Parental stress measures and language intervention training for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been shown to report higher levels of stress than parents of typically developing children and parents of children with other disabilities (Hayes & Watson, 2013). UT Project SKILLS is a parent-directed speech and language intervention that directly targets children’s social communication skills and indirectly targets parental self-efficacy and resilience. The goal of the present pilot study is to characterize parenting stress reported by parents participating in Project SKILLS and to examine change in stress from pre- to post-intervention. 56 parents of children with ASD participated in the study and completed the parental stress scale. 19 participants completed both the pretest and the post-test surveys. Participants reported stress levels within one standard deviation of all parents who participated in previous work examining parenting stress utilizing the parental stress scale. Three distinct patterns of change emerged: decreased stress, no change, and increased stress. The study has a number of limitations that prevent generalization to broader populations. However, the results contained clinical implications and highlighted a need for future research in the area.Communication Sciences and Disorder