Rewards and challenges of parenting a child with Down syndrome: a qualitative study of fathers' perceptions.

Conclusions: Rewards mainly concerned the father-child bond and the loving, happy child. Fathers rarely mentioned financial stressors or their children's negative behaviors. Instead, many fathers reported children's speech problems. Our findings may assist healthcare professionals in providing more beneficial resources and interventions (especially language-related ones) to families with a child with Down syndrome.Implications for rehabilitationConsistent with a positive psychology approach, fathers reported more rewards than challenges in raising a child with Down syndrome.There may be a need for greater involvement of fathers in language interventions for children with Down syndrome.Healthcare professionals can assist parents of children with Down syndrome in recognizing parenting rewards. PMID: 32255374 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Disability and Rehabilitation - Category: Rehabilitation Authors: Tags: Disabil Rehabil Source Type: research