HUBUNGAN KEKUATAN KARAKTER DENGAN STRES PENGASUHAN PADA ORANG TUA YANG MEMILIKI ANAK BERKEBUTUHAN KHUSUS (ABK)

Parents who raise exceptional children often find the parenting process more difficult than parents who raise normal children. The burden of caring for exceptional children makes parents vulnerable to parenting stress which can put them at physical or psychological risk. Optimal use of character strength will help parents deal with parenting stress. This research aimed to determine the correlation between character strength and parenting stress in parents with exceptional children. Using a correlational quantitative research design along with non-probability purposive sampling technique, research was conducted on 276 parents, divided into 138 fathers and 138 mothers. The research instruments used were the the Values in Action Inventory of Youth (VIA-Youth) and Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF). Based on the results of the Pearson product moment correlation test, it can be seen that there is a negative correlation between character strength and parenting stress (r = -0.200; p = 0.001 < 0.05). This result indicates that the higher the level of character strength, the lower the level of parenting stress in parents with exceptional children.