MEANINGFUL ACTIVITIES OF CHILDREN WITH MITOCHONDRIAL DISORDER 79 3 interactions among persons, occupations and environment there were personal challenges that could lead them to avoid doing the activity. Therefore, the PEOP model can be useful in practice when collecting information about occupational performance from the child’s perspective. The transferability of the child’s perspective is influenced by the study population. Children with mitochondrial disorders represent various limitations that are also present in several other groups, e.g., children with physical disabilities, neurological impairments, developmental disabilities or intellectual disabilities. The same themes probably exist in these populations, although the exact experiences will differ. For example, Powrie et al. (2015) found that for children with physical disabilities, fun, freedom, fulfilment and friendship are important for leisure. They also connect their results to the SDT. Another review that related their findings to the SDT included children with various disabilities (Willis et al. 2017). They found three categories, namely person-based elements (having fun, experiencing success, belonging, experiencing freedom and developing an identity), environment-focused elements (authentic friendships, the opportunity to participate, role models and family support) and activity-related elements (learning), that contribute to meaningful participation. ‘Having fun’ and ‘family support’ were also apparent from our interviews. Other elements were not exactly the same but contained similarities in the descriptions of the elements/themes. For example, ‘experiencing success’ shows similarities to our themes ‘Because I can do it on my own’ and ‘The things that happen when I am doing the activity make it worthwhile (or unpleasant)’. The latter theme was also in line with the themes ‘experiencing freedom’ and ‘learning’. ‘Having an identity’ has no connection with our findings. However, an explanation could be that Willis et al. (2017) studied meaningful participation, while the current study focused on how children value everyday activities. Moreover, the element ‘having identity’ emerged based on data from the children’s and parents’ perspective, whereas our themes are solely based on the children’s perspectives. We feel that the results are transferable. The outcomes are comparable to other literature, and children with a mitochondrial disorder represent a wide spectrum of disabilities, and thus they may considered representative of other children with mild-to-severe physical and developmental disabilities. The transferability of the child’s perspective was also influenced by the age range (2-18 years) in the sample. This relatively wide range is possible because the different aspects of participation are the same for all age groups (Eriksson and Granlund 2004). In this study, the youngest child was 6 and the oldest was 18. We found the same themes in all age groups; however, there were some differences in the way they were expressed. These disparities are consistent with the theory of Erikson
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