Association of Distress Tolerance and Mother-Child Interaction with Children’s Behavioral Disorders in Mothers of Children with Learning Disabilities: Mediating Role of Marital Quality

A mother’s distress tolerance is her ability to withstand negative emotions, which can alleviate her child’s behavioral disorders. This study was conducted to investigate the association of distress tolerance and mother-child interaction with children’s behavioral disorders through the mediating role of marital quality in mothers of children with learning disabilities.

In this descriptive correlational study, the statistical population included all the mothers of students with learning disabilities from Andimeshk, Khuzestan Province, Iran, in 2021. The convenience sampling method was employed for recruiting 210 participants. The research instruments included the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire, the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scales, the Distress Tolerance Scale, the Mental Health Questionnaire, and the Child-Parent Relationship Scale. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was adopted to evaluate the proposed model.

The results indicated that the direct paths from distress tolerance and mother-child interaction to marital quality were significant (P<0.001). Moreover, the indirect paths from distress tolerance to children’s behavioral disorders and the association between mother-child interaction and children’s behavioral disorders were significant through the mediating role of marital quality (P<0.001). However, the direct paths from distress tolerance and mother-child interaction to children’s behavioral disorders were not found to be significant.

The proposed model had good fitness. It could be considered as a major step towards identification of the factors affecting behavioral disorders of students with learning disabilities.