Parenting a child with a traumatic brain injury: Experiences of parents and health professionals

Abstract

Parenting interventions may provide essential support for parents in adjusting to and managing their child's difficulties and the efficacy of existing programmes needs evaluation. Addressing parent emotional adjustment and coping strategies is vital following paediatric TBI, given the impact on parent well-being and the potential negative effects on child outcomes through reduced parenting effectiveness. Group programmes may enable connection and support.

Supporting parents following childhood traumatic brain injury: a qualitative study to examine information and emotional support needs across key care transitions

“…Other studies have similarly found parents lack information about TBI (Armstrong & Kerns ; Roscigno & Swanson ; Brown et al . ). In addition parents lacked information to prepare them for care transitions, such as moving to the ward and returning home.…”

“…; Roscigno & Swanson ; Brown et al . ; Jordan & Linden ). While in this study this related in part to the availability of local services, parents also associated it with a lack of understanding about the impact of a TBI on children, particularly when this is invisible.…”

Does Stepping Stones Triple P plus Acceptance and Commitment Therapy improve parent, couple, and family adjustment following paediatric acquired brain injury? A randomised controlled trial

“…Superior child behavioural and adaptive outcomes from ABI are linked to high parental warmth and responsiveness, and low parental negativity, permissiveness, and authoritarianism (Micklewright, King, O'Toole, Henrich, & Floyd, 2012;Wade et al, 2011;Yeates, Taylor, Walz, Stancin, & Wade, 2010), while high authoritarianism appears to mediate the negative relationship between parent distress and child adaptive functioning (Micklewright et al, 2012). Qualitatively, parents report that struggling with internal experiences (such as guilt, frustration, anxiety, and flashbacks to the injury) can interfere with effective parenting (Brown, Whittingham, Boyd, & Sofronoff, 2013a).…”

Development and psychometric testing of the Family Functioning Questionnaire in Rehabilitation (FFQR)

“…After testing the 80 items, a total of 20 items were excluded from the scale, 19 of which (1,3,6,8,17,25,36,39,41,42,47, 50, 51, 55, 62, 65, 67, 75, 82) did not load on any factor (<0.40) and one of which (item 56) was distributed in two factors with the difference being less than 0.10. In the second round, the factor loadings of 11 items (2,7,9,13,19,30,33,35,46, 64, 69) were less than 0.45 and one item (item 80) had a difference of less than 0.10. In the final factor analysis, all of the remaining 48 items had factor loadings greater than 0.45, ranging from 0.49 to 0.77.…”