Learning Disabilities, Juvenile Delinquency and the Family: The Role of “Intensive Parenting”

Abstract

This study explores the ways in which parents cope with and manage children who have problems such as learning disabilities and delinquency. Prior research has suggested that these problem areas are frequently related, but this qualitative study explores variations in parenting dynamics associated with better adaptations on the part of the child, and that lower the likelihood that the learning disabled child will also emerge as a delinquent one. In fourteen of these families, the child had a learning disability and had also become involved in delinquent behavior. We argue that although all parents who have a learning disabled child share a number of common experiences, including unique family stresses, differences in parenting style and practices, including accommodations/reactions to the learning disability serve to differentiate more successful families from those whose children eventually become involved with the juvenile court system. A highly intensive parenting style in particular characterizes these more successful families.