Parenting stress

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I thought this article was right on the money, and thought I'd share it with you: http://triplehelixblog.com/2011/07/hidd ... by-autism/

Great article! Funny that in Canada we get all sorts of funding for our kids to get therapy. It is not much, but it is something. If parents want to attend educational workshops and such, you can take the money away from your child's allotment. But who wants to take money away from their child? Their therapy is so important and with it being so expensive, I don't do that.

Wish there were more opportunities for Caregivers to get necessary training.

Great how the article acknowledges parental stress without acting like autism is some sort of child-stealing, family-destroying monster.

Though I wonder to what extent the prevalent negative attitudes towards autism account for parental stress levels. I mean, look at the contrast between the Autism Society of Canada and the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. It seems like amond developmental disabilities, autism is one of the most stigmatized.

No doubt the practical difficulties of raising an autistic kid account for a lot of stress, but it probably doesn't help to hear that your kid's doomed unless they get enough early intervention, and that it's normal and understandable for a parent to want to kill their autistic child.

I wonder if British parents of autistics are less stressed out? The National Autistic Society in Britain is a great organization, and doesn't pull the kind of gloom and doom rhetoric that ASC and Autism Speaks do.

I do worry for all the parents I read here who come here just after they discovered their child has autism, and who clearly are assuming the worst. We were fortunate in that my son is absolutely no different from me (in fact, he has far more strengths than I do) and therefore, outside of my original concerns about his depression, I have never worried that he will turn into some kind of TV version of an autistic child.

Another issue that parenting articles never address, and this one doesn't either - I would guess that a very large percentage of kids on the spectrum have one or both parents who are undiagnosed HFA or Asperger's. This, in itself, causes all kinds of stress because parenting is, at best, a highly unpredictable and extremely sensory-heavy experience. I know that I, for one, really wish I had a diagnosis to legitimize that part of my connection to my son, and to get specific support for the kinds of challenges a parent on the spectrum faces (Not sure at all where I fit on the spectrum; I'd hardly qualify as "disabled" these days - but I do face challenges that I don't think wholly NT parents face.)

I am guessing there would be huge push-back if diagnosticians asked parents to be tested, as many people who made it through life on the spectrum before it was widely known did so by gritting their teeth and denying their difference. I wish this wasn't so.

(OMG so many commas. Sorry.)

I have been thinking over the idea of trying to get an autism parent support group started at our school. It sounds like the authors of this article would support that. Not that I need another task to take on but it has been my observation, as this article points out, that there is much foucs on support for the children but here there is virtually nothing for the parents. This inspires me to think about this idea a little more seriously!

I can identify with that aricle, it always makes me feel better knowing that I am not on my own

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... Telomeres/

BBC article on Telomeres. Not at all related to Autism, but listen at about 13:30, they wanted a group of people suffering reliable long term high levels of stress to study for evidence of stress related damage at a DNA level. Wisely they chose mothers of Autistic children, and they were able to see that damage (length of Telomeres).