ATTITUDE TOWARDS A CHILD AND THE FAMILY ROLE OF MOTHERS OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISTIC SPECTRUM DISORDERS AND CHILDREN WITH SPEECH DISORDERS

The paper presents the results of a comparative study of the attitude towards a child and the family role of mothers of autistic children and children with speech disorders, obtained by the parental attitude (ORO) and parental attitudes (PARI) diagnostics. The study identified that mothers of children with disabilities had common features distinguishing them from mothers of neurotypical children: a more negative attitude towards the family role, the desire to limit extrafamilial influences, excessive emotional concentration on a child, emotional distance, and predominance of desire to accelerate child development over the desire to develop the activity of a child. Correlation analysis showed the reliable correlation between the indicators of ORO and PARI methods: between child acceptance and the optimal emotional contact, between the symbiosis and the attitude to the family role. Within the group of autistic children's mothers, the symbiosis indicator reliably correlated with signs of protecting a child and accelerating the development of a child. The study revealed a reliable correlation between the cooperation indicator and the optimal emotional contact only for groups of mothers of children with speech disorders and children with neurotypical development. In the group of autistic children mothers, the authors identified a negative correlation between the cooperation indicator and the indicators of emotional distance, emotional concentration, and attitude to the family role. In the same group, the tendency towards hypersocialization turned out to be the most profound correlation with the sign of mother’s dependency, the tendency to infantilize a child reliably positively correlated with the signs of will suppression, dependence on the family and reliably negatively correlated with the sign of equalizing relations. The study results became an important argument in favor of the need for specific correctional, and in many cases, psychotherapeutic help to mothers of autistic children and mothers of children with speech disorders. They confirm the facts available in the scientific literature and the new ones that revealed the specifics of their attitude towards the family role and a child.