Challenging Behaviours among Children with Intellectual Disability

Abstract

Hope helps in coping among parents with intellectually disabled children. This study compared the level of hope among parents of such children with and without challenging behaviour. The participants were parents of children with multiple, single and no challenging behaviours. These three groups were compared for their total and subscale hope scores with analysis of variance. Multiple regression analysis was conducted with the total hope score as the dependent variable. The results showed that hopelessness was related to challenging behaviour. The post hoc test showed different levels of hopelessness between parents in challenging behaviour groups in relation to the control group. In particular, only the parents of intellectually disabled children who had multiple challenging behaviours had significantly lower hope scores than the other two groups. Multimodal parental attitude intervention models should address the role challenging behaviours play in contributing to hopelessness among parents.