Examination of attitude differences of the parents of children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder

Purpose: The aim of this research is that there are many factors that affect parents' child-rearing attitudes; these may depend on characteristics unique to their children or may depend on the characteristics of their parents. In this context, the relationship between the sociodemographic characteristics of parents with ADHD or ASD and their child-rearing attitudes and the differences between the parenting attitudes of parents whose children have these two neurodevelopmental problems and those whose children are normally developing were investigated in this study. Method: The research was carried out on a voluntary basis with 150 parents between the ages of 25-60 who live in Istanbul and have children with ADHD and ASD or healthy children. The research was conducted with the relational survey model and cross-sectional. The data were collected by face-to-face application of the Sociodemographic Information Form prepared by the researcher and the Alabama Parental Behaviors Scale, which measures parents' child-rearing attitudes. Results: Skewness/skewness and Kurtosis/kurtosis values were checked to ensure that the data showed normal distribution. When the values suggested by George and Mallery (2010) are taken as reference, it is accepted that the skewness and kurtosis values are between +/-2 values, as a normal distribution. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to measure the relationships between sociodemographic variables and parental behaviors in the study. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to measure the differences between the groups; With Tamhane post-hoc analysis, which groups differed from each other was examined. As a result, when the parental behaviors of parents with ADHD, ASD and healthy children were analyzed according to sociodemographic characteristics, and when the attitudes of parents with ADHD and ASD children were compared with the attitudes of parents with healthy children, significant differences were found. It has been observed that as the age of the mothers increases, parental follow-up decreases, and as the age of the fathers increases, they tend to be less interested in the child. As the education level of the mother increases, there is a low-power positive correlation between the rate of caring for the child. At the same time, it was observed that as the education level of the mother increased, she was more inclined to apply inconsistent discipline. It has been found that parents with ADHD and healthy children are more interested in their children than parents with children with ASD. Another result of our research is that parents with ADHD children have weaker parental follow-up than parents with healthy children and children with ASD. Parents of children with ADHD were found to discipline more inconsistently than parents of healthy children.