A new study has found that autistic children can benefit if their parents are trained in at-home interventions. Motherhood is challenging for everyone, but mothers who have children who have special needs can have different challenges that are hard to carry. Autistic children often face unique challenges, and they can be different for every child.
If mom is dealing with negative behaviors at home, she may need to know what she can do minimize them. She may go to the professional to try and get help for her child, but she also may want to know some skills that she can use at home. This means work has to be done to see what is the best option.
According to Medical Xpress, parents who are trained to provide at-home interventions can help their children with autism. The study was done by Brigham Young University, and it can be read in full here.
This training would also include empowering parents to give them the confidence they need to use these strategies. The study found that these interventions can help autistic children improve their positive behaviors and their language communication skills. Timothy B. Smith, one of the researchers, stated that they worked off what they already knew.
He stated that they know that early intervention for children with autism can help them improve their learning and social skills. The problem is there is not enough services available to get the help to children when they are young. However, they could be able to fill that gap with training parents.
If parents can work with their children before they are able to see a professional, it could provide that early intervention. When they completed the study, they found that autistic children who had parents with this training fared better than children who did not.
This could be ground-breaking for parents who have autistic children, and the researchers stated what parents would be trained on. In this training, parents would be trained on how to help their child to focus on a task, how to take turns with others, both in playing and speaking. Parents would also receive training that would empower them to implement these trainings.
Researchers said that parents are more than capable to constantly reinforce social behaviors if they know what they need to look for and how to do it properly. They believe this will have a remarkable impact on the wellbeing of autistic children.
Sources: Medical Xpress, Springer Link