Abstract
Work with families of children with autism is approximately 20 years old. It began in a context in which parents were seen as both partly responsible for their children’s condition and perhaps disturbed in their own way. At least three factors, however, provided momentum for the phenomenon of parent training or programs for families. One was criticism of the logic behind and weak empirical evidence for the psychogenic and sociogenic explanations of autism, i.e., that autism constituted the child’s defense against, or was the result of, a harsh, conflicting, unrewarding family environment. A number of researchers, including Ornitz (1967a, 1976b), Ornitz, Brown, Mason, and Putnam (1974), Reynolds, Newsom, and Lovaas (1974), Rimland (1964), and Schopler (1965) showed that many of the deviant behaviors and developmental abnormalities of autistic children were associated with and perhaps were accounted for by sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and neurological impairments for which their parents were not responsible. In addition, the work of DeMyer (1979), Eberhardy (1967), Farber (1959), Fowle (1968), Holroyd and McArthur (1976), Kozloff (1979), Schopler (1971), and Schopler and Loftin (1969a, 1969b), suggested not only that the blaming of parents for their children’s condition benefited those who developed and applied the psychogenic and sociogenic explanations, but that much of the anxiety and the apparently disordered behavior of the parents was a result of the painful, draining, and confusing experiences of the parents almost from the time their autistic child was born, not the least of which were experiences with professionals.
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Kozloff, M.A. (1984). A Training Program for Families of Children with Autism. In: Schopler, E., Mesibov, G.B. (eds) The Effects of Autism on the Family. Current Issues in Autism. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2293-9_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2293-9_10
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