Essay Title: Would parental strategies decrease the stresses of raising a child with Autism?
Introduction
Parents don't wish that one day they will be raising autistic kids. This is beyond the dream of parents who wants to give the best life to their kids. However, it is impossible to tell the fate of the baby inside the womb of the mother. It is impossible to tell if the child would be autistic or not. And it is impossible to choose. There are several adjustments that the family had to consider to fit in with the requirements and demands of raising an autistic child. Marguerite Colston, vice president of the Autism Society argues that the challenges of being a parent of an autistic child can be overwhelming.
Autism spectrum disorder or ASD is a wide scope of complex neurodevelopment disorders that constitute social impairments, stereotyped, repetitive and communication difficulties and restricted patterns of behavior. Autism is the most severe case of ASD, and despite its significant difference in character and severity, it affects every age group of all ethnic and socioeconomic clusters. According to some experts in this field, 1 out of 88 children will likely to have an ASD (Nikopoulos & Keenan, 2006).
A salient feature of autism is the child's impaired social interaction. During infanthood, the baby suffering ASD might be: (1) unresponsive to people and (2) excessively focused on one item for long periods of time to the extent of isolating one's self from others. According to Nikopoulos & Keenan (2006), socialization is one of the most important components of human life as it transcends the development of the person's attachment on things or people, his or her relationship with peers, and his or her social skills in communicating with others. As a result of their incapability to infer emotions or the thought of others through common components such as voice tone and facial expression, they also have a problem with their relationship with other people (Martin, et.al., 2007, p. 384).
But not only autistic children suffer from the disease, parents also have to cope with the problem. Two effective parental strategies used to decrease the stress of raising a child with autism are: coping and learning strategies. Although, there are other strategies that are considered effective by experts, these two mentioned strategies are commonly utilized by parents to help them in understanding and coping with the problem of their children. This essay shall focus on the problems of raising an Autistic child on their families, then it will suggest two different strategies to decrease the stress of raising an autistic child.
Problems and Stresses that Parents of Autistic Children Face
After the diagnosis that the child is suffering from autism, most parents would come into the state of shock. This is a normal reaction as the task of having an autistic child is overwhelming and nobody expects that the child will suffer from such disorder (Baron-Cohen, 1993). This is beyond the comprehension and expectation of parents that the child they loved is suffering from a disorder which can be considered a lifetime challenge.
Many parents agonize some of the hopes and dreams they lovingly held for their child. Friends may consider them being “depressed,” which almost always sound frightening. Depression is of negative effect; it often blocks the way to moving forward. Sadness, as time progresses, may be transformed into anger. Anger is a natural part of the healing process, but the negative part of it is that the anger is hurled directly to those people closest to the parent---the parent's other children, spouse, friend, or the world in general (Siegel, 1996).
During this stage parents don't want to accept the reality that their kids are suffering from autism. The parent must, however, be aware that s/he may be experiencing denial so that it doesn't cause the parent to lose focus on the child's treatment. At this period, parents would feel that they so much alone and isolated from the world. In the end, it is very important for parents who have autistic child to accept the reality. After the diagnosis the real fight is to help the child cope with the problem and still live a normal life. But parents cannot do this if they continue to dwell on the problem, which may result to loss of love to the child or even child's rejection.
In reality, even if the family is well-organized and has been in great attitude, the knowledge of autism may leave the family disorganized and in chaos. Of course, as mentioned earlier, it is impossible for kids to feel negative emotions, but for parents and siblings of the autistic child, the situation is a very big problem (Schopler & Mesibov, 1994).
Current Trends in Autism
Since its definition in 1942, autism has been addressed by a series of new 'cures', only to be questioned by scientific researches in the end. But now, there are a number of treatments which help some but not all children and adults with autism. One of the common evidence that the child is suffering from autism affects echolalia. This pertains to the normal way of learning the language, which is innate to all people. For children to learn the language, they would copy or mimic the sounds. It must be noted that children learn the language of their parents or their environment normally.
'Gestalt' means the holistic learning of the language language in gestalt form through chunks of information and tones rather than the tiny component sounds and specific meaning of each individual sound or even word (Dodd, 2005). For instance, the assimilation of the child with his or her environment opens her to the idea of the language. According to Lovaas (1981), this method of teaching the child requires specific parental guidance and support. In fact, it would be that child learns the language through external mimicking of sounds and words. Yet, within the person's mind, the copying strategy becomes an inherent element of learning. It is necessary for parents to allow the child copy from adults and learn from it. This is an important case as such that parents can influence their child's life through education of basic knowledge and principles.
Coping strategy allows parents to accept the reality of their child's problem and can help them to see what must be done to their child. Living as if the child is normal is a strategy that reduces the stress of parents and helps an autistic child live a normal life. Rather than creating an environment that isolates the child, coping strategy enables parents to adopt to the situation and let their child adopt to the normal life.
On the other hand, another strategy that can be utilized by parents who are raising an autistic child is learning strategy. For the past few years, learning has moved away from the traditional methods of teaching and learning to the acquisition of cognitive and language skills through different activities that are organized with preciseness of instruction. By facilitating social-communication skills, social interaction is motivated by real-life situations to help children in the context of reality and not just in classroom based (Dodd, 2005).
