VIOLATIONS IN THE CHILD-PARENT RELATIONSHIP SYSTEM AS A FACTOR IN THE FORMATION OF HELPLESSNESS IN CHILDREN

Abstract

For many years, the problem of child-parent relations, the family and its influence on the child’s personality has remained unchanged. The family, as the first institution of socialisation, influences the formation and modification of social attitudes, as well as the choice of adaptive behaviour strategies. The family lays down the life scenario on the basis of which a person acts in society, and the problems that arise in it are primarily in child-parent relations. However, the realities of our time directly affect the family, reduce its educational potential, directly or indirectly contribute to the formation of various personality deformations in children; often children with good potential are inactive, unwilling or unable to cope with real life difficulties, and lose faith in success – this phenomenon is known in psychology as learned helplessness. Helplessness is formed in ontogeny under the influence of various factors. The most important of these are disorders in the system of family relationships: unfavorable psychological climate in the family, family neglect, various types of improper family upbringing and parenting styles. The main diagnostic method of the study was testing. In order to diagnose the dominant tendencies of attitudes towards the child and family upbringing styles, the “Parental Attitude Test” and the “Family Upbringing Strategies” methodology were used. To determine the predominant emotional states of schoolchildren, which are components of the helplessness symptom complex, the “Self-assessment of emotional states” methodology was used. Based on the results of the empirical study, it can be concluded that the highest rates of anxiety, fatigue, depression and helplessness are inherent in children from families with authoritarian, indifferent and clearly undefined parenting styles. The attitude towards children in such families is characterised by emotional rejection, lack of support, unpredictability of parents’ reactions to the child’s behaviour, and excessive control.