Abstract:

The family has a vital role to play in helping children to master reading and writing. The family literacy environment is now an established predictor of children’s language and literacy development. The existing literature on learning environment conditions confirm the importance of adequate family functioning, and the existence of a satisfactory family context for children’s effective academic development. However, there are no studies focusing on the association between spelling errors and family dynamics, and in particular the association between socio-demographic characteristics of parents of children with spelling difficulties and family dynamics. The present study aims to examine the association of parents’ socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, marital status, years of education, occupation, nationality) with the dimensions of family dynamics. This study presents the findings of the first phase of a larger study involving parents who reported that their children made spelling errors .The study sample was 225 parents (28% fathers and 72%mothers), with a mean age of 38.1 years. For data collection,
1) A Self-administered Socio-demographic Questionnaire and
2) The Family Dynamics Measure II (FDM II) Questionnaire was administered.
The findings of the study indicated that there were statistically significant differences in two dimensions of the FDM II and were found in dimension 1: Individualization-Enmeshment, where women scored higher on family dynamics compared to men, and dimension 6: Role reciprocity-Role Conflict, where men scored higher on family dynamics compared to women. On the other dimensions of family dynamics, no statistically significant differences were observed between the family dynamics dimensions and socio-demographic variables of age, marital status, years of education, occupation, and ethnicity. The research showed that socio-demographic characteristics of parents are not related to family dynamics in families of children with spelling difficulties, and only the gender variable is related to two dimensions of family dynamics.

Keywords:

Family dynamics, socio-demographic characteristics, parents, children with spelling difficulties.