The importance of mother’s well-being in the audiologic habilitation process of children with cochlear implant

Many studies have shown that mothers of children with cochlear implants (CIs) could display distress, negative emotions and dysfunctional communication with their children. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between mothers' well-being and communication and language development of children with CIs. The aim of this study is to assess, using a multi-method approach (qualitative and quantitative), the relationship between mothers' well-being (stress and feelings), mothers’ communication strategies and children’s language development, before surgery and three months after CI activation. Twenty mothers along with their deaf children were recruited at ‘Guglielmo da Saliceto’ Hospital in Piacenza. Each mother was interviewed before CI surgery to investigate the emotions related to the diagnosis of deafness of her child. Moreover, before surgery and after CI activation, the mother-child interaction was observed, following the guidelines of the Assessing Linguistic Behavior, to analyze the mother’s linguistic input, and two questionnaires were administered in order to assess the mother’s stress and child language development, respectively, Parenting Stress Index and Italian version of MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. Preliminary results have shown that the emotional experience of the mother related to the diagnosis of the child is complex, and involves positive and negative emotions. Moreover, the data have highlighted that the mother’s distress, perception of a difficult child and parent-child dysfunctional interaction were positively correlated with a higher use of prohibitive phrases of the mother during interaction with her child and negatively correlated to the child’s lexical development. To sum up, the preliminary findings have shown the mother’s feeling could affect mother-child interactions and consequently the child’s language development. For this reason, it’s important to assess mothers’ well-being in the audiologic habilitation process of children with CI. In particular, these data could contribute to implement supportive programmes for mothers before children’s surgery and after CI activation, focused on mothers’ emotions and on the direct observation of the mother-child interaction.