Abstract
The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between behavior disturbances of preschool and school children with developmental delays and their mother's stress appraisals (parenting burden). The study subjects were 319 mothers of children using the therapeutic day care center for children with developmental delays and 1,030 mothers of children using the special education school for children with developmental delays in S prefecture. In the study survey, the questionnaires including children's demographic characteristics (sex, age, grade, types of impairment, diagnosis, and behavior disturbances), mother's demographic characteristics (age, the number of children, family structure, and working), and parenting burden were administered. The data collected in the survey were analyzed using a structural equation modeling (SEM). In the analysis, a multiple regression model with latent variables (multiple-indicator model) was constructed to describe the relationships between children's behavior disturbances and mother's parenting burden. The result showed that children's behavior disturbances were positively related to mothers' parenting burden (contributing rate = 31.0 %). Focusing on the effects of the behavior disturbances domain, difficulty in emotional control was more strongly associated with "negative feelings to the child" and "negative feelings to the child-rearing" than the others. Based on the above findings, the authors discuss how practitioners should manage the children's behavior disturbances, to reduce the mother's parenting burden.
