ABSTRACT
The present study is a descriptive analytic study aiming to assess maternal adaptation toward their children with chronic conditions, assess the factors that affect this adaptation and compare adaptation in case of sick children with chronic physical illness versus intellectual illness. The study was conducted in Port-Said city. The subjects of the study were from in and out-patient clinics affiliated to Port-Said General Hospital, El-Mebara for Health Insurance hospital, Asphor Center for Dialysis and a Governmental School Serving Mentally Retarded Children namely; EL-Tarbya El Fekrya. It includes 174 mothers of chronically ill children. Data were obtained through interviewing the mothers of chronically physically ill and mentally retarded children, using four tools namely; a structured interview questionnaire, a socioeconomic standards scale, a coping scale and an adaptation patterns scale. The results of the study revealed that 67.8% and 60.9% of mothers of mentally retarded and of physically chronically ill children had poor adaptation, respectively. It was found that socio-economic standards, maternal knowledge, coping mechanisms used by mothers