Abstract
Parents face many questions, uncertainties, and fears at the time children are diagnosed with autism. At the heart of this process is the relationship with early interventionists who work early on and intimately with families to help children with autism learn, connect, and engage. This chapter describes a series of early intervention strategies to promote a coaching (versus expert-driven) relationship between interventionists and families. The approach, procedures, and examples come from our own line of research and work coaching families with the Early Start Denver Model (Rogers, Dawson, & Vismara, 2012) as we talk about how to define and address child learning goals inside everyday routine-based activities and how to increase parents’ motivation when it comes to making the change necessary to address goals. The outcome is a stronger working alliance to guide, support, and ultimately empower parents toward active learning and child-family engagement.
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Vismara, L.A., Rogers, S.J. (2018). Coaching Parents of Young Children with Autism. In: Siller, M., Morgan, L. (eds) Handbook of Parent-Implemented Interventions for Very Young Children with Autism. Autism and Child Psychopathology Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90994-3_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90994-3_12
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