Psychological Factors Of Parenting Stress On Children With Autism And Educational Implications

Autism has characteristic symptoms and is extremely difficult to cure.So,parents are under the great pressure during the process of care.And their anxiety,depression and other negative emotions are prominent.In recent years,many studies have shown that parenting stress is related to the beliefs,attribution patterns,self-efficacy and coping styles of parents of autistic children,in addition to the external objective factors such as the degree of autistic children's own illness and their parents' educational level and income status.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the psychological factors of parenting stress and the educational implications of autistic children.In this study,301 parents of autistic children were surveyed by using the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form,Eysenck Personality Questionnaire,General Self-Efficacy Scale and Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire.Several related statistical approaches were used in the study and data processing was conducted to identify the psychological factors of parenting stress in autistic children.Research finds that:(1)The scores of parents of autistic children are higher than the national norm in four dimensions: total parenting stress score,parental distress,parent-child interaction disorder and difficult children.And 85.38% of the parents of autistic children were at the high level of parenting stress.The scores of parents of autistic children with high parenting stress level were significantly higher than those of parents with low parenting stress level under the parental distress dimension,the parent-child interaction disorder dimension and the difficult children dimension.(2)The introvert-extrovert and neuroticism factors in parental personality traits of autistic children have significant effects on the total scores of parenting stress.Parents who are characterized by emotional instability and introverted silence have the higher level of parenting stress.(3)Parents' general self-efficacy has a significant impact on parenting stress.Parents who have the lower level of general self-efficacy generally have the higher level of parenting pressure.(4)Both positive coping styles and negative coping styles have significant effects on parenting stress.Parents who are more likely to adopt negative coping styles in the face of stress events have the higher level of parenting stress than parents who are more likely to adopt positive coping styles.