Parenting Style and Emotional Regulation in Children with Intellectual Disability

Background: Children with intellectual disability experience problems in emotional regulation. This is important for children to control their emotions to face pressure and difficulties in their life. Parenting style will affect children's ability to manage their emotions and have a positive impact on children's well-being and children's emotional regulation abilities. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between parenting style and emotional regulation of children with intellectual disability. Methods: The research design used a cross sectional study. The sample in this study were children with intellectual disabilities and their parents as many as 32 of 35 children who were in special schools in Surabaya Indonesia were selected by simple random sampling. Parenting style were measured using the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) and emotional regulation was measured using the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA) with the Spearman Rho analysis test. Results: Most parents apply authoritative parenting (81.3%). Meanwhile, the emotion regulation strategy is balanced between using cognitive reappraisal (53.1%) and expressive suppression strategies (46.9%). The relationship between parenting style and emotion regulation is quite strongly correlated (p value = 0.003, r = 0.509). Conclusion: Democratic parenting applied by parents towards intellectually disabled children makes children better in terms of emotional regulation abilities. Special attention and the role of parents in this case is the application of effective parenting is needed to help children regulate their emotions which will have an impact on life in the future.