Parents' perceptions of their children's coping with school failure

The present study is an attempt to investigate parents' perceptions of thei r children's coping strategies with school failure. The School Failure Copi ng Scale was administered to 387 elementary school students aged from 10 to 15 years (241 girls and 146 boys) in order to assess their coping strategi es with school failure. The same scale was administered to their parents as king them to assess coping strategies of their children when confronted wit h bad grade in school. Although there were some differences in coping strat egies used by children and the perception of these strategies on behalf of parents, the latter were generally able to correctly predict their children 's coping strategies. Parent's prediction of a child's coping strategy acco unted for 26% of its problem solving coping strategy variance, 30% of emoti ons coping strategy variance, 24% of its forgetting coping strategy varianc e and 34% of social support variance. Parent's best prediction was for soci al support and the worst for problem solving coping strategy.