Comparing Family Problem Solving, Procrastination, and Flourishing Among Parents of School Children with Specific Learning Disorders and Intellectual Disability

The birth of children with mental and physical disabilities or the appearance of symptoms of mental and physical disabilities make their parents amazed and disappointed. Procrastination is a common and universal phenomenon, and postponement, procrastination, and negligence at work refer to the act of unnecessarily and irrationally postponing things to the point where a person feels uncomfortable. One of the intervention methods to reduce couples' incompatibility is the family problem–solving method, which helps couples find reasonable solutions to their conflicts by teaching them how to negotiate. Most of the psychological approaches in the field of flourishing include positive psychology and mental health perspectives. Children and the problems caused by caring for these children put a lot of stress on these parents and cause disorders in their psychological functions, which necessitates the study and comparison of different components between the parents of these children. The present study aims to compare family problem solving, procrastination, and flourishing among parents of children with special learning disorders (SLD) and parents of children with intellectual disabilities.

The method of this research was a causal–comparative. The study population was all parents of students with SLD and intellectual disabilities living in the city of Tabriz, Iran, in the second semester of the academic year 2017–2018. By random sampling method, 160 parents (father or mother; 80 parents of children with special learning disorders and 80 parents of children with intellectual disabilities) were selected. The inclusion criteria of one of the parents in the study were having at least a sixth–grade elementary education, both parents being alive, and no obvious physical disability (deafness, blindness, motor disability) that hindered the research. The exclusion criteria were receiving simultaneous psychological or medical treatment from parents, divorce and separation of parents from each other, and living independently and separate from each other. The study data were gathered via Family Problem Solving Scale (Ahmadi et al., 2007), Procrastination Questionnaire (Tuckman, 1991) and Flourishing Scale (Diner et al., 2010). For data analysis, we used descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) in SPSS software version 21. The significant level was set at 0.05.

The results showed a significant difference between parents of children with SLD and parents of children with intellectual disability in the procrastination (p<0.001) and subscale of interest in daily activities (from the flourishing variable) (p<0.001). However, no significant difference was observed between them in family problem solving and its subscales, as well as flourishing variable and its other subscales.

Based on the research findings, parents of children with intellectual disabilities are more negligent than parents of children with SLD. Also, the parents of children with intellectual disabilities are more interested in daily activities compared to parents of children with SLD.