شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

This research focuses on the experiences of eight Kuwaiti parents raising a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to explore parental perspectives on the category of ADHD and experiences of parenting a child with ADHD. Medical sociology, critical psychology, and disability studies influence the conceptual framework for the research and provide a lens to examine the parents’ experiences and understanding. The study adopts a narrative approach and parents’ stories were collected using open-ended questions and narrative interviews. Using thematic narrative analysis, the analysis develops three themes. The first theme, ‘Parents’ understandings of ADHD’, explains how Kuwaiti society and culture influenced the social construction of parents’ ideas about their children’s behaviour as ADHD. In this theme five stages in the parents’ journey to understanding ADHD are described revealing complex engagement with ADHD as a disorder and ADHD as a deviant social norm. The second theme, ‘Disability barriers in social life’, explores the attitudes, environmental and psycho-emotional barriers that parents and their children encountered that led to exclusion from social participation and other disadvantages. The theme is divided into three sub-themes to discuss the idea that, despite the availability of support and services, parents and children with ADHD are still disadvantaged via a lack of information, poor communication and psycho-emotional burden, all of which are in part products of negative social and institutional attitudes. The third theme, ‘ADHD and impairment’, explores the parents’ personal ideas of ADHD that often conflict with the negative social perceptions in the context of Kuwait. The theme is divided into two sub-themes. The first sub-theme addresses the role of religion and Arab culture in accepting ADHD disabilities and impairments. The second sub-theme focuses on the ways parents positively negotiate the differences in children with ADHD. The analysis of parents’ experiences as discussed here has implications for policymakers and professionals. parents’ perspectives around ADHD help to build a set of understandings rooted in lived experience which challenge the dominant cultural and medical dogma. Considering ADHD as a disorder, often leads support and services to focus on impairment and to neglect the disability encountered by the children with ADHD and their families. This research concludes that centering the voices and experiences of parents and children with ADHD is crucial to developing more socially just practice and research in disability studies in Kuwait. (Author’s abstract)