Personality and Parent-Child Relationship in Conduct Disorder Children

Authors: Amrita Sen, Dr. Tilottama Mukherjee

Pages: 6-10

Abstract:

The children’s personality traits develop from early childhood based on social interaction and perception of life events. Primarily early childhood experience with parents is believed to have long-lasting effects on all future relationships. Active and impulsive children often are targets of negative interaction, which leads to conflict. Again, as part of developmental stages children become more autonomous and independent, their desires and frustrations often come into conflict with those of their parents; the result is typically a display of negative or disruptive behaviors. The children with Conduct Disorder (CD) shows repetitive persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic right of others or major age-appropriate societal norms are violated. The aim of the present study was to study the personality, relationship between perception of parents and parenting style among the CD children and their normal counterpart. A sample of 16 CD children and 16 children without any behavioural problems and their respective parents were studied. Child Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ) was used as a screening tool for selecting the control group. The children’s personality dimensions and perception of the parents were evaluated employing Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory (JEPQ), Parent-child Relationship Scale (PCRS) respectively and their parents parenting style was evaluated on Multidimensional Parenting-Scale (MDP-Scale). Student’s t-test was used to assess the differences between personality traits of patients and their control counterpart. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to assess the Correlation between Childs perception of their parents and parenting style. The conduct disorder children were found to have the higher predisposition for neuroticism, psychoticism and lie scale although the results were not statistically significant. Negative perception towards parents and the negative parenting style of the parents resulted in poor parent-child relationship.