Abstract
Autistic people often struggle with socio-emotional skills and have idiosyncratic behavior and sensory preferences, which can lead to several adverse outcomes, including challenging behaviors. This can create parenting stress and mental health issues in parents, which, in turn, might challenge the parent-child relationship and subsequently affect their parenting socio-emotional skills. Thus, autistic children’s reduced socio-emotional skills and increased behavioral problems, parent’s mental health, and the parent-child relationship might underlie a spiraling interrelation that can cause detrimental effects for both children and their parents.
To examine the relationship between these four constructs, data were collected in person from 39 children (21 autistic; 18 neurotypical), one of their parents, and the class teacher. Measures included the WNV, SRS-2, ASEBA, ERSSQ, CPRS, WHO-5, and MDI.
Results indicated that although parents of autistic children reported worse psychological well-being and autistic children had reduced socio-emotional skills and more problem behavior, the parent-child relationship did not differ between autism and neurotypical families. Multiple regression analyses showed that parent-child closeness was positively related to parent psychological well-being and that children’s socio-emotional skills difficulties related to more parent-child conflict. However, partial-correlations revealed that children’s socio-emotional skills, parent mental health, and parent-child relationships might interrelate differently in autism families than in neurotypical families, which might have a valuable influence on interventions targeting mental health issues and socio-emotional skills difficulties in autism.