Year: 2011
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Child characteristics as a source of parenting stressAccording to the currently available information, autism is characterised by the coexistence of three groups of symptoms: impaired social relations and communication, and restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).All of the above mentioned developmental difficulties may be severely distressing for parents.So far there is no consensus on the relation between severity of children's impairment and stress in parents of children with autism.Some researchers report the presence of this relationship (e.g.Hastings & Johnson, 2001;Hoffman et al., 2008).Not all authors, however, have confirmed their results (e.g.Tobing & Glenwick, 2002), and some have even suggested that the severity of the child's autism symptoms is a relatively poor predictor of parental stress (Konstantareas & Papageorgiu, 2006).It seems that the root cause of this disparity in research findings are methodological issues, such as sample size, selection criteria and internal differentiation in the groups of parents and children in the studies, as well as the tools used to measure the children's developmental problems.Furthermore, the role of particular types of the child's developmental and behavioural problems in the aetiology of parental stress is still unclear.Certainly, the most typical signs and symptoms of autism are pervasive deficits in socio-emotional development.They are especially apparent in limited ability of people with autism to initiate and maintain interaction (Volkmar et al., 2004).These difficulties may vary in form and severity, but even people with high-functioning autism (HFA) experience significant problems in interpersonal relations.Studies on parents of children with non-autistic developmental disorders show that low levels of the child's pro-social behaviour are related with the severity of parental stress (Richman et al., 2009).As Davis and Carter (2008) demonstrated in their study on parents of newly-diagnosed children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), deficits in social relatedness may be a significant burden to parents.Similar results were obtained by Kasari and Sigman (1997), who found a relationship between the level of parental stress and child's responsiveness when interacting with the experimenter.An important area in which the development of children with autism is untypical is the formation of interpersonal relations with parents.Studies have shown that the majority of these children's mothers consider their child's sings of attachment to be insufficient and rate their emotional reciprocity lower than mothers of children with other disabilities (Abbeduto et al. 2004;Hoppes & Harris, 1990).Even though mothers report that they would like their children to show more signs of attachment, this aspect of the child's functioning appears to be less salient in the emergence of parental stress than other difficulties experienced by mothers.Hoffman and colleagues (2009) found no differences in Attachment Subscale in Parenting Stress Index (PSI) between mothers of children with autism and mothers of typically developing children.Mothers of children with autism in the study reported high www.intechopen.com How to referenceIn order to correctly reference this scholarly work, feel free to copy and paste the following:
Source: InTech eBooks
DOI: 10.5772/18507
Author: Ewa Pisula
Institution: University of Warsaw
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Uniwersytet Warszawski
OpenAlex ID: W1520762614