Theodora Papadopoulou, PhD
Linguist, Program Manager of Special Education Courses at NYC
Family consultation for children who belong to the autistic spectrum is very essential.
Parents of children with autism often face unique challenges when attempting to understand and address their children's difficulty. Although professionals have used functional assessment to help design interventions that match the communicative intent of challenging behaviour, parents often do not have this skill.
Both parents and the individual himself need counseling in order to cope with all the difficulties that the disorder causes and strengthen themselves enough to be able to provide help and support to people in need. The family struggling with the difficulties of an autistic child needs a team of experienced and dedicated individuals to help them ‘think outside the box’. In other words, family members need a professional to help them escape from grief and pain and eventually manage to understand the way autistic children think. Since it is impossible to make autistic people comprehend the way normally developed people think and express themselves, it is of highly importance to make family members understand the way autistic individuals comprehend the world.
In addition, a lot of people with an autism spectrum disorder experience problems at some time in their lives. They are more vulnerable to experiencing depression and anxiety than other people, especially in late adolescence and early adult life.
Mothers and fathers of children with autism report significantly more stress than do parents of children without disabilities or parents of children with other disabilities, including chronic illnesses (Hastings, Kovshoff, Ward, Espinosa, Brown, & Remington, 2005; Gray, 2002; Hastings & Beck, 2004).
According to Gray (2002), more than half of the mothers reported persistent career problems, indicating that their child’s autism prevented them from working at all or restricted the number of hours they could be employed. On the positive side, parents reported an overall reduction of stress over time. For example, two-thirds of the parents indicated that their present situation was better than it had been a decade earlier. However, several exceptions to this finding involved the report of ongoing high stress levels among parents whose children were aggressive.
On the side of coping, Singh and colleagues (2006) suggested that stress levels can be reduced by teaching parents how to handle problem behaviours, including aggression. Hastings and Beck (2004) also noted that when interventions result in children’s language acquisition and in the reduction of problem behaviours, parents experience a greater sense of well-being and a reduction in reported stress levels.
Counsellors trained in Cognitive and Behavioural counselling believe that if an individual changes the way that they think about themselves and other people (and about past or future events) then they will be able to function better in daily life.
People with autism spectrum disorders have more of a tendency to think in a way that hinders their ability to cope with everyday situations. These are called cognitive distortions and are also seen in people experiencing anxiety and depression who don't have an autism spectrum disorder.
A Cognitive Behavioural counsellor can help the autistic individual to control his/her moods or his behaviour, taking into highly consideration the difficulties that he/she is experiencing. This type of counselling will help him/her start looking at the way his/her thoughts affect his/her emotions and actions.
Other ways of counselling may also help. Some research has shown that a counsellor or psychologist using Personal Construct Theory may be able to assist. Alternatively, some people may prefer to see a Person Centred counsellor. These types of counsellors talk about feelings more than Cognitive Behavioural Counsellors. Therefore, people who talk more about how they feel rather than how they think may find this approach useful.
Whatever approach the counsellor uses, it is worth asking what awareness and experience the counsellor has in working with your particular difficulty, and if they know what an autism spectrum disorder is.
Parents of a child who belongs to the autistic spectrum are exposed to a great amount of stress and frustration. They are often overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, denial and anger. This results from the realisation that they do not have a ‘normal’ child who can interact and communicate with them successfully.
Feelings of shame and disappointment are there to add to the general negative psychological background of the parents. A typical feeling experienced by the parents of a child who belongs to the autistic spectrum is sadness at loss of hopes and dreams for the child. Social isolation is often a result of having an autistic child. Friends and relatives are mostly unwilling to try to understand the needs and behaviour of an autistic child and thus prefer to stop interacting with them and their families. To make matters worst, parents also experience a heavy financial strain since most autistic children are in need of special educators and caretakers to help them in their everyday life. Family members find themselves in a new reality which requires fast adjustment and appropriate action. This is why family consultation is the only way to help parents and siblings of an autistic individual cope with the new situation they have to face.
References
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