No matter what kinds of support families find, it’s difficult to alleviate all parental stress when the child has a disability. And I don’t mean the stress that any parent has. I mean clinical levels of stress that can actually lead to ill health parents of children with autism report more health problems than other parents their age. And without help and action for their child, many can feel less energetic, and some can even lose interest in sex. Below, I’ll describe the areas of stress most likely to affect parents of children with autism and make some suggestions for coping with them. Remember: my advice is no replacement for good psychological support from a professional, a good friend, a family member, or a parent group, so please seek this out if you’re feeling overwhelmed and frightened. The Stress of Wondering About the Future Of all the fears that keep a parent awake at night, concern about her child’s future how well her child will ultimately be able to function in the real world is probably the biggest one. Many children with autism do not perform well on standardized tests, and many professionals, especially in the schools, base much of their analysis on how the child performs on those tests, so the picture a parent gets of his child’s cognitive abilities is often bleaker than it needs to be. A helpful thing to focus on when thinking about cognitive levels is the brain’s plasticity. Many children who have suffered from a stroke, gunshot wound, or other severe brain trauma are able to fully recover by developing neural pathways around the damaged areas. Our goal is to help children with autism do the exact same thing. We haven’t yet met a child with autism who couldn’t learn with good sound interventions.
