Article Text
Abstract
Background Child developmental impairment problems offer a challenge and a valuable opportunity. Unlike any other medical problem, the human brain continues to develop for the first six-year and respond to its environment. The parents are the main stakeholders for children and training parents could provide a valuable low-cost early intervention. The parents are often in denial about a developmental impairment. Some parents panic or feel anxious, angry, and hopeless. There seems to a lack of guidance on the best practice to address parental feelings.
Objectives
To identify parental anxiety in children with Neurodisability
Can a digital platform with the child’s developmental profiling and visual report, app-based support with tailored individualized informed based profiling address parental anxieties.
Do children have better outcomes If parental anxieties are addressed
Methods A parental stress index (PSI)with 5 items was constructed. 83 parents enrolled in the intervention program were interviewed. 50 parents scored higher than 30%. The parents were shown visual profiling of their child’s development. We ensured that the parents could identify the developmental areas the child needed help. We provided parents with an app that had some targeted tailored information with play ideas to perform at home. We repeated the parental Stress index interview every 2 months with these parents. Only 44 parents continued the program.
Results After 8 weeks of support, the Parental stress index interview was reperformed on all 44 parents. Significant improvement was noted in PSI with a mean difference of 19.71 and t value of 7.56, with a significant .00 level. Their children’s developmental progress also improved in parents with lower PSI.
Conclusions We believe that addressing parental anxiety improves interaction with the child. The result is limited on the number of parents and inability of a control population due to lack of resources, it highlights an important area of empowering parents and using digital technology for its implementation.