Features of construction child-parent relationships in families with parents of different psychological types raising a child with intellectual disability

Statement of the problem. The article presents an overview of theoretical positions and research on the problem of child-parent relations in families with children with intellectual disabilities. Child-parent relationships are one of the most important aspects studied in family psychology, family relations psychology, and age psychology. There is a lack of programs for correcting child-parent relationships in families with children with intellectual disabilities. The purpose of the article is to identify and characterize the features of the dominant psychological types of parents who raise a ‘special’ child, and the features of their direct interpersonal interaction. The research methodology consists of modern theoretical scientific positions of the General and Special Psychology on objective laws of mental development, on the structure of the defect, on general and specific patterns of mental development of a normally developing child and a child with disabilities (L.S. Vygotsky, V.I. Lubovsky); works of V.V. Tkacheva describing the relationship of parents and children in families with a child with an intellectual disability; concepts justifying the need for psychological support of the family in order to ensure the full development of the child’s personality: M.R. Bityanova, N.S. Glukhanyuk, I.V. Dubrovina, R.V. Ovcharova, T. Ancheva. The study involved 50 parents who have a child with mental retardation or mild mental retardation at the age of 7-10, studying at a secondary school in Krasnoyarsk. To diagnose the dominant psychological type of a parent, V.V. Tkacheva’s questionnaire “Psychological type of a parent” was used, and E. I. Zakharova’s ODRAV method was used to study features of interaction between children and parents. The Mann Whitney U-test is used for comparison of samples. The correlation analysis is based on the Spearman correlation coefficient calculation. Research results. The study showed that 50 % of the dominant psychological type is authoritarian, 32 % - psychosomatic, 18 % - neurotic. Each type of a parent has its own specific characteristics, especially the perception of children. Parents of the neurotic and psychosomatic types have higher values on the sensitivity block scales, but parents of the authoritarian type are better accepting themselves as a parent, and they are characterized by more positive feelings. Authoritarian parents are better guided by the emotional state of the child, are able to influence it. Parents of the psychosomatic type are characterized by lower indicators of the mood background and the ability to focus on the emotional background of the child. Parents of the neurotic type are more difficult to accept themselves as a parent, they often experience negative feelings in the situation of interaction with the child. Conclusion. It is concluded that the features of child-parent emotional relationships in families with a child with an intellectual disability are associated with the psychological type of parents. It is shown that the educational performance of children has a relationship with the dominant psychological type of parents. The authors note that the problem of parents’ relations with ‘special’ children has been studied for a long time, but there are few programs to correct these relations.