Reduction of stress between mothers and their handicapped children.

This paper reports the results of videotaped baselines and a series of behavioral instruction sessions that involved 28 preschool handicapped children and their mothers. The behaviours of mother and child were analyzed from videotaped records before, immediately following, and nine months after the behavioral instruction sessions. The intervention, the instruction sessions, focused on enrichment of the mother-child interaction repertoire and was accomplished with immediate feedback to the mother by using the bug-in-the-ear device. The frequencies of the 216 measures of negative behaviours tested (12 behaviours in each of 18 dyads) decreased in 48 instances immediately following the instruction sessions. Forty of these changes were still present nine months later. The research indicates it is possible to reduce stressful, negative interaction and, in addition, to maintain the mother's behaviors of warmth and acceptance.