Clinic and home parent training of a mother with mental handicap caring for three children with developmental delay

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Abstract
There have been few intervention studies with mothers with mental handicaps and their children, but recently there has been more interest in this population. Previous work has focused upon a limited number of behaviours and only upon interactions between a mother and one child, even though some mothers had several children.This study reports on parent training efforts with a mother of three children, each with behavioural and/or medical and cognitive delays. Training occurred first in a clinic setting and then in the home, the mother being instructed with each child singly and then as a group. Using a multiple baseline procedure the results showed that the interactions were positively changed in both settings. Great difficulty in developing more positive styles of interaction, especially with the eldest daughter, led the authors to expect that the gains would not be fully maintained and additional training would be required. However, there was some maintenance in the positive aspects of the mother's behaviour as well as for some of each child's behaviour.The data support the contention that mothers with mental handicaps can be successfully trained to care for several (even delayed) children. Given the manifold problems of the mother studied and of other mothers with similar handicaps, and the consequent large expenditure of professional effort, it is apparent that other training programmes should be examined. These may require relatively short, periodic maintenance training sessions for a long duration. The efficacy of differing methodologies to meet individual parents' needs must be examined.

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