As a challenge to the family, autism must rank among the most stressful of childhood developmental disabilities (Tahmassian, & Khorramabadi, 2011). Problems with communication, emotional expression and antisocial behaviors, all combined to place tremendous stress on the families of children with autism. Despite these problems, families do cope with autism and often cope successfully. Nevertheless, the research on autism and family coping that does exist is cross sectional in nature, and, consequently, relatively little is known about how the coping activities of these families change over time. This purpose of this paper is to provide information on this subject by presenting the results of a qualitative, longitudinal study of family coping and autism. …show more content…
This research has been used for quantitative methods and focused on the factors that serve to ameliorate the stressful effects of the disorder Among the various factors that are significantly related to various forms of parental distress and adjustment are the sex of the parent degree and type of social support additional life stresses age of the child and coping activities In the initial study, which was conducted between and parents with children presently enrolled at a treatment center for autism were asked to participate in the project. A total number of parents agreed to do so; however, time and resource constraints limited the sample to