adjust to their children’s emotions.
The research consisted of three studies. The first study involved a questionnaire-based survey, with the use of the “Basic Information about Children”, (兒童基本資料表), a self-compiled questionnaire form, and the Parenting Stress Index, devised by Abidin (1990b) (簡式親職壓力量表), Chinese edition. The parenting stress levels of 29 parents of children with disabilities were thus evaluated. The study revealed that the parenting stress of these parents was big, and parents of children with mental retardation as well as autism had the biggest stress. Moreover, stress level was related to parents’ level of education, average household income and employment situation.During the second study, 20 parents were selected according to the results of the first study, and asked to complete a questionnaire about emotion and behavior (情緒行為)evaluation, which was taken from the “Checklist for Evaluation of Development in Autistic Children”《自閉症兒童發展評估表》. This aimed to understand the parents’ ideas and opinions about their children’s emotions and behavior(情緒行為) as well as to collate their stress levels indicated in the first study. According to findings of the study, the more serious the children’s emotional and behavioral disorders/problem(s 情緒行為問題 )were, the bigger the parenting stress was.
The third study was an experiment (被試)involving 10 parents and their autistic children with mental retardation. They were divided into two groups: experimental group and control group(實驗組 對照組). In the control group, the children were asked to do the sandplay alone, while in the experimental group parents and children took part in the sandplay therapy together. The study indicated that after a period of sandplay therapy parenting stress was significantly decreased. Besides, when these parents filled out one more time the questionnaire about their children’s emotions and behavior, they all believed that there was improvement in their children.
Conclusions:
1. Parents of children with disabilities face rather big parenting stress. The research has indicated that parents of children with mental retardation in addition to autism suffer the biggest stress
2.Emotional and behavioral problems(情緒行為問題) of disabled children and parenting stress influence each other.
3. Sandplay therapy plays a positive role on relieving stress on parents parenting disabled children. Parent-child sandplay therapy, which includes parents as a therapy element, can decrease parenting stress as well as encourage greater appreciation by parents of their children.