Training Programs For Parents May Help Behavioral Problems In Children With Autism

Researchers are continually learning about autism, a behavioral disorder that's estimated to affect 1 in 68 children.

Yet new findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association show that some training programs for parents could be successful in improving the behavior of children with the health issue.

For the study, researchers randomly assigned 89 parents to receive training and 91 parents to receive educational information regarding autism. All parental participants had a child between the ages of 3-7 with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The programs for each group--whether training or educational--lasted about six months and included about 12 in-person sessions and one or two home visits. However, education programs did not teach behavior management strategies. A drop of at least 25 percent in behavioral problems would be considered a significant improvement, according to the study authors.

Findings revealed that disruptive behavior for the children whose parents had received the training program declined by close to 48 percent when compared to about 32 percent for children of parents who just received educational information from a program.

A clinician who did not know which program the parents received was also asked to evaluate the children based on their improvements. The group that received training showed much higher scores at about 6 percent when compared to 40 percent and with improvements lasting for about 48 weeks.

"We teach parents to identify the antecedent, which is key to understanding what's driving the behavior," study author Lawrence Scahill, MSN, PhD, a professor of pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, via Health Day. "The parental response may inadvertently reinforce the maladaptive behavior."

She described the parental training program used for that study that's built on the ABC model: "A" represents the antecedent or the situation that comes before "B," the child's behavior and "C" is the outcome/consequence.