STUDYING IDEAS OF SENIOR PRESCHOOLERS ABOUT THEIR PARENTS

Statement of the problem. The authors of this paper study the ideas of children of senior preschool age about their parents. Currently, the phenomenon of modern parenthood is actively discussed in the scientific literature, including the specifics of parents’ attitude to their underaged children and the image of parenthood in the representations of modern mothers and fathers. At the same time, there are practically no studies characterizing the image of a parent in the representations of children. The purpose of the article is to characterize the ideas of children of senior preschool age about their parents. The methodology of the research consists of the scientific ideas of A. Adler, M. O. Ermikhina about the importance of studying a child’s ideas about parents as a factor in the formation of its attitude to oneself and relationships with others; a systematic approach in the study of the family (A. Ya. Varga); the research of A. Adler, J. Bowlby and Russian scientists L. I. Bozhovich, N. V. Varayeva, L. S. Vygotsky, I. V. Dubrovina, T. V. Leus, and V. S. Mukhina regarding the influence of the image of father and mother formed in child’s ideas on the nature of its relationships with people around it and its social functioning throughout life. The study involved children of senior preschool age who are brought up in two-parent families. The main research method was content analysis of textual information obtained through an associative experiment. To identify an unconscious, automated level of representation of the image of father and mother by children of senior preschool age, as well as features of their relationships with parents, the “Incomplete sentences” method was used. Research results. The results of the study of the ideas of senior preschoolers about their parents are described. It is established that the ideas of senior preschool children about their parents are generally characterized by an emotionally positive attitude towards their father and mother. Children’s expectations from their parents are associated with participation of parents in joint activities with them (games, walks), as well as with manifestation of positive emotions and feelings by parents. At the same time, in the associations of children, there is practically no experience of interaction with parents against the background of the leading type of activity of a preschool child – games. The fears of children associated with their parents are characterized by the fear of emotional rejection by parents. Conclusion. Based on the presented description of the ideas of senior preschool children about their parents, the authors of this article propose and justify a system of psychological and pedagogical work with parents, which involves: informing them about the influence of child-parent relations on the mental and personal development of a preschool child; forming their position of emotional acceptance in relation to a child; teaching them effective ways of interacting with a child based on the leading type of children’s activity – games. The main content of this work is psychological education, as well as individual and group counseling of parents.

Dialectical behaviour therapy ‘Skills for Living’ for young people leaving care: A qualitative exploration of participants’ experiences

It is acknowledged that care leavers experience an accelerated transition into adulthood, despite often having complex psychosocial needs with limited support networks. The ‘Skills for Living’ programme was designed to improve the psychological wellbeing of care leavers and offers an adapted Dialectical Behaviour Therapy skills group as its primary intervention. This paper provides a qualitative evaluation of the programme. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 10 participants, and the data were analysed using thematic analysis ( Braun & Clarke, 2006 ). Four key themes emerged: ‘Initial Apprehension and Reluctance to Participate’, ‘Connection, Understanding and Validation’, ‘Confidence with Social Skills’, and ‘Emotional Acceptance and Self-Soothing’. Clinical implications and recommendations are discussed.

Neurobiological models of emotion regulation: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of acceptance as an emotion regulation strategy

Emotional acceptance is an important emotion regulation strategy promoted by most psychotherapy approaches. We adopted the Activation Likelihood Estimation technique to obtain a quantitative summary of previous fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) studies of acceptance and test different hypotheses on its mechanisms of action. The main meta-analysis included 13 experiments contrasting acceptance to control conditions, yielding a total of 422 subjects and 170 foci of brain activity. Additionally, subgroups of studies with different control conditions (react naturally or focus on emotions) were identified and analysed separately. Our results showed executive areas to be affected by acceptance only in the subgroup of studies in which acceptance was compared to natural reactions. In contrast, a cluster of decreased brain activity located in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus was associated with acceptance regardless of the control condition. These findings suggest that high-level executive cortical processes are not a distinctive feature of acceptance, whereas functional deactivations in the PCC/precuneus constitute its specific neural substrate. The neuroimaging of emotional acceptance calls into question a key tenet of current neurobiological models of emotion regulation consisting in the necessary involvement of high-level executive processes to actively modify emotional states, suggesting a complementary role for limbic portions of the default system.

