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Parenting and Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Comprehensive Guide to Autism

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationships between parents and their child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), focusing particularly on parenting stress and limit-setting behaviors. It summarizes the literature on the “lived experience” of parents of children with ASD and places these experiences in relation to models describing interactions between parenting stress, parenting behaviors, and child behaviors. The literature suggests there is no intrinsic difference between parents of children with ASD and typically developing children. Rather, parents of children with ASD experience very high stress, which disposes them to focus on negative aspects of their child’s behavior and sometimes to use less positive-parenting practices, which, in turn, affect the problem behaviors of children.

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Reed, P., Osborne, L.A. (2014). Parenting and Autism Spectrum Disorders. In: Patel, V., Preedy, V., Martin, C. (eds) Comprehensive Guide to Autism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4788-7_5

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