The family stress concept and the coping paradigm in studying the families of “special” children (a literature review)

The literature review summarizes the information related to three scientific fields. It allows expanding our understanding of family adjustment to the child’s disturbances. The discussion presents the psychological model of family stress coping and the studies of family adjustment to the child’s disability. On the example of families with deaf children, the author traces the development of specialists’ system of ideas about the reciprocal effects of deaf children and their families, describes the related studies and discusses the prospects of the development of future scientific project in this field of science.The application of the family stress concept and the coping paradigm in studying family adjustment to the child’s disability can help us not only to choose the adequate support measures for such families, but also to assess the efficiency of using various interventions and methods of compensation of the sensory defect.