Crisis of the First Year and Its Manifestations Due to Family Interaction

The study involved 117 people from 43 families of Saint-Petersburg. Among them there were 31 triads “mother – father -child” and 12 dyads “mother - child”, i.e. 43 children (20 boys and 23 girls), 43 mothers and 31 fathers. The age of children differed from 10 months to 2 years. The sample was divided into 2 age groups: from 10 months to 1 year 6 months; and from 1 year 7 months to 2 years. The methods we used were the following: “Manifestations of the crisis of the first year” questionnaire by V. Vasilenko, “Child and parent emotional interaction” questionnaire by E. Zakharova, Maternal postnatal attachment scale by J. Condon, Parental Attitude Research Instrument (РARI) by E.S. Schaefer & R.Q. Bell, Test of marriage satisfaction by Y.E. Aleshina, L.Y. Gozman, E.M. Dubovskaya. The study revealed that constructive formations of the crisis prevail over negativistic manifestations; the main formation is autonomous child speech. The postcritical phase has not been identified. The data in general show the well-being in the child and parent emotional interaction, the high maternal attachment to children, and prevalence of attitudes towards optimal emotional contact with the child and the high level of marriage satisfaction. At the same time we revealed reduced indicators of ability to perceive the child's state (29% mothers and 48% fathers), understand what causes the child’s state (26% mothers and 39% fathers), influence to the child's state (29% mothers and 26% fathers). Constructive formations of the crisis are positively correlated with the sensitivity of the mother, the maturity of her behavioral manifestations in interaction and negatively correlated with positive feelings in interaction and emotional acceptance from fathers, as well as with the maternal attitudes to excessive concentration on the child. Negativistic manifestations of the crisis are less pronounced in the case of mother’s ability to influence to the child’s state, to support him, the child’s emotional acceptance and mother’s marriage satisfaction, and more pronounced in the case of maternal attitudes to the excessive emotional distance with the child, severity and, at the same time, to partnership with the child. Thus, the mother’s sensitivity, maturity of her behavioral manifestations in interaction and parental attitudes combined with some "conditional love" from fathers can be regarded as resources for the successful flowing of the crisis of the first year. Parents need to move from strengthening their previous parenting methods to searching for new forms of interaction.

STUDY OF MATERNAL ATTITUDES TO PRIMARY SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN WITH SEVERE SPEECH DISORDERS

Statement of the problem. The authors study the characteristics of maternal attitudes towards children of primary school age with severe speech disorders. Currently, a large number of studies of the impact of the family on the development of the child are recorded, while there are practically no studies of parental attitudes towards children with developmental disorders, including children with severe speech disorders. The purpose of the article is to describe the specifics of maternal attitudes to children of primary school age with severe speech disorders and to substantiate the directions and content of psychological and pedagogical work with this category of mothers. The research methodology is composed of scientific concepts reflecting the general and specific laws of the mental development of children, presented in the works of L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, V.V. Lebedinsky; studies by V.V. Tkacheva, characterizing the relationship of parents and children in families raising children with developmental disabilities; works by A.Y. Varga, A.S. Spivakovskaya, R.V. Ovcharova, Y.B. Hippenreuter, substantiating the significance of psychological support of the family to ensure the full mental and personal development of the child. The study involved 30 mothers raising primary school age children with severe speech disorders. The psychodiagnostic tool was the methodology for studying parental attitudes, developed by A.Y. Varga and V.V. Stolin, aimed at identifying the predominant type of parental attitudes towards the child; the methodology “Questionnaire of child-parental emotional interaction”, proposed by E.I. Zakharova, which allows assessing the severity of such indicators of parent-child interaction as sensitivity, emotional acceptance, behavioral manifestations. Research results. The peculiarities of maternal attitudes towards children of primary school age with severe speech disorders are described. It was established that mothers are characterized by a destructive attitude towards a child: the predominant types of parental relationship are “Authoritarian Hypersocialization” and “Little Loser”, which indicates the desire of mothers to exercise total control over the behavior of the child, based on the belief that the child is too small, immature, compared to peers, is not adapted to independent life. At the same time, the emotional interaction of mothers with children is characterized by insufficient expression of emotional acceptance, the ability to provide emotional support to the child. Conclusion. Based on the identified features of parental attitude to children with severe speech disorders, the authors proposed and substantiated a system of psychological and pedagogical work with mothers, which involves: informing parents about the features of mental and personal development of a child with severe speech disorder; mastering techniques of effective communication with the child; establishing a friendly parent-child relationship. The main content of this work is psychological education, as well as individual and group counselling of parents.