The goal of the learning environment within the family as fostered by parents is to help autistic children to develop skills in communication with others, or as discussed earlier, the social-communication skills of the person (Westwood, 2010). This is one of the greatest battle that must be faced by parents. In the same manner, it is also important for parents to support their kids by ensuring that self-care and the basic needs of children are provided sufficiently.
Westwood (2010) recommends that parents ensure the basic academic skills of the person through numeracy and literacy. Instead of succumbing to isolation of the child, it is important to assimilate them with the normal process of learning. They will learn best if they get acquainted with the real environment of their regular peers. This would be a hard direction for parents, but this will help them in reducing the capability of the person to interact with others and cope with the stress of learning.
According to Matson (2009) teaching autistic children the new technology is an important part to keep them learning and adaptive and to reduce the stress of raising autistic children. Through task analysis, autistic children are provided with necessary activities that can help them to acquire skills necessary in learning. From simple tasks that are repetitive in nature, autistic children learn the complex tasks for the development of the person's integral personality. By gradually changing the physical environment of the person, the child learns how to cope with the problem that they may change with the real-life situation.
Learning strategy is a gradual process of the autistic child's introduction to the world. With the aid of this strategy, parents are assured that their child is ready to adopt to specific situations. However, this strategy also isolates the child from other environments. This means that the child knows how to cope with specific situations and environments, but parents should look after them when it comes to other environments that are not yet introduced to them.
Conclusion
Copying strategy is an important element in educating an autistic child. With the development of proper skills and knowledge, a person is enabled to adapt with the real world he or she is going to assimilate with in the future. On the other hand, learning strategy that teachers communication and social skills, literacy, and numeracy of a person traces back to the idea that children with autism are just normal children with special needs, but they should not be isolated or left out by the society. It is still imperative and vital that autistic children are provided the necessary educational, social, and integral support to help them live a normal life.
The quest of giving autistic children the best life possible is deeply rooted on the agenda of reducing the stress received by parents in raising autistic children. If these educational and learning strategies succeed, parents of autistic children don't have to face the tremendous challenge of looking after their kids. Rather, they are given the opportunity to treat their children are regular ones.
In a study conducted by Hobson and Lee (as qtd in Pérez, 2007), autistic students were tested to evaluate their imitation skills, which is part and parcel of the copying strategy, with regards to "four novel goal-directed actions on objects in two contrasting styles." Some of these actions include pressing the head of a toy policeman, strumming the wooden stick, and making a staccato sound. The results of the study were parallel to the idea presented in this paper. Children with autism were able to copy these goal-directed actions with little divergence from the control group. Based on this study, it is easy to conclude that autistic children have the capability to copy actions or activities, but they have a hard time imitating expressions for they don't have the capability to discern facial expressions and emotions, as discussed earlier.
In this respect, autistic children are less responsive to emotions and expressions, but they can possibly copy or learn repetitive actions that are important to learning. In this regard, parents who want to reduce stress in raising children with autism should move toward a copying strategy for learning. By leading or teaching by example to the autistic child, it is easy for these kids to adapt and learn basic skills such as cooking, or cleaning. When they have seen the task being shown to them once, they can easily copy it in the perspective of their capability to imitate.
Overall, the learning strategy for a person with autism is based on the idea of imagery-based rehearsal. This means that by providing a visual system to the autistic children, learning is being initiated in the mind of the person (Baron, 2006). There are several cases and situations that can be traced to this principle. It is necessary to understand when is the best time for that information to be embedded in the mind of the person.
Lastly, autism is a disorder that must be considered a “gift” by parents. It should be that parents do everything to make the disorder less burdensome on the lives of their kids. By providing support to their kids, parents also get their results. Autistic children become less demanding and hyperactive, which would allow them to do their jobs without the stress from kids.
References
Baron-Cohen, S. Autism: The Facts. Oxford Medical Publications. Oxford University Press. Oxford, United Kingdom.
Baron, M. (2006). Stress And Coping in Autism. Oxford University Press. Oxford, United Kingdom.
Dodd, S. (2005). Understanding Autism. Elsevier Australia. New South Wales, Australia.
Martin, A., et.al. (2007). Lewis's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Textbook. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Walnut, Philadelphia.
Matson, J. (2009). Applied Behavior Analysis for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer. Berlin, Germany.
Nikopoulos, C. & Keenan, M. (2006). Video Modelling and Behaviour Analysis: A Guide for Teaching Social Skills to Children with Autism. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. London, United Kingdom.
Pérez, J. (2007). New Developments in Autism: The Future Is Today. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. London, United Kingdom.
Schopler, E. & Mesibov, G. Behavioral Issues in Autism. Springer. Berlin, Germany.
Siegel, B. (1996). The World of the Autistic Child : Understanding and Treating Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Understanding and Treating Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Oxford University Press. Oxford, United Kingdom.
Westwood, P. (2010). Commonsense Methods for Children with Special Educational Needs. Taylor & Francis. New Delhi, India.
