Background and Purpose: Affective, behavioral & cognitive leisure time cultural program is one of the most important programs that can decrease the emotional problems in mothers and enhance the social skills in their children. Therefore, efforts are made here to investigate the effectiveness of this program on the emotion regulation of mothers and social skills of their children with intellectual disability (ID).
Method: This research was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test post-test control group design. The sample consisted of 30 mothers and their children with ID who were selected by convenience sampling and then randomly assigned to either the control or experimental groups. The experimental group underwent 16 sessions of intervention (two 60-min sessions per week), while the control group did not. The instruments of this research were Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004) and Evaluation of Social Skills (Matson & Ollendick, 1983). Independent t-test and MANOVA were used for analyzing the data.
Results: The results showed that Affective, behavioral & cognitive leisure time cultural program had a significant effect on the emotion regulation of mothers of children with ID (t=11.22, P=0.0001). Furthermore, intervention had a positive and significant effect on the social skills in their children (t=10.22, P=0.0001).
Conclusion: Affective, behavioral & cognitive leisure time cultural program improved the emotion regulation of mothers and increased the social skills in their children with ID. So, planning for use of this cultural program is of particular importance.