**Addressing Communication Difficulties of Parents of Children of the Autism Spectrum**

Fernanda Dreux Miranda Fernandes, Cibelle Albuquerque de La Higuera Amato, Danielle Azarias Defense-Netvral, Juliana Izidro Balestro and Daniela Regina Molini-Avejonas

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53964

**1. Introduction**

The autism spectrum includes major developmental disorders that, by definition, involve early and severe disorders in the areas of social, communicative and cognitive development. The resulting disorders are frequently severe and persistent with large individual variations. Therefore its impact on the families should not be overlooked.

On the other hand, the intervention aimed towards children with Autism Spectrum Disor‐ ders (ASD) should be comprehensive, intensive and long term. It leads to the notion that the families' participation in these processes should be a systematic focus of therapeutic propos‐ als and studies involving children of the autism spectrum.

However, a recent literature review [1] about the papers published in three of the most im‐ portant journals with specific focus on autism revealed a different reality. Only 0.7% of the papers published between 2005 and 2009 referred to studies about families with ASD chil‐ dren, comprising a total of 4883 participants. It is interesting to note that more than half of the papers about families with children of the autism spectrum were published in the last 18 months of the considered period. The themes of those studies involved issues about stress and emotional problems (13 papers); support groups and quality of life (7 papers); charac‐ terization of the families and their members (7 papers); intervention processes and their re‐

© 2013 Fernandes et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

sults (5 papers) and how the parents consider their children with autism spectrum disorders (8 papers).

to doubts of many parents at some point. Hopefully they will help parents and caregivers of ASD children to think about how their child communicates, which can be the key elements of successful communication experiences and the triggers of critical situations. This way they will be able to increase the occurrence of good and pleasant communication while de‐ creasing the number of stressful situations. However, it should be remembered that some amount of misunderstanding and frustrating communicative situations is part of the every‐ day life of every person and therefore it is not reasonable to plan to completely eliminate

Addressing Communication Difficulties of Parents of Children of the Autism Spectrum

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53964

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The broad themes considered address possible strategies to improve opportunities for com‐ munication, favor language development, improve social contact and improve the quality of

Observing the communicative style of the ASD child parents may identify new ways of fos‐ tering the development of new abilities and their use in different situations or with different

Identifying if there are specific situations when the child uses preferentially a certain com‐

Showing the possibilities of expressing a certain meaning - or improving the communica‐ tion's efficiency - by the use of alternative communicative means or by the combination of

Depending on the child's abilities, it may be important to exercise various situations and op‐

In other situations it may be important to improve the creativity in communication. Some‐ times it can be useful to show, in familiar situations, the various forms to express a certain

Visual contact requires a delicate balance where the person must look at other people but shouldn't stare at them. Parents should be supportive in the development of strategies to improve social visual contact. Simple strategies, as being at the child's eye level, consistently maintaining and requesting eye contact and responding to the child's eye contact initiatives

Being aware of all the communication the child expresses, regardless of the communicative mean. Shouts, murmurs, vocalizations and gestures may convey meaningful contents and therefore lead to productive interactions. On the other hand, if a communicative attempt

Stimulating the use of new gestures, sounds or words in familiar situations.

them form the ASD child's communicative experiences.

**2. Specific focus and action options**

**2.1. Improve opportunities for communication**

municative mean (speech, gestures, vocalizations, writing).

portunities for expressing a certain content or intent.

may produce significant results to the child's social adaptation.

communication with family and peers.

functions.

more than one mean.

message or intent.

The growing interest in the area may be a result of the recognition that families should be included in any plan for intervention designed towards ASD children. A recently published research [2] studied the experiences that were shared by families during the diagnostic proc‐ ess that identified an ASD. Reports about 16 children identified that there was an average 2 year lag between the first doubts about the child's development and the ASD diagnosis. These processes were more difficult and more painful to families of older children.

Another recent study [3] assessed schooling problems of ASD children and their families. The results confirmed the difficulties frequently observed in adaptation of ASD children in regular schools. The authors point out that opportunities for establishing friendship groups and peer acceptance seem to be the key elements to successful adaptations. [4] studied the opinion of parents of ASD children in the search for treatments - a process that often de‐ mands time, money and energy - in six different countries. The most significant issues that emerged were the effectiveness of treatments, relationships with professionals, access to treatments, costs, medication and stress. Early inclusion in a regular school, whenever possi‐ ble, should be part of the resources provided for the development of children with autism spectrum disorders.

A Brazilian study [5] proposed a questionnaire to the identification of perceptions of care‐ givers of ASD children about the quality of their communication with their children, regard‐ less of the concrete disorders presented by the child and the specific diagnosis within the spectrum. The questionnaire had a specific focus on the caregivers and was divided in four domains regarding their impressions about themselves, about other people, about their chil‐ dren and about their attitudes with their children. Caregivers report difficulties with other people's reactions to their children's behavior, communicative stile of the adult-child dyad, concern about the child's future and the need for more information about their child com‐ munication and instructions on how to face their difficulties.

The atypical communication development of individuals with ASD is related to difficul‐ ties with the various communicative roles (as speaker and as listener); disorders in the use of the different communicative means; a restricted repertoire of communicative func‐ tions; lack or few demonstrations of communicative intent, imitation, joint attention and other disorders in the social cognitive and symbolic development and social communica‐ tive adaptation [6, 7].

Verbal communication may be absent. Language delays, discursive or narrative disorders may also be observed. Social impairments may also vary from lack of visual contact or social reciprocity to severe behavior disorders (including aggressive and disruptive behaviors and eating and sleeping idiosyncrasies).

The aim of this chapter is to present some specific points and strategies to cope with autistic children's communication inabilities and suggestions on how to improve opportunities for communicative development and improvement. Not all the suggestions will be useful to all parents at any moment of their child's development; but probably some of them will answer to doubts of many parents at some point. Hopefully they will help parents and caregivers of ASD children to think about how their child communicates, which can be the key elements of successful communication experiences and the triggers of critical situations. This way they will be able to increase the occurrence of good and pleasant communication while de‐ creasing the number of stressful situations. However, it should be remembered that some amount of misunderstanding and frustrating communicative situations is part of the every‐ day life of every person and therefore it is not reasonable to plan to completely eliminate them form the ASD child's communicative experiences.
