This paper aims to investigate the parent’s social skills and the influence of these skills on the parents’ attachment to their children with intellectual disability. The child who suffers from intellectual disability needs to improve his/her interpersonal relations in order to reach a suitable development that allows him/her to get more autonomy, happiness and consequently a better way of life. Several authors have underlined the importance of an adequate repository of social abilities from parents to set up a warm familiar environment, which is propitious for the development of their children. This environment would influence the quality of the attachment to their children, changing these parents in examples of social behaviors and, additionally, collaborating with the improvement of the social life of their children, allowing them to be more autonomous and inclusive. Nevertheless, stress and some social-demographic variables, with the advent of a handicapped child, can determine the social incompetence of the parents in order to provide harmonious places to accept this child.
Social skills; Mental retardadion; Parent child relations; Social competence