The effectiveness of early family-centered intervention on mothers' attitudes, parenting outcomes and psychological well-being of children at risk of developmental learning disabilities

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Ph.D in Psychology and Education of Children with Special Needs, University of Isfahan, Iran

2 2. Professor, Department of Psychology and Education of Children with Special Needs, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

3 Professor of Children with Special Needs, Department of Children with Special Needs, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, iran

4 Professor Department of Pedagogy for Disabilities and Disadvantages, Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

Improving parenting increases cognitive and communication abilities of preschool children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of early family-centered intervention on mothers' attitudes, parenting outcomes and psychological well-being of children at risk of developmental learning disabilities. Based on the purpose, this study was of practical type and based on the collection of information, it was a semi-experimental with pre-test, post-test and control group. Participants were 32 mothers of children who had referred to counseling centers in Isfahan due to cognitive and behavioral-emotional problems. Children were identified as the children at risk of learning difficulties that selected by sample method. The research tools included McGrail's nurtured heart approach questionnaire (2022); Dehghani's preschool children’s well-being questionnaire (2016) and behavior problems scale of preschool children were Shahim and Yousefi (1999). The experimental group received 8 sessions intervention and data was analyzed by the MANCOVA in SPSS-24. Findings showed that there is a significant difference between the average scores of the compared groups in the psychological well-being variable and the attitude of the parents has changed in the post-test. Based findings the early family-centered intervention was affected and improved the psychological well-being in children (52%), inhibition component (19%), reward component (14%) and general factor component (27%) in the level of 0.5 P<0 is signification. The results show that the family-centered intervention based on conscious parenting approaches are effective in changing mothers' attitudes, improving children psychological well-being and reducing cognitive and behavioral-emotional problems of children with developmental learning disabilities.

Keywords

References

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Clinical Psychology Studies
Volume 16, Issue 60
September 2025
Pages 55-68

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