Contingent Interaction During Work and Play Tasks for Mothers With Multiple Sclerosis and Their Daughters

Abstract

Occupational therapy has focused on activity as a catalyst for understanding human roles and interactions, regardless of whether disability or chronic illness is present. Parenting is an important interactional activity accompanied by specific role expectations. This investigation examined the interaction patterns of mothers with multiple sclerosis and their daughters. Thirty-one mothers with multiple sclerosis and their daughters aged 8 to 12 years were compared with 34 mothers without disabilities and their daughters aged 8 to 12 years. Videotaped mother-daughter interactions during a work task and a play task were scored by two raters for 11 different behaviors. These behaviors were collapsed into three behavioral composites--receptiveness, directiveness, and dissuasiveness--for statistical analysis. Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences between the two groups on the behavioral composites for either mothers or their daughters. The two tasks stimulated a different pattern of mother-daughter interactions. For both members of the dyad, interactions during the work task were more directive and less dissuasive than those in the play task. The clinical implication of this finding indicates the importance of understanding the influence of the task selected when observing interaction. Because of recent social and legal changes, understanding parenting and chronic illness is critical.

Children and adolescents adjustment to parental multiple sclerosis: a systematic review

“…Of the 18 eligible studies (see Table 1), locations of study participants were as follows: United States (n = 4) [12,15,16,18], Canada (n = 3) [13,17,22], Switzerland (n = 2, 1 of which also included Germany and Greece) [8,23], Greece (n = 2) [7,21], UK (n = 1) [14], Israel (n = 2) [24,25], Australia (n = 4) [5,10,19,20]. Cohort sizes ranged from 8 [10] to 281 [12], with a total of 2051 children or adolescents studied overall.…”

“…All study participants were recruited mainly through university neurology departments or specific national or local MS society centres. MS-specific clinical information on the affected parent were noted in some studies, with 2 providing a quantitative measure of disability (based on Kurtzke’s Expanded Disability Status Scale [EDSS] [37] score), with the affected parents ranging from an EDSS of 2 to 7, indicating ‘slight weakness’ through to ‘restricted to a wheelchair’ [16,23]. A further 9 studies provided other means of quantifying impairment, again with parents ranging from minimal impairment to wheelchair bound [7,8,10,14,15,17,19-21].…”

“…In the two studies reporting the affected parents’ disease course, most had relapsing-remitting MS [5,14]. Only six studies had enforced a minimum time of exposure to parental MS before enrollment [7,16,18,21,24,25], the rest did not specify or only mentioned parents’ disease duration.…”

Impact of parental multiple sclerosis on early childhood development: A retrospective cohort study

“…Previous studies have shown that mother-daughter interactions during work and play tasks were perceived as similar, irrespective of whether the mother had MS. 31 Similarly, other studies have shown that children with an MS-affected parent did not appear to differ from the community norms for overall difficulties and externalizing problems. 6,9 However, these studies showed that parents with MS were more likely to report that their children had psychological problems.…”

Focusing on arthritis and parenting

“…However, there is little documented information on the experience of parenting with arthritis. The emphasis of most available literature is on physical disability in general, focusing on the effect of the parent's disability on child development rather than the parenting experience per se (Crist, 1992). Studies reveal that when one member of a family is disabled, the entire family experience the disability in some way, and there is great potential for family disruption (Miller et al, 1983;Ryan et al, 1996).…”