Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting, Parental Competence, and Perceived Social Support in the Mothers of Children with Special Needs

The birth of a child is an exciting but stressful event for the parents. Meanwhile, the birth of a child with special needs imposes more stress on the parents and requires special physical and mental strength to parenting the child. The current study was conducted to compare the interpersonal mindfulness in parenting, parental competence, and perceived social support in the mothers of children with or without special needs.

This study was a descriptive research with comparative analytical design. The statistical population included two groups of mothers of children with or without special needs living in Qazvin in 2018. Among them, 160 mothers (87 having a child without special needs and 73 having a child with special needs) were selected voluntarily by convenience sampling to participate in the study. The research tools included Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting Scale (Duncan, 2007), Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (Johnston and Mash, 1989) and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, and Farley, 1988).

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups of mothers of children with or without special needs in terms of interpersonal mindfulness in parenting (p<.01) and parental competence (p<.05); however no significant difference was found in terms of perceived social support (p>.4).

Results showed lower scores of parental competence and higher scores of interpersonal mindfulness in parenting in the mothers of children with special needs compared to the mothers of children without special needs. The implications of the result are discussed in the article.