A psychiatric nursing perspective on mothers' experience with children who progress poorly at school

M.Cur.Mothers have hopes, wishes and expectations about their children's education. The hopes, wishes and expectations will be seen to being realised as long as the child progress well at school Childen who progress poorly at school, disappoints, frustrates and stresses their mothers with consequential physical and emotional symptoms. The Psychiatric Out patient's Child and Adolescent unit assesses diagnose and make recommendation on the children who progress poorly at school as so refered by their schools. Mothers accompany their children for the purpose of history giving and any relevant information should it be needed during the course of the assessment of the child Mothers reacted differently to their children's poor progress at school, and to their children's inability to perform or complete assesment tasks as given to them as part of the assesment procedure. Some cried, some showed frustration, by turning their backs on their children, by shouting at them and even making excuses for their poor performance. The researcher then developed an interest to undertake a research on the mothers experience with children who progress poorly at school A exploratory, descriptive, contextual and qualitative research was undertaken to find out the mother's experience with children who progress poorly at school. Permission was obtained from gatekeepers. A pilot phenomenological interview was conducted with a mother whose child progress poorly at school, who meet the selection criteria and the interview guide was confirmed. Phenomenological interviews were conducted with thirteen mothers who were purposively selected. Steps were taken to ensure trustworthiness. Tesch's method of data analysis was followed to analyze the data The results indicated that mothers with children who progress poorly at school, are dissapointed, frustrated, in denial, stressed and suffer depressive symptoms Guidelines for supportive action by the psychiatric nurse have been described. The possibility of applying the results of the research for use in nursing education, nursing research and nursing practive have been described, as well as the use of the research results by other medical professionals in their own disciplines Mothers with children who progress poorly at school need support from psychiatric nurses in order to facilitate promotion, maintenance and restoration of their mental health as an intergral part of health