The relationship between mothers' well-being and their communication with children with cochlear implants.

Background: Many studies have shown that the mothers with children with Cochlear Implants (CIs) could display high distress, negative coping strategies and dysfunctional communication with their children. However, few studies have investigated if there are a correlation between the well-being of the mothers and the communication inputs they give to the child. The aim of this study is to analyse, with a multimethod approach, if there is a correlation between stress, coping strategies and the communicative style of the mothers with children with CI, before and after CI activation. Methods: Twelve mothers with deaf children, were recruited from the ‘Guglielmo da Saliceto’ Hospital in Piacenza, participated in the study. Before the surgery and after three months of CI activation, the mother-child interactions were observed during semi-structured activity at the hospital, to codify the spontaneous linguistic production of the mother, and the Italian version of the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1983) and the Italian version of Coping orientation to the problems experienced (Carver et al., 1989) were administered. Findings: Data analysis shown a correlation between emotional experience and mother’s distress, specifically the mothers’ anger and their negative perception of their children’s behaviour [r=.757; p= .007], between lack of social support and mothers’ high levels of negative emotion [r=.846; p=.001] and between elaboration of the diagnosis and realistic expectations about the child’s disability [r=.667; p=.025]. Moreover, a correlation between mothers’ frequency of prohibitions during interaction and a) mothers’ distress expressed [r=.637; p=.035], b) their total score of psychological stress reported [r=0.611; p=0.46]. Conclusion: The data show that both the mothers' feelings about the diagnosis and the social support received are related both to their well-being and their communication with children. Specifically, mothers’ feeling about diagnosis could affect mother-child interactions. These preliminary findings could have implication for clinical practice and the implementation of supportive intervention programmes for mothers after CIs activation, focused on the direct observation of the mother-child interaction.