THE INFLUENCE OF FAMILY EDUCATION STYLES ON ADOLESCENTS‘ PROPENSION TO DEVIANT BEHAVIOR

The work is devoted to the problem of the influence of the styles of family education on the tendency of adolescents to deviant behavior. In families with an authoritarian, liberal and indifferent style of family education, which are characterized by a low level of emotional acceptance, control, and increased conflict, the tendency to deviant behavior in adolescents will be higher, while in families with an authoritative style of parenting, indicators of the tendency to deviant behavior in adolescents will be below.

Emotional and Situational Acceptance Across the Lifespan: A Novel Scale

Self-reported emotional well-being tends to increase with age (Charles & Carstensen, 2007), but evidence for age differences in emotion regulation strategies is mixed (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2019), and the strategy of acceptance, in particular, is relatively understudied. Acceptance involves the deliberate decision to not alter a situation or one’s emotional response to it, and older adults report greater use of general acceptance (Shallcross, Ford, Floerke, & Mauss, 2013). Yet, no current scale distinguishes between situational and emotional acceptance; general acceptance is typically measured using a subscale of the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS; Baer, Smith, & Allen, 2004), which assesses judgments of emotions and thoughts. Therefore, a 6-item measure of situational acceptance was developed and administered to 24 younger adults (age 18-25) and 30 older adults (age 55+) on Amazon Mechanical Turk, along with the KIMS accepting subscale and Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003). The situational acceptance scale achieved good reliability (α=.721) and significantly correlated with the MAAS (r= .301, p=.027) and KIMS (r= .466, p<.001). Older adults tended to rate themselves as significantly higher on situational acceptance (M=29.83, SD=5.17) than younger adults (M=25.13, SD=5.72; t=-3.171, p=.003), and this pattern held for the MAAS and KIMS. These results confirm prior work suggesting older adults engage in acceptance more often than younger adults and expand this finding to situational, not just emotional, acceptance. Furthermore, skills related to mindfulness and acceptance appear to greatly overlap and may increase over the lifespan.

Features of ideas about their activities in young people with different levels of psychological well-being

In a modern dynamic environment high demands towards the personal qualities of specialists are an integral part of the formation process and development of professionals. At the same time, maintaining psychological well-being becomes significant. The aim of our research was to study the relationship between psychological well-being and features of professional development of young adults expressed in the systems of meaning that describe their activities. Respondents (N=65) were given questionnaires to collect information about specifics of their activities, conditions for the exercise of these activities, marks of negative states (burnout for medical students and stress for conscripts). The obtained results, as we compared the two groups of respondents, allowed us to divide them by the presence or absence of negative state that indicate psychological distress. The data we obtained indicate three components of the psychological well-being: emotional acceptance of their activities; specific features of relations with surrounding people, and how the work is organized in terms of its process and content.Respondents, who belong to different groups according to the degree of psychological well-being, can be described as oriented towards the well-being of the social environment, or as “individualists”, for whom the organization and content of work is more important. The prospect of using the results consists in the possibility of taking them into account in career guidance activities, as well as in predicting the success of professional self-determination of young people.