Perceptions of six immigrant parents of their child's language disorder and care experience

The present study aims to understand culturally and linguistically diverse parents' perceptions of their child's language disorder and the factors influencing their perceptions and parental practices. Parents of six children that had received rehabilitation services for a language disorder participated in the study. All of the parents grew up outside of the Province of Quebec, lived in the province for 5 to 18 years, and had various first languages and cultural backgrounds. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the parents, and themes emerged from their interview data. Results revealed that parents were aware of their child's difficulties, mostly for the expressive aspect of language. They sought out many initiatives so their children could receive speech and language pathology services. Nonetheless, diagnoses of language disorder or language delay were hard to grasp for parents, as were their impacts. This caused diverse emotions among parents and brought them toward a search for meaning through their own thoughts and experiences. Their perceptions of their child's language disorder appeared to change throughout the interventions, but parents continued to question themselves about how to deal with bilingualism and its impacts. The results enrich the thinking around the delivery of services in speech-language pathology in parent-child dyads in the context of linguistic and cultural diversity.