Development-Centered Care of Children with Disabilities: Parents’ Arrangement of Zones of Proximal Development
摘要
The knowledge and motives parents bring to their care for a child are to a high degree culturally and historically mediated and are transferred through participation in cultural practices as processes in zones of proximal development. While cultural knowledge of childcare is transferred mostly automatic for parents of typical children, this is not the situation for parents of children with disability. Instead, mismatches between cultural norms and the child’s situation of development makes parent’s arrangement of adequate care more challenging. In this chapter, we present a study into parents’ development of care for their children with cerebral palsy, analyzed from focus groups interviews. The findings show that the development of care activities is mediated by society’s value systems and the specific organization of special care. Parents have to focus on solving current and future mismatches between the child’s abilities and social situations of development that could facilitate effective zones of proximal development. This development-centered care focus is useful not only to amend the child’s impairments in themselves, but to address the situation of mismatches and to create future developmental opportunities.