Parental Self-efficacy and Proactive Coping among Parents of Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Parents of Typically Developed Children

Abstract

Raising a child with a disorder of any kind, especially a neurodevelopmental disorder entails significant difficulties. Parental self-efficacy has been found to predict parenting stress, and coping and it has an impact on child upbringing. In this view, the parental self-efficacy and proactive coping among parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders and that of parents of typically developed children were examined. Using purposive sampling for parents of children with the neurodevelopmental disorder and convenient sampling for parents of typically developed children, data was collected from a sample of 200 participants and after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, an independent sample t-test was done on the selected 200 data.   The findings suggest that parents of children with neurodevelopmental disorders had similar levels of proactive coping and lower levels of parental self-efficacy than parents of typically developing children. Parental self-efficacy and proactive coping have an impact on children’s healthy development. Thus, interventions could be introduced to promote parental self-efficacy and coping among parents in a healthy lifestyle.