The features of interaction between mothers and their children aged 15-18 during psycho-emotional outbursts

Abstract

Annotation. The aim of the study is to analyze the influence of mother's reaction during psycho-emotional outbursts in children aged 15-18 on the development of adolescent aggression. The participants of the study were asked to answer the questions in the questionnaire called “The Questionnaire of Mothers of Teenagers Aged 15-18” which included a separate block of questions namely “What do you do when your child has outbursts of irritability or temper tantrums, when he/she gets extremely angry? Subsequently, the participants’ substantive responses were selected and analyzed. The study covered 864 adolescents aged 15-18 (425 people – a group of aggressive adolescents, 439 respondents – a group of non-aggressive teenagers). The analysis considered the difference in distribution between aggressive and non-aggressive groups when exposed to certain factors. Information base – international program ELSPAC – Ukrainian fragment “Family and Children of Ukraine”. Statistical processing of information – Microsoft Office 2003, 2010, “IBM SPSS Statistics 20.0”, “Microsoft Office Excel 2010”. The difference was determined at p<0.05. The analysis of the methods for raising a child used in an attempt to “quench” emotional outbursts in adolescents showed that among the studied methods of calming down a child were identified those methods that had a positive effect on his psycho-emotional state i.e. allowing him/her to cry (42.9% in the aggressive group and 57.1% in the non-aggressive group); neutral methods, for example, comforting with talking (63.6% and 36.4% by groups, respectively), and methods that had a negative impact i.e. forcing a child to go away (83.3% and 16.7%, respectively); getting into a war of words, shouting at him (71.8% and 28.2%, respectively); leaving a child with someone (65.6% and 34.4%, respectively), threatening a child (75.0% and 25.0%, respectively) or beating him/her (81.4% and 18.6%, respectively). Thus, the study found that the interviewed mothers rarely used parenting methods that have a positive effect, and vice versa, they used approaches that did not have a calming effect, which negatively influenced the psycho-emotional state of adolescents.