Behavioral and Academic Challenges in a Primary School Child Within the Context of Parental Disability: A Qualitative Case Study from the Palestinian Context

Abstract

Background: Parental disability constitutes a salient ecological stressor with the potential to compromise parenting efficacy and disrupt children's psychosocial development. Arabic-language scholarly literature remains notably deficient in rigorous qualitative investigations examining how parental disability shapes school adjustment among primary-school children, a gap particularly pronounced within the Palestinian context. Objective: This study examined the behavioral, emotional, and academic challenges encountered by a primary-school-aged child within a parental disability context, interpreted through family–school–developmental system interactions.  Method: A qualitative single case study, anchored in Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model, was employed. Data were triangulated across semi-structured teacher interviews, systematic classroom observations, and documentary analysis of school records. Reflexive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke's framework was applied, with methodological triangulation and member-checking to ensure trustworthiness. Results: Five themes emerged: emotional dysregulation and impulsivity; oppositional behavior and resistance to authority; diminished academic engagement and attentional difficulties; social anxiety and impaired peer relationships; and parentification dynamics manifesting as developmentally incongruent family role assumption. These manifestations were interpreted as multi-level contextual responses arising from constrained parental support, absent individualized psychoeducational planning, and deficient home–school coordination — not stable psychopathological traits. Conclusions: Findings underscore the need for early, ecologically grounded psychoeducational interventions addressing developmental and systemic dimensions of school behavior. Institutionalized family–school partnerships are identified as pivotal. The study advances an ecological interpretive framework bridging a substantive gap in Arabic empirical literature with transferable utility for analogous international contexts.