Life History: Parental Adjustment in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

DSM-V states that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that obstruct children’s development in terms of communication, socialization, and behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). With the limitations of ASD children, parents need to adjust to ASD children. There are four factors that affect parental adjustment, which is the characteristics of ASD children, social support, perception of the problem, and coping strategies (Pozo et al., 2011). The purpose of this study is to see and understand how parents adjust with ASD children. This is a qualitative study using a interpretative phenomenological paradigm, which is to understand the experiences of the participants. The approach in this study is by using life history to examine the lives of parents from the birth of the child to present time. Collections of data were achieved by semi-structured interview. The participants involved in this study are married couples who have ASD children. This research shows that emotion focused coping is one of the factors that parents with ASD children used to adjust themselves. With gratefulness, rejoice and surrending their difficulties to God.