If you and your family members maintain healthy and positive relationships with each other, it helps to make your family strong in times of crisis and in the long term. For parents with partners, raising an autistic child can bring many positive changes to your relationship. But couples in families with children with additional needs sometimes experience big challenges.
For example, additional medical bills and therapies can cause financial strain. One of the keys to handling these challenges is making time for each other. Enjoyable time together is important for its own sake. But it can also give you opportunities for listening , talking , and working on conflict management if you need to.
Positive relationships between your autistic child and their siblings are important to positive relationships in your family overall. You can strengthen sibling relationships by giving all of your children everyday warmth and positive attention.
This helps them all to feel special and sets a great example of how they can relate to each other. Support groups: For many parents and family members, autism support groups can be life saving. Contact with other parents of autistic children eases isolation, improves mood, and increases acceptance and understanding of the disorder. Often, just knowing that others are going through a similar experience can bring much needed relief and help parents cope with the physical and emotional challenges of raising an autistic child.
Your school district will be able to recommend a local support group. Accepting help: Parents and family members should seek help and support from every source possible. There is nothing wrong with relying on extended family to babysit, or with accepting donations to help pay for therapy and medical expenses.
Parents must remember to take a break and spend some time caring for their own needs. An extra nap, a trip to the salon, or an afternoon at the bookstore can recharge the mind and body and alleviate a considerable amount of accumulated stress.
Taking care of yourself, helps make you a better caregiver. Embracing the Positive Impact Although there are a variety of challenges associated with parenting a child with autism, the disorder can also have many positive affects on your family. Autistic Children in Military Families. Autism and Nonautistic Siblings.
By Adrienne Warber. Is Air Pollution Linked to Autism? By Kate Miller-Wilson. Diana Diaz's Contributions to Autism. Using Food to Motivate Autistic Children. Laws About Autism. By Cynthia Shearer. Adult Mental Health external icon. People with an ASD external icon.
People with any Disability external icon. Senior Health external icon. Teen Sexual Health external icon. Sexuality for People with a Disability external icon. Safety is important for everyone. We all need to be safe in order to live full and productive lives. People with disabilities can be at higher risk for injuries and abuse.
It is important for parents and other family members to teach their loved one how to stay safe and what to do if they feel threatened or have been hurt in any way. It can sometimes be helpful to give a person with a disability a bracelet or other item that has his or her name, address, phone number, and disability on it in case he or she gets lost. Be sure to actively listen to your child, too — even if that means finding new, nonspeaking ways to communicate with them.
An autism diagnosis can be an opportunity to focus on the strengths of both the child and the family. When parents and an autistic child receive appropriate support, the whole family can thrive.
The challenge is ensuring that families have access to the right resources. Hartman points out that many of the challenges that autistic people face could be improved if more people actively listened to the autism and disability communities. Learning what their priorities are for support and what society can do to create change and accommodations can help everyone.
If you want to learn more about autism spectrum disorder or what it means to be autistic, here are some key facts to get you started. Do you think someone you know may have autism? Our autism quiz can help you determine if they might need further evaluation and screening for autism…. It's actually more accurate to describe autism symptoms as sets of sensory, communication, and behavior patterns. Each autistic adult is different. Learn how you can manage school, work, and more with whichever level of support works best for you.
Many people believe that autistic people lack empathy, but it's time to retire this myth. If you're autistic, it's fairly common to also live with another medical, neurodevelopmental, or genetic condition. Learn about autism-related…. Autism is complex. While your genes may interact with your biology and environment to cause autism, there's more to it than that. Autism is diagnosed based on shared behaviors and ways of communicating.
But with that said, every person with autism is different. Learn about….
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